Interface IDynamicEntity

This is a wrapper for IEntity objects. It provides nicer access to underlying properties and automatically handles things like multi-language etc. The underlying IEntity IEntity is in the Entity property.

Normally you will use it without caring about these internals.
Please check @HowTo.DynamicCode.DynamicEntity

Inherited Members

IHasDecorators<IEntity>.Decorators

ICanDebug.Debug

Namespace: ToSic.Sxc.Data

Assembly: ToSic.Sxc.dll

Syntax

[PublicApi_Stable_ForUseInYourCode]
public interface IDynamicEntity : IDynamicEntity, IEntityWrapper, IHasDecorators<IEntity>, IMultiWrapper<IEntity>, ICanBeEntity, IDynamicEntityBase, ISxcDynamicObject, ICanDebug

Properties

AnyBooleanProperty

A Dynamic Entity always contains an item of your data - a book, person, blog-post or a piece of content. Since the object is dynamic, you can just use .IsFemale or whatever other property your item has. If it's a true/false, it will just magically work and return a bool. If it doesn't exist, it will return null.

Declaration

bool AnyBooleanProperty { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Boolean

AnyChildrenProperty

A Dynamic Entity always contains an item of your data - a book, person, blog-post or a piece of content. Since the object is dynamic, you can just use .Tags or whatever other property your item has. If it's contains relationships, it will just magically work and return a list of further DynamicEntity objects. If it doesn't exist, it will return null.

Declaration

IEnumerable<DynamicEntity> AnyChildrenProperty { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<DynamicEntity>

Remarks

Very often you'll want to use LINQ to further sort or query these items. But the Razor compiler cannot know that it got a list, so using .Any() or similar fails. To fix this, put an AsList around it - a bit like AsList(myThing.Tags). Sometimes you'll also need to help a bit more with AsList(myThings.Tags as object). Now you can do things like var tags = AsList(myThings.Tags as object); if (myTags.Any()) {...} Read more about this in the Dnn LINQ Tutorials

AnyDateTimeProperty

A Dynamic Entity always contains an item of your data - a book, person, blog-post or a piece of content. Since the object is dynamic, you can just use .Birthday or whatever other property your item has. If it's a date/time, it will just magically work and return a DateTime. If it doesn't exist, it will return null.

Declaration

DateTime AnyDateTimeProperty { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.DateTime

AnyJsonProperty

A Dynamic Entity always contains an item of your data - a book, person, blog-post or a piece of content. Since the object is dynamic, you can just use .Gps or whatever other property your item has. If the field contains JSON, it will just magically work and return a string. If it doesn't exist, it will return null.

Declaration

string AnyJsonProperty { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.String

Remarks

Very often you'll want to use the Json as a dynamic object again. Just pass the result through AsDynamic and it will work. Example: var gps = AsDynamic(myThing.Gps); var lat = gps.Lat; Read more about this in the Dnn JSON Tutorials

AnyLinkOrFileProperty

A Dynamic Entity always contains an item of your data - a book, person, blog-post or a piece of content. Since the object is dynamic, you can just use .Image or whatever other property your item has. If it's a link, it will just magically work and return a string. If it doesn't exist, it will return null.

Declaration

string AnyLinkOrFileProperty { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.String

Remarks

Note that many internal references in the CMS use file:2742 or similar. This will automatically be resolved to the real link which your output needs.

AnyNumberProperty

A Dynamic Entity always contains an item of your data - a book, person, blog-post or a piece of content. Since the object is dynamic, you can just use .Length or whatever other property your item has. If it's a number, it will just magically work and return a double. If it doesn't exist, it will return null.

Declaration

double AnyNumberProperty { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Double

AnyStringProperty

A Dynamic Entity always contains an item of your data - a book, person, blog-post or a piece of content. Since the object is dynamic, you can just use .FirstName or whatever other property your item has. If it's a string, it will just magically work. If it doesn't exist, it will return null.

Declaration

string AnyStringProperty { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.String

Remarks

Remember to use @Html.Raw(...) if you want the html to be preserved and not cleaned when placed in the page.

AnyTitleOfAnEntityInTheList

If this DynamicEntity carries a list of items (for example a BlogPost.Tags which behaves as the first Tag, but also carries all the tags in it) Then you can also use DynamicCode to directly navigate to a sub-item, like Blogs.Tags.WebDesign.

Declaration

IEnumerable<DynamicEntity> AnyTitleOfAnEntityInTheList { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<DynamicEntity>

Remarks

New in 12.03

Entity

The underlying entity which provides all the data for the DynamicEntity

Declaration

IEntity Entity { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
IEntity	An Entity object.

EntityGuid

The guid of the underlying entity.

Declaration

Guid EntityGuid { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Guid

Remarks

If the entity doesn't exist, it will return an empty guid

EntityId

The ID of the underlying entity. Use it for edit-functionality or just to have a unique number for this item.

Declaration

int EntityId { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Int32

Remarks

If the entity doesn't exist, it will return 0

EntityTitle

The title of this item. This is always available no matter what the underlying field for the title is.

Declaration

string EntityTitle { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.String	The title of the underlying entity. In rare cases where no title-field is known, it can be null. It can also be null if there is no underlying entity.

Remarks

This returns a string which is usually what's expected. In previous versions (before v15) 2sxc it returned an object.

EntityType

The type name of the current entity. This provides the nice name like "Person" and not the technical internal StaticName

Declaration

string EntityType { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.String

IsDemoItem

Many templates show demo data. If the template code must know if it's the demo item or real data, use .IsDemoItem.

Declaration

bool IsDemoItem { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Boolean	True if this is the item configured in the view-settings, false if not.

