Is there a way to manually set the content items on a ContentView templated server control?

Question

The examples I'm seeing for the new ContentView templated server control all use a ContentModelSource server control on the front end. What if I have a method already created that uses the FrameworkAPI and sets all sorts of weird filters in the criteria object and returns a List<ContentData>. Is there a way I can pass that list of content data into my ContentView server control and totally skip having any sort of ContentModelSource control on the page?

Answer 1

I've done a lot of digging into this issue, and I've discovered the following things:

• It is true that a ContentModelSource is required to use the ContentView server control. You get an ugly .NET exception if you try to go without it.
• You are not required to actually get the data from that ContentModelSource
• Data can be set by using the SelectMethod property on the ContentView control. Set it to the name of a public method on your page that returns either ContentData or List<ContentData>.
• Alternatively, you can wait until the Page_Load event and set the Model.ContentList property. You get a .NET exception (Null Reference, i think) if you try to set it during Page_Init.

ASPX:

<ektron:ContentModelSource runat="server" ID="cmsNull"></ektron:ContentModelSource>

<ektron:ContentView runat="server" ID="cvPrimary" ModelSourceID="cmsNull">
</ektron:ContentView>

C#:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    var cm = new ContentManager();

    var criteria = new ContentCriteria();
    criteria.AddFilter(ContentProperty.Type, CriteriaFilterOperator.EqualTo, EkEnumeration.CMSContentType.Content);

    cvPrimary.Model.ContentList = cm.GetList(criteria);
}