Hey

I've just been working with the same problem and found that I was using the wrong method.

The code you have does not get a node it seems. I googled the problem a little further and found this post http://forum.umbraco.org/yaf_postst5831_Get-properties-out-of-a-document-selected-by-contentpicker.aspx and Dirk say to get the node you use:

umbraco.presentation.nodeFactory.Node n = new umbraco.presentation.nodeFactory.Node(idOfNode);

This worked for me hope it helps.

Jon

Thanks webmonger. That nodeFactory method (at least from looking at it) returns me a single node. Which isn't quite what I'm after. I need to be able to use XPath to select all the appropriate nodes in the tree, as I'm after all the children nodes that are of a particular @nodeTypeAlias

You can use nodeFactory and (assuming they are the direct children) use LINQ (or a for loop) to get the children of a particular type:

var node = new Node(1234);
var children = node.Children.Where(child => child.NodeTypeAlias == "WhatImLookingFor");

Hi Chad

I used this recently:

           Nodes artworks = new Nodes();

            DocumentType dtArtwork = DocumentType.GetByAlias("Artwork");

            umbraco.cms.businesslogic.Content[] c = Document.getContentOfContentType(dtArtwork);

Then looped through c adding nodes to artworks using artworks.Add(new Node(c[i].Id)); based on property values (c[i].getProperty("").Value)

I'm not sure if this is the right way to go but it works.

Claire - You'll want to be careful with that, as it can be quite database intensive. the Document API uses the DB, and the ctor hits the DB 2 or 3 times for each construction

I was wondering about that at the time but I'm new to this too & didn't know you could do that.  Thankyou for showing us.

Slace,

"You can use nodeFactory and (assuming they are the direct children)" - They aren't direct children. The structure looks something like this:

-Main Section Node
    -Sub Section
        -Node I want
        -Node I want
    -Sub Section
        -Node I want
    -Sub Section
        - Node I DON'T want (is a different type)

So I'd want it to just grab those 3 nodes.

Chad - you could write a recursive function to do it then and pass in the current level and the nodeTypeAlias that you want, looking at the children of it recursively.

Should a recursive function really be needed? The umbraco api returns xml, .net has XPath... it shouldn't be that hard :)

I've got this:

var parentNode = umbraco.library.GetXmlNodeById(NodeID);
parentNode.MoveNext(); // moves to the first node;
var foo = parentNode.Current.SelectDescendants("node", "", false);

That returns all the descendants of that top level node. Perfect, now I just want those which have a certain node type alias.... So I change the XPath query to:

var foo = parentNode.Current.SelectDescendants("node [@nodeTypeAlias = 'MyType']", "", false);

No dice, it doesn't select any nodes. Here are the following XPath scenarios and their results:

"*" // returns all nodes and their child data nodes
data // returns just the data nodes
node // returns just the nodes

// All of the above is pretty standard...

@* // thought it would return all the attributes - no results
node [1=1] // just trying some stuff - no results
node/data // no results - now I'm getting confused

Success!

My issue, is from not reading the docs. the SelectDescendants method does not take an XPath string, it takes a string of the descendant nodes you would like to select.

So doing the following works fine:

var node= umbraco.library.GetXmlNodeById(NodeID).Current.Select("node/child::node [@nodeTypeAlias = 'Paint']");

And then you can interate over that.

I however, needed to add sorting to the mix as well. So here is what my solution ended up looking like:

//get the node I'm after
var node = umbraco.library.GetXmlNodeById(NodeID);

//I then create a xpathnavigator...
var navi = node.Current.CreateNavigator();

//and use that xpathnavigator to create xpathexpression
var expr = navi.Compile("node/child::node [@nodeTypeAlias = 'Paint']");

//add sorting to the mix
expr.AddSort("@nodeName", XmlSortOrder.Ascending, XmlCaseOrder.None, "", XmlDataType.Text);

//and finally run that expression to select the new nodes in the order I need.
var sortedNodes = node.Current.Select(expr);

//loop through and build up my dropdownlist control.
while (sortedNodes.MoveNext()) {
    ddlPaints.Items.Add(new ListItem(sortedNodes.Current.GetAttribute("nodeName", ""), sortedNodes.Current.GetAttribute("id", "")));
}

You could try doing this:

//given variables startNodeId and doctypename
string start = startNodeId > 0 ? string.Format("//node[@id = {0}]", startNodeId) : "";
System.Xml.XPath.XPathNodeIterator it = umbraco.library.GetXmlNodeByXPath(start + "//node[@nodeTypeAlias = '" + doctypename+ "']");
while (it.MoveNext()){ //iterate through each node }

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