Remarks

New in 10.07

IsPublished

Tells us if this data item is published or still draft. Default is true.

Declaration

bool IsPublished { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Boolean

Metadata

The type name of the current entity. This provides the nice name like "Person" and not the technical internal StaticName

Declaration

IDynamicMetadata Metadata { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
IDynamicMetadata

Remarks

Added in v13

Presentation

Contains presentation settings for an item - if they exist. This is a functionality of the CMS, where an instance of an item can be configured to show in a specific way. Normally it's used when something like an address has various show-settings (like how the map should visualize this address). The presentation-info is therefor not-null IF

• the content belongs to this module instance
  
• the view-configuration of this module is configured to have presentation items
  
• there is either a default presentation configured in the view, or the user has manually edited the presentation settings

Declaration

dynamic Presentation { get; }

Property Value

Type	Description
System.Object	An IDynamicEntity with the presentation item (or the demo-presentation), otherwise null.

Methods

Children(String, String)

A dynamic list of sub-items. Important for LINQ style querying or just working with various lists. Note that for getting child items of this item you can just use the properties, like content.Authors.
But using Children("Authors", typeName) gives you the ability to restrict to a type.
Please check the tutorials on 2sxc.org/dnn-tutorials/ for more info.

Declaration

List<IDynamicEntity> Children(string field = null, string type = null)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
System.String	field	Optional field filter - would only return items that point to the current item in a specific field name.
System.String	type	Optional type filter - would only return items of this type.

Returns

Type	Description
System.Collections.Generic.List<IDynamicEntity>	A list of all items pointing here (filtered), converted to DynamicEntity for convenience.

Remarks

New in 10.21.00 - note also that the parameter-order is reversed to the Parents()

Field(String)

Get a Field-object of a property of this entity, to use with services like the IImageService which also need more information like the metadata.

Declaration

IDynamicField Field(string name)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
System.String	name

Returns

Type	Description
IDynamicField

Remarks

History: Added in v13.10

Get(String)

Get a value of the entity. Usually you will prefer the quick access like @content.FirstName - which will give you the same things as content.Get("FirstName"). There are two cases to use this:

• when you dynamically assemble the field name in your code, like when using App.Resources or similar use cases.
• to access a field which has a conflicting name with this object, like Get("Parents")

Declaration

dynamic Get(string name)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
System.String	name

Returns

Type	Description
System.Object	An object which can be either a string, number, boolean or List<IDynamicEntity>, depending on the field type. Will return null if the field was not found.

Get(String, String, String, Boolean, Nullable<Boolean>)

Get a property using the string name. Only needed in special situations, as most cases can use the object.name directly

Declaration

dynamic Get(string name, string noParamOrder = "Params must be named (https://r.2sxc.org/named-params)", string language = null, bool convertLinks = true, bool? debug = default(bool? ))

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
System.String	name	the property name like Image - or path like Author.Name (new v15)
System.String	noParamOrder	see Convention: Named Parameters
System.String	language	Optional language code - like "de-ch" to prioritize that language
System.Boolean	convertLinks	Optionally turn off if links like file:72 are looked up to a real link. Default is true.
System.Nullable<System.Boolean>	debug	Set true to see more details in Insights how the value was retrieved.

Returns

Type	Description
System.Object	a dynamically typed result, can be string, bool, etc.

Get<TValue>(String)

Get a value using the name - and cast it to the expected strong type. For example to get an int even though it's stored as decimal.

Declaration

TValue Get<TValue>(string name)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
System.String	name	the property name like Image - or path like Author.Name (new v15)

Returns

Type	Description
TValue	The typed value, or the default like null or 0 if casting isn't possible.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
TValue	The expected type, like string, int, etc.

Remarks

Added in v15

Get<TValue>(String, String, TValue)

Get a value using the name - and cast it to the expected strong type. For example to get an int even though it's stored as decimal.

Since the parameter fallback determines the type TValue you can just write this like `Content.Get("Title", fallback: "no title")

Declaration

TValue Get<TValue>(string name, string noParamOrder = "Params must be named (https://r.2sxc.org/named-params)", TValue fallback = null)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
System.String	name	the property name like Image - or path like Author.Name (new v15)
System.String	noParamOrder	see Convention: Named Parameters
TValue	fallback	the fallback value to provide if not found

Returns

Type	Description
TValue	The typed value, or the default like null or 0 if casting isn't possible.

Type Parameters

Name	Description
TValue	The expected type, like string, int, etc. Note that you don't need to specify it, if you specify the fallback property.

Remarks

Added in v15

GetDraft()

Get the draft item of this item if this is a content-item which is published, and has a draft.

Declaration

dynamic GetDraft()

Returns

Type	Description
System.Object	Returns a dynamic entity if there is a draft, or null if there is no draft.

GetPublished()

Get the published item of this item if this is a content-item which is draft, and has a published.

Declaration

dynamic GetPublished()

Returns

Type	Description
System.Object	Returns a dynamic entity if there is a draft, or null if there is no draft.

Parents(String, String)

A dynamic list of entities which point to this item. Important for LINQ style querying or just working with various lists. Note that for getting child items of this item you can just use the properties, like content.Authors.
Please check the tutorials on 2sxc.org/dnn-tutorials/ for more info.

Declaration

List<IDynamicEntity> Parents(string type = null, string field = null)

Parameters

Type	Name	Description
System.String	type	Optional type filter - would only return items of this type.
System.String	field	Optional field filter - would only return items that point to the current item in a specific field name.

Returns

Type	Description
System.Collections.Generic.List<IDynamicEntity>	A list of all items pointing here (filtered), converted to DynamicEntity for convenience.

Remarks

New in 9.42 - note also that the parameter-order is reversed to the Children()