Writing a custom file system provider

The CMS.IO library allows you to customize Xperience to support a file system of your choice. As described in the Overview page, you can achieve this by developing a custom provider based on the classes contained within CMS.IO.

Preparation

To implement a custom file system provider, you need to add a new assembly to the Xperience solution:

1. Open your solution in Visual Studio.
2. Add a new Class Library project, for example named CustomFileSystemProvider.
3. Add the Xperience API libraries to the project:
   1. Right-click the solution in the Solution Explorer and select Manage NuGet Packages for Solution.
   2. Select the Kentico.Xperience.Libraries package.
   3. Install the package into the custom project (the version must match your MVC project’s Kentico.Xperience.AspNet.Mvc5 package and the exact hotfix version of your Xperience administration project).
4. Reference the project from both your MVC project and the Xperience administration project (CMSApp).

The Xperience installation directory contains sample definitions of all classes required to implement a generic file system provider. To help with the implementation, you can copy these classes into the custom file system provider’s project:

1. Open your Xperience program files directory (by default C:\Program Files\Kentico\<version>).
2. Expand the CodeSamples\CustomizationSamples\CustomFileSystemProvider subfolder.
3. Copy all contained files into the CustomFileSystemProvider directory in your solution.
4. Include the new files into the CustomFileSystemProvider project in Visual Studio:
   1. Expand the CustomFileSystemProvider project in the Solution Explorer.
   2. Click Show all files at the top of the Solution Explorer.
   3. Select the new files while holding the Ctrl key.
   4. Right-click one of the files and select Include in Project.
5. Edit the copied files and rename the namespaces to exactly match the assembly name of your custom project (CustomFileSystemProvider in this example).

Implementation

If you choose to take advantage of the prepared classes, go through all files contained in the project and replace the NotImplementedExceptions inside methods with your implementation, and implement property and method overrides. You can consult the following steps for reference or if you wish to create a provider from scratch.

1. Create two separate classes that inherit from the following abstract classes:

   • CMS.IO.AbstractDirectory
   • CMS.IO.AbstractFile

2. Implement all methods defined in the abstract classes.

3. Create three other classes that inherit from the following classes:

   • CMS.IO.DirectoryInfo
   • CMS.IO.FileInfo
   • CMS.IO.FileStream

4. Override all methods and properties from those classes.

5. Create constructors for the classes listed in step 3 according to the following table:

   Inherits from	Constructors
   CMS.IO.DirectoryInfo	public DirectoryInfo(string path)
   CMS.IO.FileInfo	public FileInfo(string filename)
   CMS.IO.FileStream	public FileStream(string path, CMS.IO.FileMode mode) public FileStream(string path, CMS.IO.FileMode mode, CMS.IO.FileAccess access) public FileStream(string path, CMS.IO.FileMode mode, CMS.IO.FileAccess access, CMS.IO.FileShare share) public FileStream(string path, CMS.IO.FileMode mode, CMS.IO.FileAccess access, CMS.IO.FileShare share, int bSize)

Configuration

Perform the following configuration steps to start using your custom file system provider:

1. Add the CMSStorageProviderAssembly key to the appSettings section of your project’s web.config file. Set the key’s value to the assembly name of your custom provider.
2. Configure the project to use the provider.
   • Use the API to create an instance of the CMS.IO.StorageProvider class and map specific project folders to your custom provider.

Example

The following code registers a module that maps a site’s media library folder to a custom storage provider:

using CMS;
using CMS.Base;
using CMS.DataEngine;
using CMS.IO;

// Registers the custom module into the system
[assembly: RegisterModule(typeof(CustomInitializationModule))]

public class CustomInitializationModule : Module
{
    // Module class constructor, the system registers the module under the name "CustomInit"
    public CustomInitializationModule()
        : base("CustomInit")
    {
    }

    // Contains initialization code that is executed when the application starts
    protected override void OnInit()
    {
        base.OnInit();

        // Creates a new StorageProvider instance using the custom 'CustomFileSystemProvider' assembly
        var customMediaProvider = new StorageProvider("custom", "CustomFileSystemProvider");

        // Maps a directory to the provider
        StorageHelper.MapStoragePath("\~/MySite/Media/", customMediaProvider);
    }
}