part-2.md

versionFrom	versionTo
9.0.0	10.0.0

Adding configuration to a property editor

Overview

This is step 2 in our guide to building a Property Editor. This step continues work on the Suggestion Data Type we built in step 1, but goes further to show how to add configuration options to our editor.

Configuration

An important part of building good Property Editors is to build something flexible, so we can reuse it many times, for different things. Like the Rich Text Editor in Umbraco, which allow us to choose which buttons and stylesheets we want to use on each instance of the editor.

An editor can be used again and again, with different configurations, and that is what we will be working on now.

There are two ways to add configuration to the Property Editor. If in the previous step you chose to create the property editor using a package.manifest file, read the package.manifest section below. If you have chosen the C# variant, read the Csharp part of the article.

Package.manifest

To add configuration options to our Suggestion Data Type, open the package.manifest file. Right below the editor definition, paste in the prevalues block:

...
"editor": {
                "view": "~/App_Plugins/Suggestions/suggestion.html"
            }, // Remeber a comma seperator here at the end of the editor block!
 "prevalues": {
                "fields": [
                    {
                        "label": "Enabled?",
                        "description": "Provides Suggestions",
                        "key": "isEnabled",
                        "view": "boolean"
                    }
                ]
            }

Csharp

It is also possible to add configuration if you have chosen to create a property editor using C#. Create two new files in the /App_Code/ folder and update the existing Suggestion.cs file to add configuration to the property editor.

First create a SuggestionConfiguration.cs file:

namespace Umbraco.Cms.Core.PropertyEditors
{
    public class SuggestionConfiguration
    {
        [ConfigurationField("isEnabled", "Enabled?", "boolean", Description = "Provides Suggestions")]
        public bool Enabled { get; set; }
    }
}

Then create a SuggestionConfigurationEditor.cs file:

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.IO;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services;

namespace Umbraco.Cms.Core.PropertyEditors
{
     public class SuggestionConfigurationEditor : ConfigurationEditor<SuggestionConfiguration>
    {
        public SuggestionConfigurationEditor(IIOHelper ioHelper, IEditorConfigurationParser editorConfigurationParser) : base(ioHelper, editorConfigurationParser)
        { }
    }
}

Finally, edit the Suggestion.cs file from step one until it looks like the example below:

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.IO;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.PropertyEditors;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services;

namespace Umbraco.Cms.Core.PropertyEditors
{
    [DataEditor(
        alias: "Suggestions editor",
        name: "Suggestions Editor",
        view: "~/App_Plugins/Suggestions/suggestion.html",
        Group = "Common",
        Icon = "icon-list")]
    public class Suggestions : DataEditor
    {
        private readonly IIOHelper _ioHelper;
        private readonly IEditorConfigurationParser _editorConfigurationParser;

        public Suggestions(IDataValueEditorFactory dataValueEditorFactory,
            IIOHelper ioHelper,
            IEditorConfigurationParser editorConfigurationParser)
            : base(dataValueEditorFactory)
        {
            _ioHelper = ioHelper;
        }
        protected override IConfigurationEditor CreateConfigurationEditor() => new SuggestionConfigurationEditor(_ioHelper, _editorConfigurationParser); 
    }
}

So what did we add? We added a prevalue editor, with a fields collection. This collection contains information about the UI we will render on the Data Type configuration for this editor.

The label "Enabled?" uses the "boolean" view. This will allow us to turn the suggestions on/off and will provide the user with a toggle button. The name "boolean" comes from the convention that all preview editors are stored in /umbraco/views/prevalueeditors/ and then found via boolean.html.

Save the file, rebuild the application and have a look at the Suggestions Data Type. You should see that you have one configuration option.

Using the configuration

The next step is to gain access to our new configuration options. For this, open the suggestion.controller.js file.

Let's first add the default value functionality. When the $scope.model.value is empty or undefined, we want to use the default value. To do that, we add the following to the start of the controller:

if($scope.model.value === null || $scope.model.value === ""){
    $scope.model.value = $scope.model.config.defaultValue;
}

and then at the end we add a getState method:

    // The controller assigns the behavior to scope as defined by the getState method, which is invoked when the user toggles the enable button in the data type settings.
    $scope.getState = function () {
        
        //If the data type is enabled in the Settings the 'Give me Suggestions!' button is enabled
        if ($scope.model.config.isEnabled) {
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }

See what's new? The $scope.model.config object. Also, because of this configuration, we now have access to $scope.model.config.defaultValue which contains the configuration value for that key.

Next - Integrating services with a property editor

For version 9

The snippets are slightly different in V9 because IEditorConfigurationParser isn't required.

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.IO;

namespace Umbraco.Cms.Core.PropertyEditors
{
     public class SuggestionConfigurationEditor : ConfigurationEditor<SuggestionConfiguration>
    {
        public SuggestionConfigurationEditor(IIOHelper ioHelper) : base(ioHelper)
        {
        }
    }

}

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.IO;

namespace Umbraco.Cms.Core.PropertyEditors
{
    [DataEditor(
        alias: "Suggestions editor",
        name: "Suggestions Editor",
        view: "~/App_Plugins/Suggestions/suggestion.html",
        Group = "Common",
        Icon = "icon-list")]
    public class Suggestions : DataEditor
    {
        private readonly IIOHelper _ioHelper;
        public Suggestions(IDataValueEditorFactory dataValueEditorFactory,
            IIOHelper ioHelper)
            : base(dataValueEditorFactory)

        {
            _ioHelper = ioHelper;
        }
        protected override IConfigurationEditor CreateConfigurationEditor() => new SuggestionConfigurationEditor(_ioHelper);
        
    }
}