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 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 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 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 development index unless you use a shared database.
• Each server environment (test, staging, and so on) should have its index unless it uses a shared database.
• If content is removed or added in ways other than the CMS API (for instance, using a database restore or rollback), you should run the scheduled job for re-indexing.

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 publishes a page that does not exist in the other developer's database.