A handy helper method and class for you

Getting related links from an umbraco page can be quite tricky, especially if you want to get them in the controller.

This post gives you a handy little helper method to turn your related links property into a C# class object to make it easier to work with.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Umbraco.Core.Models;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq;
using Umbraco.Web;

namespace CodeShare.Library.RelatedLinks
{
    public class RelatedLink
    {
        public string Text { get; set; }
        public string Url { get; set; }
        public bool NewWindow { get; set; }
        public string Target { get { return NewWindow ? "_blank" : null; } }

        public RelatedLink(string text, string url, bool newWindow)
        {
            Text = text;
            Url = url;
            NewWindow = newWindow;
        }
    }

    public static class Helper
    {
        public static List<RelatedLink> GetRelatedLinks(IPublishedContent contentItem, string propertyAlias)
        {
            List<RelatedLink> relatedLinksList = null;
            UmbracoHelper uHelper = new UmbracoHelper(UmbracoContext.Current);
            IPublishedProperty relatedLinkProperty = contentItem.GetProperty(propertyAlias);

            if (relatedLinkProperty != null && relatedLinkProperty.HasValue && relatedLinkProperty.Value.ToString().Length > 2)
            {
                relatedLinksList = new List<RelatedLink>();
                JArray relatedLinks = (JArray)relatedLinkProperty.Value;

                foreach (JObject linkItem in relatedLinks)
                {
                    string linkUrl = (linkItem.Value<bool>("isInternal")) ? uHelper.NiceUrl(linkItem.Value<int>("internal")) : linkItem.Value<string>("link");
                    bool newWindow = linkItem.Value<bool>("newWindow");
                    string linkText = linkItem.Value<string>("caption");
                    relatedLinksList.Add(new RelatedLink(linkText, linkUrl, newWindow));
                }
            }

            return relatedLinksList;
        }
    }
}

Here is how you can use it in your code.

using CodeShare.Library.RelatedLinks;

List<RelatedLink> relatedLinks = Helper.GetRelatedLinks(CurrentPage, "yourRelatedLinksPropertyAlias");

You will then have a link of RelatedLink objects giving you access to the properties on it such as Text, Url, NewWindow and Target.

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