You can create a xml extension for generating 3 diferent items from a number of items . 

You have now the id of the items and you can render on the panel .

Best regards , Vlad . 

Hi,

you don't have to make a .net user control for that, you can use xslt. First, make a property to your "abstract" node called umbracoNaviHide of type True/False so you can hide the node from navigation. This property is just a convention to be used in situations like this, you can name it any way you want, but chances are if you used some sample xslt to create your menus this umbracoNaviHide is already used there. Then you can make an umbraco macro with an xslt that gets 3 random nodes from your abstract node, this an example (that I found somewhere on this forum) on how to get a random node:

<xsl:variable name="abstractNode" select="abstractNodeId"/>

<xsl:variable name="abstractNodeSet" select="$abstractNode/descendant::node[@nodeTypeAlias = 'AbstractChildNodeTypeAlias']" />
<xsl:variable name="numNodes" select="count($abstractNodeSet)" />
<xsl:variable name="randomNum" select="floor(Exslt.ExsltMath:random() * $numNodes) + 1"/>
<xsl:variable name="randomNode" select="$abstractNodeSet[position() = $randomNum]"/>

then you can use the node $randomNode to output whatever of its properties you want. I'll of course have to change abstractNodeId to the id of your abstract node, and AbstractChildNodeTypeAlias to the alias of the child nodes of the abstract node. Load this macro in any templates you want and you're done! Let me know if need any more detais on this, I'm also kind of new to umbraco, but I did a similar xslt to the one I think you need.

Thanks for your replies.

Xslt is kind of a mess to right now - and i definatly feel more at home using dot.net. But if I decifer your example right, the trick is to loop the above example 3 times to get 3 random nodes. But in that way, I have no way (that I know of) to make sure the node is not already been taken. Put another way: I need 3 random, but distinct nodes. Any way to this?

Yeah, you do have a good point, I don't know if you can make the 3 random nodes distinct, at least not by using my example. If you want to make a .net user control, then you should do some research on how to use the nodeFactory class from the umbraco.presentation package, it provides read-only methods, but it's fast.

Hi,

This is how I select a random node by calling our to .NET from XSLT. You should be able to modify to pass in a array of already selected integers to ensure you don't reuse a node.

[code]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:msxml="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:umbraco.library="urn:umbraco.library"
xmlns:yourprefix="urn:my-scripts"

exclude-result-prefixes="msxml yourprefix umbraco.library">

  <xsl:output method="html"/>
  <xsl:param name="currentPage"/>

  <msxsl:script implements-prefix='yourprefix' language='CSharp'>
    <![CDATA[
public int randomNode(int limit)
{
DateTime tmeNow = DateTime.Now;
int mls = tmeNow.Millisecond;
Random rndNumber = new Random(mls);
return rndNumber.Next(1, limit + 1);
}

]]>
  </msxsl:script>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:variable name="AdGroup" select="/macro/source/node/@id"/>
    <xsl:variable name="collection" select="umbraco.library:GetMedia($AdGroup, 'true')/node"/>
    <xsl:variable name="selectedNode" select="yourprefix:randomNode(count($collection))"/>

    <xsl:for-each select="$collection">
      <xsl:if test="position() = number($selectedNode)">
        <img>
          <xsl:attribute name="src">
            <xsl:value-of select="./data[@alias='umbracoFile']"/>
          </xsl:attribute>
          <xsl:attribute name="alt">
            <xsl:value-of select="@nodeName"/>
          </xsl:attribute>
        </img>

        </xsl:if>
    </xsl:for-each>

  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

[/code]

This is what i finally have come up with.

Now, there might be some easier way to do this, but as mentioned earlier, I'm pretty inexperienced with c#, not to mention Umbraco.

Any suggestions on improvements are highly appreciated.

The code:

    public partial class CasePanel : System.Web.UI.UserControl
    {

        public int parentId { get; set; }
        public int nodeCount { get; set; }

        private Random index = new Random((int)DateTime.Now.Ticks);

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            umbraco.presentation.nodeFactory.Nodes nodes = new umbraco.presentation.nodeFactory.Node(parentId).Children;

            if (nodes.Count < nodeCount) nodeCount = nodes.Count; //Make sure count is not greater than the actual number of nodes

            Node[] nodeList = new Node[nodeCount];

            selectRandom(nodes, nodeList, 0);
            for (int i = 0; i < nodeCount; i++)
            {
                Literal1.Text += nodeList[i].Name + "<br />";
            }

        }

        void selectRandom(Nodes list, Node[] newList, int cursor)
        {
            Node node = list[index.Next(list.Count)];

           if (!newList.Contains(node))
           {
               //The node is NOT in the list - append it.
               newList[cursor] = node;
               cursor++;
           }

           if (cursor < newList.Length)
           {
               selectRandom(list, newList, cursor);
           }
            
        }
        
    }

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