Initially strongly typed localization provider was not planned to be used everywhere in EPiServer, but localizing categories came as complimentary feature: [LocalizedResource(KeyPrefix = "/categories/")] public class Categories { [ResourceKey("category[@name=\"" + nameof(SampleCategory) + "\"]/description")] public static string SampleCategory => "Some Category !"; } Still there is lot of ceremony to get things right.. Sick and tired of generating proper resource keys for localizing EPiServer categories? Say no more. Localization provider gives you now (within latest version) possibility to decorate your class with attribute and necessary translations will be added automagically. Here is a…

Listen to the audience. I was more than lucky to be on some local user groups to talk about strongly typed localization provider for EPiServer. Feedback from the audience is more likely to be provided than awaiting comments in blog posts. You have to listen to the audience, you really have to. They are your consumers, they know more about the context and projects where and how your library might be used. Over couple of last weeks I've been heads down busy with some of the feedback implementation. Here is…

Usually I don't post small changes in separate blog post, but I think that it's worth to mention breaking changes in latest ImageResizer (IR) plugin for EPiServer. Before If you are using Fluent API to resize the image, then you may face inconsistency in API. Passing in null or ContentReference.EmptyReference you will get an ArgumentNullException exception: @Html.ResizeImage(null, 100, 100) However, if passing in string.Empty for the another overload - you would get back empty string: @Html.ResizeImage(string.Empty, 100, 100) Why this is bad -…

Blog post about latest updates for database localization provider project. Release mainly focuses on foreign affairs - foreign, hidden and referenced resources. Read further for more info. Foreign Resources Good friend and colleague of mine asked once: "How do I register localized resources for ValidationIssue enum from EPiServer Commerce assembly?" Short answer back then was - you can't. Until now. With latest database localization provider now you can tell provider to get familiar with so called foreign resources and include those in sync process as well - even they are…

Recently we had experience with Azure WebJobs hosting system and specificely - with disposable jobs. This blog post will describe how to properly handle disposable job dependency. Why Dependency? You might ask, why I need to have dependencies for the Azure WebJob. The only purpose for WebJob would be to kick-off rest of the services and transfer control to them to do the work. According to some software architectural theories - WebJob is just the delivery mechanism, it's a trigger for other services to step up and carry out the…

Along with other smaller bug fixes, database-driven localization provider for EPiServer got closer to front-end. We joined forces together with my old pal and friend Arve Systad and made it possible to add translations to client side resources as well. Setup So setup for the client-side resource localization with help of DbLocalizationProvider plugin is more or less straight forward. You will need to install DbLocalizationProvider.EPiServer.JsResourceHandler package from EPiServer feed and add corresponding <script> include in your markup file to fetch translations from the server: <script…

Great colleague of mine Māris Krivtežs wrote blog post about feature folders describing code organization into folders by features or functional areas rather than technology or different grouping. However, one of cons from Maris' approach we couldn't reconcile with - name of the sub-feature folder needs to follow Mvc controller naming convention. "Another issue is related to the sub-feature folder naming. Sub-feature folder still should be called with the same name as a controller." So I made tiny adjustment to the view engine worth sharing. Adjusted code is below. public…

It's been awhile since last update for DbLocalizationProvider for EPiServer. Anyway things been in my backlog. Period around New Year is not the most productive for me :) This blog post will describe some of the interesting stuff I've been lately busy with. Export & Import - View Diff Once upon a time I got sick of merging and importing new resources from staging environment (with adjusted translations by editors) into production database where on the other hand editors already made changes to existing resources. Up till now import process only…

Some great updates have been delivered to EPiServer Scheduled Jobs infrastructure within version 10.3. In this blog post we will review some of the important changes. Scanning Process Property IsStoppable is now calculated during scanning process. Scheduled jobs scanner detects whether job is stoppable or not. If so - it's written down to the database and used later when job is being triggered. Also - now with v10.3 you don't need to inherit from base class (EPiServer.Scheduler.ScheduledJobBase). In this case all you need is to have…

This blog post will describe a way how to customize styles and scripts loaded by EPiServer.Forms.Samples package. Background Unfortunately EPiServer.Forms package does not have DateTime picker available in standard package. So you need to download and reference sample package that contains reference scripts and form elements for some additional stuff. Among others one of them is date time picker. It's based on jQuery UI. More or less everything is OK, until you need to customize look & feel of the date time picker. The way how it's…

