Programmatically retrieve the categories that can be assigned to pages in Episerver

Question

Does anyone have an idea of how to programmatically retrieve the categories that can be assigned to pages in Episerver? C# is the programming language that I am using but an example in VB will do as well.

Answer 1

If you're after all the categories defined in the CMS, then start with fetching the root category first and all it's children.

Category rootCategory = Category.GetRoot();
CategoryCollection childCategories = rootCategory.Categories;
foreach (Category category in childCategories)
{
    // do whatever
}

If you only want to retrieve categories selected on the current page, then iterate through the Category property on the current page. It returns a CategoryList object which contains the Ids of the selected categories.

foreach (int catId in CurrentPage.Category)
{
    Category category = Category.Find(catId);
    // do whatever
}

Answer 2

Since Category.GetRoot() is marked as obsolete, this solution is more proper as per Episerver 9:

var categoryRepo = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<CategoryRepository>();
var rootCategory = categoryRepo.GetRoot();
CategoryCollection childCategories = rootCategory.Categories;
foreach (Category category in childCategories)
{
// do whatever
}

Answer 3

You use the EPiServer.DataAbstraction.Category class. A good place to start would be the Category.GetRoot() method:

http://world.episerver.com/Documentation/Class-library/?documentId=cms/7/0ace72d5-11cd-b5cc-4dbe-af38a401f528

there are code examples on this page as well:

http://world.episerver.com/Documentation/Class-library/?documentId=cms/7/dbaa2f15-e227-1d1c-5142-2f245dd3e664