Page Comparison

Sometimes you, as a developer, might want to do more direct queries against the assets in Digizuite DAM. Maybe you want to:

• Offer a listing of product white papers available for download that updates dynamically

• Show an archive of videos for the current target audience

• Give the end user access to direct free text search in certain assets

• Have a gallery or a slider that automatically selects images marked in your DAM for that purpose by your image editor.

In cases such as these you might want to consider doing a custom query for assets. Luckily the Optimizely/Digizuite integration is prepared for this and supports it fully.Image Removed

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Querying

In order to search, you basically have to construct an AssetQueryParameters object.

This will specify all the important parameters of your search. These are some of the parameters you can set:

• FreeText (string). A free text search query. By default this will do a free text search against the title, description, keywords and note field - but it can of course be configured.

• Facets (List<FacetRequest>). Any additional fields to filter for.

• Limit (int). How many assets to return.

• QueryCacheDuraction (TimeSpan). The timespan to cache the results for. This is very important in order to ensure decent performance on your site and DAM Center. This can also be set through the method CacheFor.

When you have constructed a complete AssetQueryParameters object, you can use it in the DigizuiteClient.Search(AssetQueryParametres) method. This will return an IEnumerable<IContent> that in turn can be cast to whatever type you expect.

If you require the generated IContent objects to have a different 'Parent' property than the default (which is the Digizuite Content Providers entry point), you can specify it in an optional parameter. This can be useful if you want the objects to be listed below a certain folder for example.

Figuring out which values to use for Crops, Sorting and Asset Types

When setting the above search parameters it's important to know which options is available to set. You can of course see this in your DAM Center's configuration, but that might not be available to the typical web site editor.

Luckily, whenever the Digizuite Client class (DFO 4.0.0 - 1 Understanding DAM For Optimizely)  initializes, it connects to the DAM and retrieves lists of the various settings like Asset Types, Crop Names, Sorting methods and Media formats. They are then available in the "Configuration" object of the Client and can be called like myClient.Configuration.AssetTypes, myClient.Configuration.MediaFormats, myClient.Configuration.Crops, myClient.Configuration.SortFields.

Selection factories

To make it even easier to use the values from the DAM Center in custom property drop down lists - for example in a block to hold a dynamic gallery, the integration also provides SelectionFactories for AssetType, Crops and MediaFormats SelectionFactory for folders in the Digizuite.Episerver.Helpers namespace, ready to use in attributes on properties like this: 

[SelectOneSelectMany(SelectionFactoryType = typeof(CropSelectionFactoryFoldersSelectionFactory))]
public virtual string CropName Folders { get; set; }

See a full example further down!

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The AssetQueryParameters has a Parse(string) method that can transform any string into an AssetQueryParameters object.

The parsing will check for the occurrence of key=value sets in the provided string and if the key is "crop" it will try to identify a crop name to filter on. If the key is "type" it will look for a single or a comma-separated list of asset types - either by their ID's or names.
If the key is "sort" it will try to identify a sort field from the value and set that. Any other key/value pairs will be added as OptionalFilters. Any additional text in the query that is not a key/value pair will be set as free text search.

If the entire query consists of a single number it will be treated as a request for a specific asset id.

Since this is exactly the same mechanism that is configured for the Digizuite Search Provider, you can actually try to search in the Digizuite Media tab and use this syntax!Image Removed

Example: Building a Gallery Block

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We will also make it optional which folders to search in, a Free text query, how many assets to show and so on. However, we won't worry about paging for now.

