umbraco 411 mvc custom routing content is null how can i load content - API Questions

Keith Jackson 183 posts 552 karma points

Feb 02, 2013 @ 23:21

Umbraco 4.11 - MVC Custom Routing - Content is null - How can I load content

I've got a routing setup for a blog within my site that works like this...

siteroot/blog
siteroot/blog/page2
siteroot/blog/page3

etc. etc.

So I set up the following cutom routes...

            routes.MapRoute(
                null, "blog/page",
                new { controller = "blog", action = "index" });

            routes.MapRoute(
                null, "blog/page{page}",
                new { controller = "blog", action = "showpage", page = UrlParameter.Optional },
                new { page = @"\d+" });

            routes.MapRoute(
                null, "blog/rss.xml",
                new { controller = "blog", action = "feed" });

All is well and good, but when the showpage action on the BlogController is hit the value of the model is null.

    public class BlogController : RenderMvcController
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Default method on the controller.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="model">The model.</param>
        /// <returns>The first page of the blog.</returns>
        public override ActionResult Index(RenderModel model)
        {
            return ShowPage(model);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Shows the page.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="model">The model.</param>
        /// <param name="page">The page.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public ActionResult ShowPage(RenderModel model, int page = 1)
        {
            var blogRoll = (model == null) ? NullBlogRoll.Value : new BlogRoll(model.Content);
            
            // This is null so will need to enforsce usage of the blog model rather than the content.

            return View("Blog", new BlogListViewModel(blogRoll) { CurrentPage = page });
        }
}

This is kind of expected as Umbraco seems to be looking for some content called 'page2' or 'page3' (for example). What I need to be able to do is to either....

Somehow return the 'parent' intem (the blog root) as 'model'
Load the blog root manually in the event the model value is null.

The problem I have here is that in the controller I have no UmbracoHelper or UmbracoContext with which to load content data.

I ghave a nice wrapper that is on a base view for all of my views that contains the Umbraco Helper methods, wrapped up to load specific content items, but it's too far down the chain. As a workaround I've had to but some skanky logic on a wrapping model where you can query if the underlying model is null...

    public class BlogListViewModel : MinistrywebBaseViewModel<IBlogRoll>
    {
        #region | Construction |

        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="BlogListViewModel" /> class.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="blog">The blog.</param>
        public BlogListViewModel(IBlogRoll blog)
        {
            InnerObject = blog;
        }

        #endregion

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the blog roll.
        /// </summary>
        public IBlogRoll BlogRoll
        { 
            get { return InnerObject; }
            set { InnerObject = value; }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets a value indicating whether this instance has null blog roll.
        /// </summary>
        public bool HasNullBlogRoll { get { return InnerObject == NullBlogRoll.Value; } }

        public int CurrentPage { get; set; }

        public IEnumerable<Article> ArticleSummaries
        {
            get
            {
                var articleRemovalQuotient = InnerObject.ArticlesPerPage * (CurrentPage - 1);
                return InnerObject.Articles.Skip(articleRemovalQuotient).Take(InnerObject.ArticlesPerPage);
            }
        }

This is however, kind of sucky and seriously messes up any kind of seperation of concerns. (It looks like this in the view)...

@inherits MinistrywebViewPage<BlogListViewModel>
@{
    Layout = "../_Layout.cshtml";

    // Because of the routes used, the blog content model may be null.
    if (Model.HasNullBlogRoll) 
    { 
        Model.BlogRoll = Ministryweb.BlogRoll;
    }
    
    ViewBag.Title = Model.Name + " - " + Ministryweb.RootAncestorName;
}

(shivers involuntarilly)

Is there some code I can add to the controller to get ahold of the Umbraco context and return the content there? If I can do that then I don't need the model content to be passed into the controller, as I know what the ID is and it never changes.

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Umbraco 4.11 - MVC Custom Routing - Content is null - How can I load content

The first option is to specify a custom route handler

The second option is to specify a custom model binder