Ektron’s Framework API gives a great deal of flexibility when it comes to searching, filtering and ordering. An often needed requirement is to perform a search using the API and the order the results by a metadata value. Prior to v8.5 and the Framework API this would be difficult and you would often need to do a search, then iterate through the results to get the metadata and then finally do the ordering.
Thankfully as of v8.5 it is much easier!
Firstly you will need the following “using” statements to include the right namespaces:
using Ektron.Cms;
using Ektron.Cms.Search;
using Ektron.Cms.Search.Expressions;
using Ektron.Cms.Search.Compatibility;
I now assume that you have an ASPX page with a search form that includes a submit button. Upon clicking the button a method is executed that will carry out the search.
Next we define the rows that should be returned in the search results:
KeywordSearchCriteria criteria = new KeywordSearchCriteria();
criteria.ReturnProperties = new HashSet(PropertyMappings.ContentSearchProperties);
criteria.ReturnProperties.Add(
SearchMetadataProperty.GetStringProperty(“metaStr”));;
A return column is added here : “metaStr”. This corresponds to a metadata definition called “metaStr” which in my example is of type String. You can also include types Integer, Boolean, Date and Decimal.
Then we say how the results should be ordered:
criteria.OrderBy = new List()
{
new OrderData(
Ektron.Cms.Search.SearchMetadataProperty.GetStringProperty("metaSr"),
OrderDirection.Ascending)
};
This code simply says “order by metaStr, ascending”. Now we add the actual search query:
criteria.QueryText = "ektron";
In reality your search query might be more complicated here, but I want to stick to the script. Finally we perform the search itself:
ISearchManager manager = ObjectFactory.GetSearchManager();
Ektron.Cms.Search.SearchResponseData responseData = manager.Search(criteria);
So there we saw how we can perform a simple search, include metadata in the results and then order by that metadata.
Ektron CMS hints & tips 