Sitefinity - getting full URL from within MVC widget

Question

I'm trying to write a basic MVC widget that will list news items with a link to each, but I'm stuck on how I can get the correct URL for each news item. Does anyone know how this is done?

I know NewsItems don't necessarily have a single link, so I'm after the URL matching the preferred page as per the News module manager. In my case I have nominated a page called "news-item" to be the default page, so all of my news URLs should have "news-item" in front of them.

How do I build this URL programmatically?

I've tried to get the full URL by running the "GetFullUrl()" method on the default page node, but I get stuck before I even get that far:

var newsItems = App.WorkWith().NewsItems().Get();
var defaultPage = newsItems.FirstOrDefault().DefaultPageId.Value;

When trying to get the ID of the default page so I can then get its corresponding URL, I immediately encounter an error:

Nullable object must have a value.
>> var defaultPage = newsItems.FirstOrDefault().DefaultPageId.Value;

Any ideas how this is supposed to work? I feel like DefaultPageId is coming back null for some reason...

Answer 1

You can use ContentLocationService like this:

var newsItems = App.WorkWith().NewsItems().Get();
var myNewsItem = newsItems.FirstOrDefault();

var contentLocationService = SystemManager.GetContentLocationService();
var contentLocation = contentLocationService.GetItemDefaultLocation(myNewsItem);
string defaultUrl = contentLocation == null ? "" : contentLocation.ItemAbsoluteUrl;

Hope this helps.