Xperience Page Custom Data Control Extender

A Kentico Xperience Form Control Extender that sync the Form Control value to/from Page CustomData fields

Dependencies

This package is compatible with Kentico Xperience 13.

How to Use?

1. First, install the NuGet package in your Kentico Xperience administration CMSApp project

   dotnet add package XperienceCommunity.PageCustomDataControlExtender

2. Open the Administration application and navigate to the "Administration Interface" module in the menu

   

3. Create a new Form Control, selecting to inherit from the Form Control you would like to use to store data in a Page's CustomData field

   

4. After creating the new Form Control, assign the correct settings to that the Control is available for Page Type fields of the correct data type

   

5. (Optional) Create a custom Property for this Form Control that allows it to store data in the correct Page field location for each use:

   Note: If this Property is not defined, the Control will default to storing the Control value in DocumentCustomData

   • UseDocumentCustomData - Data type: Boolean, Required: true

     

6. Create a new field in your Page Type, using the new Form Control:

   Make sure you select "Field without database representation" as the Field type, select a Data type that your Form Control is configured to work with, and also select the new custom Form control in the drop down.

   Note: The name of the field (ShowInSitemap in the screenshot) is the XML element that will contain the value in the Page CustomData field.

   

7. (Optional) Register the included custom VersionManager to make DocumentCustomData a versioned Page field:

   Follow the instructions for Registering providers via the web.config in the Kentico Xperience documentation.

   Note: By default, DocumentCustomData is not versioned, so changes to the field will update the CMS_Document table, even for Pages under workflow.

   <section name="cms.extensibility" type="CMS.Base.CMSExtensibilitySection, CMS.Base" />
   
   <cms.extensibility>
      <managers>
         <add name="VersionManager"
               assembly="XperienceCommunity.PageCustomDataControlExtender"
               type="XperienceCommunity.PageCustomDataControlExtender.CustomDataVersionManager" />
         ...
      </managers>
   </cms.extensibility>

How Does It Work?

Normally, if we want to store data in Pages, we define fields for the Page's custom Page Type. This field often a "Standard Field" which results in a column in the Page Type field database table.

However, Pages already have 2 fields that can be used to store any kind of serializable data/content - DocumentCustomData and NodeCustomData. Data in these fields is store in XML data structures and the TreeNode APIs to access these fields perform the XML serialization/deserialization automatically.

If we want to store data in these fields we need a way to associate a Form Control (eg Check Box, Text Box, Media Selector) with a one of these XML structures and an XML element name in which the value of the Form Control should be stored.

Kentico Xperience's Portal Engine API (still used in the Administration application) allows for Form Control Extender classes to get access to a Form Control's data, Page, and Form during events of the Control's event lifecycle.

This NuGet package exposes a Form Control Extender that can be applied to custom Form Controls that inherit from existing ones - maintaining their original functionality, but intercepting the Value produced by the Form Control and sync it to/from the Page's CustomData field.

Since the Page Type field that the extended Form Control operates on is a "Field without database representation", the Page Type database table does not need modified and Content Managers don't lose any of the standard content management functionality they are used to.

Querying XML via SQL

Normally Page CustomData fields should to be used to store data that we want access to when we retrieve a Page from the database, in which case the DocumentCustomData or NodeCustomData will handle the XML deserialization for you.

However, if we want to filter in SQL on these XML columns, we can cast the column to the SQL XML type and filter on its value.

Using the setup in the steps above, this query would return all Pages (of any Page Type) that have "Show In Sitemap" set to true.

SELECT *
FROM CMS_Document
WHERE CAST(DocumentCustomData as XML).value('(//CustomData/ShowInSitemap/text())[1]', 'bit') = 1

References

Kentico Xperience

• Field Editor: Creating New Fields
• Inheriting from existing form controls
• Defining form control parameters