Story continues with fire and localization cases inside EPiServer sites. This time smaller update for database localization provider, but still - worth sharing. Support for Custom Attributes Currently database provider supports and understands just a few System.Attribute child classes: [LocalizedModel] - this is main marking attribute for making sure that provider resource sync process will pickup decorated class and scan resources there; [LocalizedResource] - this is similar as LocalizedModel, but makes sure that resources discovered at this class will take localized resource semantics. Read more here about differences; [ResourceKey]…

Recently released driven localization provider for EPiServer had main focus on more complex view models along the other smaller bug fixes and features. And specifically - there were few unsupported scenarios for the view models with base/parent class. Here is the list of all new features in v2.1. Extract Abstractions Until now, if I do need to decorate some of the resources that are located in some core area assembly - you need to reference DbLocalizationProvider library that had some undesired dependencies (for instance, why do I need…

ImageResizer.Net Plugin for EPiServer v10 is released. ImageResizer.Plugins.EPiServerBlobReader got version 5.0.0. "Old" NuGet package for EPiServer 9.x is updated with upper version constraint fix. Now plugin package v4.2 has upper EPiServer version set under v10 exclusive. Note About Image Preview That was quite "interesting" experience to realize changes in EPiServer.Web.BlobHttpHandler. This is eventually the guy who is responsible for returning Blob back to the client. A bit more details below. Background First of all a bit background. Images in EPiServer EditUI…

This part of the round shaped software blog posts as promised will be about mapping the theoretical terms and ideas mentioned in previous post to the actual code fragments and components. Application for the Post To move further and map theory to the code, I've created really simple sample application for managing the users. To demonstrate mediator internals and round shaped architecture - we will stick with hand crafted mediator. Mediator will be able to handle commands, queries and events. In the application you can: enlist existing users (for the…

This is the story how I discovered clean, understandable and maintainable software architecture. Why it's round shape and not pentagon, hexagon or any other *-gon shape? In this blog post I'll guide you through my journey. This part will cover theoretical side. Next blog post will map it to the code. Classical Architecture Agree that we all have been taught about N-tier/layer application software in high schools, universities or between the pages of some software development magazine?! Where order and most importantly dependency direction was stressed as one of…

In this post we will enhance media auto-publish option to gain more control over what's going to be automatically published and what will stay for manual publishing. EPiServer gives site admins option to configure whether media file gets automatically published when uploading to Blob storage. This is very nice, but the problem is - this setting is global. It means either all media files get automatically published, or none - on/off. For one of our customers requirement was to delay publish only certain file extensions (usually .pdf files with…

Apply DisplayOption for EPiServer.Forms Elements Would you like to use this feature also for EPiServer.Forms? In this blog post I'm gonna show you how to do that. Background It's really great to see platform evolving and adding new features. But unfortunately - I must say that EPiServer.Forms are pretty close for modification (which is good) but at the same time - not so open for extensions, that's why we will need to modify some of the built-in templates to get this done. Getting Started First of all,…

Here comes small updates for the Content Area renderer in the latest version: Now EPiServer.Forms are supported Possibility to have your own Css classes DisplayOption is now available in block template as well (if needed) Some smaller bug fixes Naming Challenges As you might know - I'm still struggling with naming of this package. Originally it was planned to be as Twitter Bootstrap Content Area Renderer, but apparently over time package feature set deviated from original idea as now package gives so much more than just adding necessary Css…

Why? You might ask, but changes I guess is the only constant thing in this industry. DbLocalizationProvider is witnessing new version and some cool features covered in more details below. Also internally provider survived quite huge refactoring activities, while I was redesigning from central services and repositories to more granular command and queries. But that’s the story for another blog post. New Features in 2.0 Here goes the list of new features available in version 2.0. List is not sorted in any order. Translate System.Enum It's…

Time to time when working on various projects we come across requirement to control somehow which DisplayOption will be selected as default, once content is placed inside particular ContentArea. As most of our projects are running under Twitter Bootstrap system - this is ideal feature request for EPiServer Bootstrap Content Area plugin. As I'm always trying to be developer friendly - I would like to be able to define these default display option rules in the code. And finally version 3.3 got these features. Default DisplayOption for Block So…