uTyped Umbraco package

At Deep Focus we released our first NuGet package. It is called uTyped and it solves a problem we’ve had with many projects when using Umbraco.

When we need to have API endpoints to return parts of our data, there is no direct support from the CMS; no easy way to get a C# model mapped to the values available in the backoffice.

You could of course create a controller inheriting from UmbracoApi and then query your content with Umbraco.TypedContentAtXPath().

As fine as this solution is, the IPublishedContent object you get from your query doesn’t have strongly typed properties. You have to query them one by one providing the type and name of the property (content.GetPropertyValue<int>("ProductId")).

Definitely not ideal…

That’s where we’ve come up with a solution we have packaged in a library. Using the TypedContentAtXPath method and AutoMapper, we are able to do:

public class MyController : UmbracoApiController
{
    private readonly UmbracoRepository _repo;

    public TestController()
    {
        _repo = new UmbracoRepository(Umbraco);
    }

    public IEnumerable<Product> GetAll()
    {
        return _repo.GetAll<Product>();
    }

    public Product Get(int id)
    {
        return _repo.GetById<Product>(id);
    }
}

Granted you have setup AutoMapper using the provided profile:

protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, ApplicationContext applicationContext)
{
    Mapper.AddProfile<UmbracoProfile<Product>>();
}

And of course created your expected model where the properties name match those setup in the backoffice:

public class Product
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string ShortName { get; set; }
}

This is a fairly simple example but the library can do much more so make sure to check out the documentation: https://github.com/DeepFocus/uTyped.

See something wrong or want to ask a question? Get in touch on Twitter

Next: You can find more articles on this blog by going to the homepage.