Growing Episerver DXC instance? You might want a tool like this…

When you have that many page types, it becomes overwhelming, not just for developers, but for testers and content-authors who use and maintain the site. Unless properly architected, this can cause huge headaches such as unexpectedly breaking other parts of the system or authors having to scratch their heads when choosing a page/block type in the CMS.

As part of the discovery phase on working on this project, I thought of developing a tool to provide visualisation on how the page/block types are used across multiple sites and give answers to the following questions:

• Are the sites sharing page types and block types?
• Are there relevant content type restrictions in place?
• Which parts of the system are going to be impacted when updating a content type?
• Are there content types not in use?

What you can do with the tool

Access it straight from the Episerver top menu

Find out which page types each site is using

Find out usages of page types across multiple sites

Find out usages of block types across multiple sites

The implementation

1. Web.config – tell your website of the new protected module show code

   <add name="CmsAudit">
      <assemblies>
         <add assembly="Insert.Your.Project.Assembly.Name" />
      </assemblies>
   </add>

2. CmsAuditController – extend the Episerver interface show code

   public class CmsAuditController : Controller
   {
       private readonly ICmsAuditor _cmsAuditor;
       public CmsAuditController(ICmsAuditor cmsAuditor)
       {
          _cmsAuditor = cmsAuditor;
       }
       [MenuItem("/global/cms/audit", Text = "Audit")]
       public ActionResult Index()
       {
           var model = new CmsAuditPage()
           {
   		Sites = _cmsAuditor.GetSiteAudits()
   	};
           return View("~/Components/CmsAudit/Views/Index.cshtml", model);
       }
   
           public ActionResult PageTypes()
           {
               var model = new CmsAuditPage();
               var pageTypes = _cmsAuditor.GetContentTypesOfType();
               model.ContentTypes = _cmsAuditor.GetContentItemsOfTypes(pageTypes, false, true);
               return View("~/Components/CmsAudit/Views/PageTypes.cshtml", model);
           }
   
           public ActionResult BlockTypes()
           {
               var model = new CmsAuditPage();
               var blockTypes = _cmsAuditor.GetContentTypesOfType();
               model.ContentTypes = _cmsAuditor.GetContentItemsOfTypes(blockTypes, true, false);
               return View("~/Components/CmsAudit/Views/BlockTypes.cshtml", model);
           }
       }

3. ICmsAuditor show code

   public interface ICmsAuditor
   {
           List GetContentTypesOfType();
   
           List GetContentItemsOfTypes(List contentTypes,
               bool includeReferences, bool includeParentDetail);
   
           List GetSiteAudits();
   }

4. CmsAuditor – the brains of the audit which uses Episerver API’s show incomplete code

   public class CmsAuditor : ICmsAuditor
   {
           private readonly IContentTypeRepository _contentTypeRepository;
           private readonly IContentModelUsage _contentModelUsage;
           private readonly IContentRepository _contentRepository;
           private readonly ISiteDefinitionResolver _siteDefinitionResolver;
           private readonly ISiteDefinitionRepository _siteDefinitionRepository;
   
           public CmsAuditor(IContentTypeRepository contentTypeRepository, IContentModelUsage contentModelUsage,
               IContentRepository contentRepository, ISiteDefinitionResolver siteDefinitionResolver,
               ISiteDefinitionRepository siteDefinitionRepository)
           {
               _contentTypeRepository = contentTypeRepository;
               _contentModelUsage = contentModelUsage;
               _contentRepository = contentRepository;
               _siteDefinitionResolver = siteDefinitionResolver;
               _siteDefinitionRepository = siteDefinitionRepository;
           }
   
           public List GetContentTypesOfType()
           {
               return _contentTypeRepository.List()
                   .Where(ct => ct is T)
                   .Select(ct =>
                       new ContentTypeAudit
                       {
                           ContentTypeId = ct.ID,
                           Name = string.IsNullOrEmpty(ct.DisplayName) ? ct.Name : ct.DisplayName,
                           Usages = new List()
                       })
                   .ToList();
           }
   
           // implement other members of interface
   }

5. DependencyResolverInitialisation – resolve ICmsAuditor to CmsAuditor show code

   [InitializableModule]
   public class DependencyResolverInitialisation : IConfigurableModule
   {
           public void Initialize(InitializationEngine context)
           {
           }
   
           public void Uninitialize(InitializationEngine context)
           {
           }
   
           public void ConfigureContainer(ServiceConfigurationContext context)
           {
               context.ConfigurationComplete += (o, e) => {
                   context.Services.AddTransient();
               };
           }
   }

Room for improvement

Conclusion