Hi Hayden,

Here's you might extend the Hybrid Framework to allow news items to be exported as a CSV.

First create a backoffice controller which generates the CSV file:

using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using System.Web.Http;
using CsvHelper;
using Umbraco.Extensions.Models.Generated;
using Umbraco.Web;
using Umbraco.Web.WebApi;

namespace Umbraco.Extensions.Controllers.WebAPI
{
    public class NewsItemExportController : UmbracoAuthorizedApiController
    {
        [HttpGet]
        public HttpResponseMessage Export()
        {
            // Get content models from Umbraco
            var newsItems = Umbraco.TypedContentAtRoot().DescendantsOrSelf<Newsitem>();

            // Write CSV
            var stringWriter = new StringWriter();
            var csvWriter = new CsvWriter(stringWriter);
            csvWriter.WriteRecords(newsItems);

            // Return file response
            var response = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK)
            {
                Content = new StringContent(stringWriter.ToString())
            };
            response.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("text/csv");
            response.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = new ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment")
            {
                FileName = "NewsItems.csv"
            };

            return response;
        }
    }
}

To keep things simple I'm just writing the content models directly to a CSV. I'm using CsvHelper which has a ton of options if you want to do something more complicated.

This method will be available at this URL: /Umbraco/Backoffice/Api/NewsItemExport/Export.

Next create an event handler which adds the export option to the menu for the news parent node:

using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Web.Models.Trees;
using Umbraco.Web.Trees;

namespace Umbraco.Extensions.Events
{
    public class TreeEvents : ApplicationEventHandler
    {
        protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication,
            ApplicationContext applicationContext)
        {
            TreeControllerBase.MenuRendering += ContentTreeController_MenuRendering;
        }

        private void ContentTreeController_MenuRendering(TreeControllerBase sender, MenuRenderingEventArgs e)
        {
            // Only display export option on News node
            if (e.NodeId == "1063")
            {
                var item = new MenuItem("exportCsv", "Export Children as CSV");
                item.AdditionalData.Add("actionView", "/App_Plugins/NewsItemExport/index.html");
                item.Icon = "save";
                e.Menu.Items.Insert(e.Menu.Items.Count, item);
            }
        }
    }
}

When this menu item is selected it will open the view at /App_Plugins/NewsItemExport/index.html so we need to create that:

<div class="umbracoDialog umb-dialog">
    <p>Click <em>export</em> to download a CSV of all news items.</p>

    <div class="umb-dialog-footer btn-toolbar umb-btn-toolbar">
        <a href="/Umbraco/Backoffice/Api/NewsItemExport/Export" target="_blank" class="btn btn-primary">
            Export
        </a>
    </div>
</div>

It's extremely simple with just some text and a download button. The button links directly to the controller action above so no need for any JavaScript.

Hope this helps.

Steven