How to remove content from collection and add it to another

Question

I have couple of providers created with a smartform:

ID          Title
90          Doctor A
102         Doctor B
10          Doctor C
26          Doctor D
495         Doctor E

I have three collections in CMS:

ID      Title of Collection
12      IM Collection
43      UR Collection
9       EC Collection

The following code retrieves the content for the collection which is working for me:

ContentManager contentManager = new ContentManager();
ContentCollectionCriteria criteria = new ContentCollectionCriteria(ContentProperty.Id, EkEnumeration.OrderByDirection.Ascending);
criteria.AddFilter(Convert.ToInt64(ddlCollection.SelectedValue));
List<ContentData> contentList = contentManager.GetList(criteria);

I will be including the following variable:

iPName (int) = the provider ID
sColl (List<string>) = The collection(s) the provider should go in

How can I code a recursive function for each provider, which will take the iPName, remove from any collection the provider exist and use the sCol to add the provider to the collection(s).

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 02 '16 at 17:31

Since you want to modify the collections, you'll want to take a look at the Collection specific APIs The manager class is found inside the Ektron.Cms.Framework.Organization namespace.

The basic idea is:

Get a mapping between providers and each collection they are in
Given iPName, get a list of Collections this provider is currently in
Compare the list from #2 to sColl (e.g. take the difference)
Any collections that don't currently contain the provider but should, add it
Any collections that do currently contain the provider but shouldn't, delete it

Here's some rough code to get you started (untested)

//this is your existing code, wrapped into a function
List<ContentData> GetCollectionContent(long collectionID)
{
    var contentManager = new ContentManager();
    var criteria = new ContentCollectionCriteria(ContentProperty.Id, EkEnumeration.OrderByDirection.Ascending);
    criteria.AddFilter(collectionID);
    return contentManager.GetList(criteria);
}

//builds the mapping from step #1 above
Dictionary<ContentData, List<ContentCollectionData>> BuildCollectionMapping()
{
    //get all the collections in the system (using a new, "default" criteria object)
    var collectionManager = new CollectionManager();
    var allCollections = collectionManager.GetList(new CollectionCriteria());

    //build the mapping, associate a content item with each collection it is in
    var mapping = new Dictionary<ContentData, List<ContentCollectionData>>();
    foreach (var collection in allCollections)
    {
        var contentItems = GetCollectionContent(collection.Id);

        foreach (var contentItem in contentItems)
        {
            if (!mapping.ContainsKey(contentItem))
            {
                mapping.Add(contentItem, new List<ContentCollectionData>());
            }

            mapping[contentItem].Add(collection);
        }
    }

    return mapping;
}

//steps #2-3 from above, using the variables you defined
void Reconcile(long iPName, List<string> sColl)
{
    var mapping = BuildCollectionMapping();

    if (mapping.Keys.Any(content => content.Id == iPName))
    {
        var collections = mapping.Single(kvp => kvp.Key.Id == iPName).Value;
        var collectionTitles = collections.Select(c => c.Title);

        //these are the names of collections to which this content item must be added
        var toAdd = sColl.Except(collectionTitles);
        //these are the names of collections from which the content item must be deleted
        var toDelete = collectionTitles.Except(sColl);
    }
}

I'll leave it up to you to fill in the details of #4-5.

As a slight aside, I want to point out that IDs in Ektron should always be represented as long (your example above iPName is int). We have just modified our environment such that content IDs are now being generated in the 64-bit range (e.g. 53687091658) and we've run into a few cases where sloppy parsing to int is resulting in runtime errors. The sample code I've provided uses long.

How to remove content from collection and add it to another

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