 [ContentType(DisplayName = "Gallery", GUID = "b05d16f0-877d-4784-8bf1-4a0ee2e57fd1",
        Description = "Shows a gallery of DAM assets")]
    public class GalleryBlock : BlockData
    {

        [CultureSpecific]
        [Display(
            Name = "Headline",
            Description = "Headline",
            GroupName = SystemTabNames.Content,
            Order = 1)]
        public virtual string Headline { get; set; }


        [Display(
            Name = "Max number of assets",
   Description = "",    GroupName = SystemTabNames.Content,    OrderDescription = 10)]"",
        public virtual int MaxNumberOfAssets {GroupName get; set; }= SystemTabNames.Content,
          [Display(  Order = 10)]
Name = "Asset Folders",     Descriptionpublic =virtual "",int MaxNumberOfAssets { get; set; GroupName}
= SystemTabNames.Content,     Order = 20)]
        [UIHintDisplay(UIHint.AssetsFolder)]
        public virtual IList<ContentReference> Folders {Name get; set; }
= "Free Text",
        [Display(     NameDescription = "Free Text",
     Description = "",     GroupName = SystemTabNames.Content,
            Order = 30)]
        public virtual string FreeText { get; set; }

        [Display(
    Name = "Crop Name",     DescriptionName = "Folders",

   GroupName = SystemTabNames.Content,     Order = 40)]
        [SelectOne(SelectionFactoryType Description = typeof(CropSelectionFactory))]"",
        public virtual string CropName {GroupName get; set; }= SystemTabNames.Content,
         [Display( Name = "Media Format",
Description = "",
GroupName = SystemTabNames.Content,
Order = 40)]
        [SelectOneSelectMany(SelectionFactoryType = typeof(MediaFormatSelectionFactoryFoldersSelectionFactory))]
        public virtual string MediaFormatFolders { get; set; }
        
        public override void SetDefaultValues(ContentType contentType)
        {
            base.SetDefaultValues(contentType);
            this.MaxNumberOfAssets = 20;

        }
    }   

When we display this to the editors in edit-mode, this is what they'll see:

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We also have to have a standard controller that will popular a View Model with the assets to show. We do that here:

protected override IViewComponentResult InvokeComponent(GalleryBlock currentContent)
{
  GalleryBlockViewModel protectedgvm override= IViewComponentResultnew InvokeComponent(GalleryBlock currentContent)
        {GalleryBlockViewModel();
  gvm.CurrentBlock = currentContent;
  AssetQueryParameters aqm = new AssetQueryParameters();            
  aqm.Limit = currentContent.MaxNumberOfAssets;                     

  var facets = new List<FacetRequest>()
  {                   
 GalleryBlockViewModel gvm = new GalleryBlockViewModelFacetRequest();
    {
      FacetMode = gvm.CurrentBlock = currentContent;FacetMode.QueryOnly,
      Recursive = false,
      SearchKey = "assetType",
     AssetQueryParameters aqmValues = new AssetQueryParametersEnums.AssetType.Image.ToString().MakeIntList();
    }
  };

  if  aqm.FoldersToSearch = (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(currentContent.Folders ?? new List<ContentReference>();))
  {
    facets.Add(new FacetRequest()
    {
      FacetMode = aqm.LimitFacetMode.QueryOnly,
      Recursive = currentContent.MaxNumberOfAssets;false,              aqm.Page = 1;    
      SearchKey  aqm.AssetTypes= _client.Configuration.FolderMetafieldGuid.ToString(),
      Values = GlobalConstantscurrentContent.AssetTypes.Image.MakeIntList();Folders.Split(",").ToList()                   
  aqm.CropName = currentContent.CropName});             aqm.OptionalFilters = new Dictionary<string,
string>();  }
  aqm.Facets = facets;
  
  if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(currentContent.FreeText)) aqm.FreeText = currentContent.FreeText;
         
  gvm.Images = _client.Search(aqm.CacheFor(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1)))?.Cast<IDigizuiteImage>()?.ToList();


         
  return View(gvm);
        }

Notice how we also make sure to set a cache timeout of 1 minute when doing the searching? That ensures a pretty updated image list, while not cause load to the DAM server for every page view. We could probably safely increase this number a lot. 

We also ensure that we will only search for images. AssetTypes.Image

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The view is basically just about rendering the gallery, with the addition of rendering the images in the selected media format as described here: DFO 4.0.0 - 4 Referencing and Rendering Assets. Here is what the end result could look like:

Image Removed

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