I’m currently working on rebuilding the http://dotnetda.org site using Umbraco and I have created the usual assortment of document types: speakers, meetings, sponsors, etc. For meetings, the name of the node is simply the session title. Unfortunately, this means that finding a meeting requires knowing the session title and I want the node text to be more descriptive and include the date as well. I can use the Umbraco API and write a little code to do this for me.

To start, I added the following using statements:

using System;
using umbraco.BusinessLogic;
using umbraco.cms.businesslogic;
using umbraco.cms.presentation.Trees;

Then, I created a class that inherits from ApplicationBase. By simply inheriting from ApplicationBase, Umbraco will automatically load the class during initialization:

public class TreeEvents : ApplicationBase
{
}

Next, I added a TreeEvents constructor and handled the BaseTree.BeforeNodeRender event:

public TreeEvents()
{
    BaseTree.BeforeNodeRender += BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender;
}

And finally I implemented the BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender method with the necessary logic to update the node’s Text property if it’s a meeting:

void BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender(
    ref XmlTree sender, ref XmlTreeNode node, EventArgs e)
{
    if (node.NodeType == "content")
    {
        var content = new Content(int.Parse(node.NodeID));

        if (content.ContentType.Alias == "Meeting")
        {
            var startDate = content.getProperty("meetingStartDate")
                .Value.ToString();

            var date = DateTime.Parse(startDate);
            node.Text = String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy} {1}",
                date,
                node.Text
                );
        }
    }
}

First, I ensure that I’m dealing with a content node, then I grab the content item based on NodeID. If the content type alias is Meeting, I parse the meetingStartDate property and prepend it to the node’s existing text.

The final result is that I can now see the meeting date which will make meetings much easier to find:

Final Code

using System;
using umbraco.BusinessLogic;
using umbraco.cms.businesslogic;
using umbraco.cms.presentation.Trees;

namespace Netda.Umbraco
{
    public class TreeEvents : ApplicationBase
    {
        public TreeEvents()
        {
            BaseTree.BeforeNodeRender += BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender;
        }

        void BaseTree_BeforeNodeRender(
            ref XmlTree sender, ref XmlTreeNode node, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (node.NodeType == "content")
            {
                var content = new Content(int.Parse(node.NodeID));

                if (content.ContentType.Alias == "Meeting")
                {
                    var startDate = content.getProperty("meetingStartDate")
                        .Value.ToString();

                    var date = DateTime.Parse(startDate);
                    node.Text = String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy} {1}",
                        date,
                        node.Text
                        );
                }
            }
        }
    }
}