Adding Core Taxonomy to Your Module: Part 5 - Terms

As with the other parts of this series, I ask that you please read them prior to reading this blog entry. The majority of this series has touched on Content Items and what they are and how to integrate them into your module. Well, for this portion we will reference Content Items but we will be covering a new topic: Terms. Compared to the previous posts in this series, this one is fairly short!

You can find the previous parts of the series here:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3
4. Part 4

Terms, while they depend on Content Items, are actually the first piece we are covering in this blog series that are specific to taxonomy/folksonomy. If you need a refresher on taxonomy/folksonomy or what terms consist of (in relation to DotNetNuke), you may wish to review Charles blog post on the topic. For content editors, terms are assigned to a content item when a user creates a content item (or update an existing content item). When users viewing a content item apply tags, these terms are then associated with the content item as well (and accessible for content editor editing via the editing of the content item).

In Part 4 we touched on where to call content creation and update methods from and where they fit into our Controller class. Now, in combination with other parts of this series, we can focus on the content add and update methods in their full glory.

Sample Create Content Item (Complete):

   1: public ContentItem CreateContentItem(EntryInfo objEntry, int tabId)

   2: {

   3:     var typeController = new ContentTypeController();

   4:     var colContentTypes = (from t in typeController.GetContentTypes() where t.ContentType == ContentTypeName select t);

   5:     var contentTypeID = 0;

   6:  

   7:     if (colContentTypes.Count() > 0)

   8:     {

   9:         var contentType = colContentTypes.Single();

  10:         contentTypeID = contentType == null ? CreateContentType() : contentType.ContentTypeId;

  11:     }

  12:     else

  13:     {

  14:         contentTypeID = CreateContentType();

  15:     }

  16:  

  17:     var objContent = new ContentItem

  18:                         {

  19:                             Content = objEntry.MyContent,

  20:                             ContentTypeId = contentTypeID,

  21:                             Indexed = false,

  22:                             ContentKey = "mid=" + objEntry.ModuleId + "&ctl=ViewEntry" + "&EntryID=" + objEntry.EntryId,

  23:                             ModuleID = objEntry.ModuleID,

  24:                             TabID = tabId

  25:                         };

  26:  

  27:     objContent.ContentItemId = Util.GetContentController().AddContentItem(objContent);

  28:  

  29:     // Handle Taxonomy Terms

  30:     Util.GetTermController().RemoveTermsFromContent(objContent);

  31:     foreach (var term in objEntry.Terms) {

  32:                 Util.GetTermController().AddTermToContent(term, objContent);

  33:             }

  34:  

  35:     return objContent;

  36: }

The only items that are new, versus what was covered in Part 2, are lines 30-33. Here is where we call the Core API to first clear any associated terms (in line 30). Next, we loop through each term (which is selected in the user interface and will be covered in Part 6) and then add it to the data store using the Core API’s Util.GetTermController (this is under the DotNetNuke.Entities.Content.Common namespace) passing it the individual term (because we are looping through one by one) and the Content Item we just created. As for the update method, we would just add lines 30-33 at the end of our UpdateContentItem method (also covered in Part 2).

Thus far we have covered everything around taxonomy integration besides integrating it into your user interface, therefore for the final blog entry in this series we will cover the user interface integration and the controls available for you to use.