Search for pages based on page type

Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) recommends Optimizely Search & Navigation, a cloud-ready extension that lets you build advanced customized search features based on your content model.

You can programmatically search for CMS pages for non-cloud environments based on a certain page type using built-in functionality. By specifying search criteria and a place to start the search, you get a PageDataCollection containing matching pages.

The DataFactory contains a method called FindPagesWithCriteria which takes a PageReference (representing where to start the search) and a PropertyCriteriaCollection object (representing what to search for). When the FindPagesWithCriteria method is called it returns a PageDataCollection object containing matching pages.

Create a criteria collection

1. Create a PropertyCriteriaCollection object that contains the individual PropertyCriteria objects:

   C#

   PropertyCriteriaCollection criterias = new PropertyCriteriaCollection();
   

2. Create a PropertyCriteria object that contains the information about the property criteria for the search:

Create search criteria

Define the search criteria by creating a PropertyCriteria object that contains the information about the property criteria for the search:

1. Set the Condition property to specify the type of comparison you want; for example, CompareCondition.Equal.
2. Set the Name property to the PageTypeID property.
3. Set the Type property to the PageType property.
4. Set the Value property to specify what page type to search for (the load of a page type is based on its name); for example, PageTypeNewsItem.
5. Set the Required property to true. This criterion is required for a match.

PropertyCriteria criteria = new PropertyCriteria();
criteria.Condition = CompareCondition.Equal;
criteria.Name = "PageTypeID";
criteria.Type = PropertyDataType.PageType;
criteria.Value = Locate.ContentTypeRepository().Load("PageTypeNewsItem").ID.ToString();
criteria.Required = true;

Create additional search criteria

Define another search criterion by creating a PropertyCriteria object that contains the information about the property criteria for the search:

1. Set the Condition property to specify the type of comparison you want; for example, CompareCondition.GreaterThan.

   C#

   PropertyCriteriaCollection criterias = new PropertyCriteriaCollection();
   

2. Set the Name property to the PageCreated property.

3. Set the Type property to the Date property.

4. Set the Value property to specify a period; for example, set to search for pages created in the last 120 days.

5. Set the Required property to true, this criterion is required for a match.

PropertyCriteria secCriteria = new PropertyCriteria();
secCriteria.Condition = EPiServer.Filters.CompareCondition.GreaterThan;
secCriteria.Name = "PageCreated";
secCriteria.Type = PropertyDataType.Date;
secCriteria.Value = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-120).ToString();
secCriteria.Required = true;

Add your criteria to the criteria collection

Add your specified criteria to the criteria collection as follows:

criterias.Add(criteria);
criterias.Add(secCriteria);

Execute the search

After you specify the criteria, define where to start the search. Use the start page as the search starting point.

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Note

The following example may return many matches (and in some cases could be time-consuming).

PageDataCollection _newsPageItems = Locate.PageCriteriaQueryService().FindPagesWithCriteria(PageReference.StartPage, criterias);

FilterForVisitor

Filter for visitors. The following filter removes pages that the current user does not have access to or that are not currently published:

FilterForVisitor.Filter(_newsPageItems);
new FilterSort(FilterSortOrder.PublishedDescending).Filter(_newsPageItems);

You can find the source code for the PageDataCollection and PageData classes the Framework Reference section under the Remarks section for the class.