CMS + Search & Navigation

The integration includes specific components for convenient usage of the Optimizely Search & Navigation .NET client API with Optimizely Content Management System (CMS).

Integration packages

The integration involves the following NuGet packages:

• Episerver.Find.Cms – Integration of the Search & Navigation REST API with CMS.
• EPiServer.Find – The .NET client API for the Search & Navigation REST API  (installed with EPiServer.Find.Cms).
• EPiServer.Find.Framework – General integration components for the Search & Navigation REST API (installed with EPiServer.Find.Cms).

Integration components

Some of the functionality you get with the integration:

• IndexingModule – Hooks up events to handle content indexing (IContent objects).
• Conventions applied to the SearchClient.Instance object exclude some properties of the IContent object and other CMS classes. The conventions also include additional fields. This is handled by the IndexingModule at startup using the CmsClientConventions class.
• The ContentIndexer class, which handles the indexing, reindexing and removal of content from the index. You can customize content to be indexed by modifying its conventions.
• A scheduled job, Episerver Find (Search & Navigation) Content Indexing Job, handles the reindexing of all content.
• The GetContentResult extension method – Call to execute search requests and get actual IContent objects back.
• Several additional filter methods,such as ContentReference, make it more convenient to filter on CMS types.

Set up for development

The CMS integration assumes that each environment has its own Search & Navigation index. It also assumes that content is added and removed through the CMS API. This means that:

• Each developer should have their own development index unless you use a shared database.
• Each server environment (test, staging, etc.) should have its own index unless they use a shared database.
• If content is removed or added in ways other than the CMS API (for instance, using a database restore/rollback), you should run the scheduled job for reindexing.

If the above guidelines are not followed, the search and querying functionality may appear to work but produce unexpected results. For instance, the GetContentResult method returns less content than its TotalMatching property reports. This might happen if two developers use the same index, and one of them publishes a page that does not exist in the other developer's database.