Dynamic Content is cool! Really cool. However, even good things can always get better. Back in october last year I wrote about how to automatically register dynamic content by attaching an attribute (like all other plugins in EPiServer) http://labs.episerver.com/en/Blogs/Allan/Dates/112230/10/Auto-Loading-of-Dynamic-Content/. Now, I’ve extended that project to also include auto registration of all the property types in EPiServer as Dynamic Content.

“Now, why would you do a crazy thing like that?”, you might wonder. The answer comes in two parts: a) I guess I don’t have a life, and b) I’ve noticed that as I grow more and more accustomed to Dynamic Content I’ve started to use it like I would use web parts. That means that I’ve been creating Dynamic Content (DC) wrappers for common EPiServer properties so editors can drag them around xhtml-fields and use them as building blocks.

Anyway, I figured the time was right for a generic way to include all the Property types as Dynamic Content. First, I used generics to create a “PropertyDC<PropertyType> : IDynamicContent” class, secondly I made sure that one of those were registrered upon startup for every Property Type in EPiServer CMS.

foreach (PageDefinitionType pdf in PageDefinitionType.List())

{

    //We now have a property type

    PropertyData pd=(pdf.TypeName==null) ?

        PropertyData.CreatePropertyDataObject(pdf.DataType)

        :

        PropertyData.CreatePropertyDataObject(pdf.AssemblyName, pdf.TypeName);

    Type basetype=typeof(PropertyDC<>);

    Type result = basetype.MakeGenericType(pd.GetType());

    AddNewDC("[Property] "+pdf.Name, result, pdf.TypeName);

}

Download the binary here (just drop it in the bin, to enable both the [DCPlugin()] attribute and the auto registration of property types).

Download full source here.