This week I needed to add Blocks used on a page to EPiServer Search Index as content of the page they were used on. This is supported in Find, but as we are not using Find in this project, I needed a different solution.
First I added an extra property to my base class to hold the content of my Blocks. Note the ScaffoldColumn(false) attribute, which hides it in edit mode.
[CultureSpecific]
[ScaffoldColumn(false)]
[Searchable]
public virtual string SearchText { get; set; }
Next I created an InitializableModule to attach some functionality to the publishing event
[ModuleDependency(typeof(InitializationModule))]
public class SearchInitialization : IInitializableModule
{
#region Public Methods and Operators
public void Initialize(InitializationEngine context)
{
DataFactory.Instance.PublishingPage += this.OnPublishingPage;
}
/// <summary> Raises the page event. </summary>
/// <param name="sender"> The sender. </param>
/// <param name="pageEventArgs"> Event information to send to registered event handlers. </param>
public void OnPublishingPage(object sender, PageEventArgs pageEventArgs)
{
StandardPage page = pageEventArgs.Page as StandardPage;
if (page == null)
{
return;
}
ContentArea contentArea = page.MainContentArea;
if (contentArea == null)
{
return;
}
StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
foreach (ContentAreaItem contentAreaItem in contentArea.Items)
{
IContent blockData = contentAreaItem.GetContent();
IEnumerable<string> props = GetSearchablePropertyValues(blockData, blockData.ContentTypeID);
stringBuilder.AppendFormat(" {0}", string.Join(" ", props));
}
page.SearchText= stringBuilder.ToString();
}
public void Preload(string[] parameters)
{
}
public void Uninitialize(InitializationEngine context)
{
DataFactory.Instance.PublishingPage -= this.OnPublishingPage;
}
#endregion
#region Methods
private IEnumerable<string> GetSearchablePropertyValues(IContentData contentData, ContentType contentType)
{
if (contentType == null)
{
yield break;
}
foreach (PropertyDefinition current in
from d in contentType.PropertyDefinitions
where d.Searchable || typeof(IPropertyBlock).IsAssignableFrom(d.Type.DefinitionType)
select d)
{
PropertyData propertyData = contentData.Property[current.Name];
IPropertyBlock propertyBlock = propertyData as IPropertyBlock;
if (propertyBlock != null)
{
foreach (
string current2 in
this.GetSearchablePropertyValues(
propertyBlock.Block,
propertyBlock.BlockPropertyDefinitionTypeID))
{
yield return current2;
}
}
else
{
yield return propertyData.ToWebString();
}
}
yield break;
}
private IEnumerable<string> GetSearchablePropertyValues(IContentData contentData, int contentTypeID)
{
IContentTypeRepository contentTypeRepository = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<IContentTypeRepository>();
return this.GetSearchablePropertyValues(contentData, contentTypeRepository.Load(contentTypeID));
}
#endregion
}
So, what’s happening here?
- When publishing the page, I loop through all Blocks in the MainContentArea, also defined on my base class.
- I get all values from string properties marked "Searchable" in the Blocks and add them to the SearchText property on my base class. Note: If for some reason you don’t want a property on a Block indexed, just add [Seachable(false)] to it.
- The value of SearchText property is added to the index and you get results also if the term you are looking for is only used in a Block on the page.
The two helper classes are from the "EPiServer.Core.ContentSearchHandler".
That’s it.
EPiServer Development 
Added a null check on line 26 of the initializable module, you might run into that
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Hi there!
I’m trying to implement this solution into my episerver site using the Alloy templates, but I keep getting an error on line 66:
Error 81 Could not find an implementation of the query pattern for source type ‘EPiServer.DataAbstraction.PropertyDefinitionCollection’. ‘Where’ not found. Are you missing a reference or a using directive for ‘System.Linq’?
Any idea what’s causing this error?
Thanks in advance.
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Hi Emil,
Do you have a reference to Linq in your project and a using in your class?
You should have at least these:
using EPiServer.Core;
using EPiServer.DataAbstraction;
using EPiServer.Framework;
using EPiServer.Framework.Initialization;
using EPiServer.ServiceLocation;
using EPiServer.SpecializedProperties;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
Grtz,
Jeroen
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So sloppy of me.. That solved it 🙂 Thank you for sharing this solution!
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My pleasure. Glad it was solved.
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Hi Jeroen, I am new at MVC and EpiServer. Can you tell me where to put the InitializableModule code?
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Hi D, you can put an InitializableModule where you want basically. Usually I prefer a folder called infrastructure or business/initialization.
But is this a question in general or for this “module” specifically? If you want to use this module you can just install it from NuGet: http://nuget.episerver.com/en/OtherPages/Package/?packageId=EPi.Libraries.BlockSearch
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