Getting started

This guide will take you through creating a content type and importing entries using the .NET Management API. Throughout the documentation we use examples based on movies.

Assumptions

You have an understanding of managing and creating content in the project explorer.
You have downloaded the example application.

Create a new project (optional)

Projects are the home for all your content in Contensis. Either use an existing project or create a new project called MovieDB. You can use the default values for assets and languages. If you're creating a new project you'll need to setup a publishing server, if these aren't already setup please ask our support team to get one up and running.

Create a genre taxonomy node

We want to be able to categorize movies by their genre, the easiest way to have a centrally managed list of categories is to use the taxonomy manager. To create a genres taxonomy follow these steps:

Click the Management Console icon at the bottom of the sidebar.
Select the Taxonomy Manager link in the menu.
Select the Root node of the taxonomy tree.
Enter Genre into the Child Name text box and press Add Child.
Genre will now be shown in the tree, select the Genre Node.
Enter Action into the Child Name text box and press Add Child.
Repeat this for Comedy, Crime, Drama, Romance and Western.

For each of the genres you have added, select them in the tree and make a note of the Node Key value, it will be in the format of 0/X/X, we will need these for the import later.

In the case of this guide our genres nodes have the following keys, your keys will likely have different values.

Genre	Key
Action	0/5/1
Comedy	0/5/2
Crime	0/5/3
Drama	0/5/4
Romance	0/5/5
Western	0/5/6

Create a movie content type

You can create a new content type using the content type builder. Create a new content type called Movie with the following fields.

Field name	API id	Type	Description
Title	title	Text	The title of the movie.
Overview	overview	Text	An overview of what the movie is about.
Release date	releaseDate	Date	The date the movie was released.
Runtime	runtime	number (integer)	The runtime in minutes.
Genres	genres	Taxonomy	The genre of the movie.
Revenue	revenue	number	The revenue the movie generated.

Import some movies

Now it's time to import some movies!

The example import solution can be found on GitHub and a local copy can be obtained using the git clone command:

Bash

git clone https://github.com/contensis/dotnet-movie-import

Open the MovieImport.sln solution in Visual Studio.

You will see there is a simple class describing a movie.

using System;

namespace MovieImport
{
    public class Movie
    {
        public string Title { get; set; }
        public string Overview { get; set; }
        public int Runtime { get; set; }
        public string[] Genres { get; set; }
        public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }
        public long Revenue { get; set; }
    }
}

Open the program class, make sure you replace the following values

Value	Description
<Contensis URL>	This is the URL of your Contensis instance. e.g. `https://cms.cloud.contensis.com`
<Client ID>	Copy your client ID from your API Key.
<Shared Secret>	Copy your shared secret from your API Key. Create an API Key
<Project Id>	From the management console, select the Project Overview and you will see your project API name.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using CsvHelper;
using Zengenti.Contensis.Management;

namespace MovieImport
{
    class Program
    {
        // The mapping between the taxonomy node name in the CSV and the taxonomy key to save
        private static readonly Dictionary<string, string> GenreTaxonomyKeys = new Dictionary<string, string>
        {
            {"Action", "0/5/1"},
            {"Comedy", "0/5/2"},
            {"Crime", "0/5/3"},
            {"Drama", "0/5/4"},
            {"Romance", "0/5/5"},
            {"Western", "0/5/6"}
        };

        static void Main()
        {
            // Create the management client
            var client = ManagementClient.Create("<Contensis URL>",
                "<Client ID>",
                "<Shared Secret>");

            // Get the project
            var project = client.Projects.Get("<Project Id>");

            // Read the movie CSV file
            using (var textReader = File.OpenText(@"Movies.csv"))
            {
                var csv = new CsvReader(textReader);

                // Iterate over each movie, creating it
                foreach (var movie in csv.GetRecords<Movie>())
                {
                    CreateMovie(project, movie);
                }
            }
        }

        private static void CreateMovie(Project project, Movie movie)
        {
            // Set-up a new movie entry
            var movieEntry = project.Entries.New("movie");

            // Set each field value
            movieEntry.Set("title", movie.Title);
            movieEntry.Set("overview", movie.Overview);
            movieEntry.Set("releaseDate", movie.ReleaseDate);
            movieEntry.Set("runtime", movie.Runtime);
            movieEntry.Set("genres", GetGenreTaxonomyKeys(movie.Genres));
            movieEntry.Set("revenue", movie.Revenue);

            // Save and publish the movie
            movieEntry.Save();
            movieEntry.Publish();
            Console.WriteLine({{APP}}quot;Saved movie {movieEntry.Get("title")}");
        }

        private static string[] GetGenreTaxonomyKeys(string genreNames)
        {
            var genres = genreNames.Split(',');
            return genres.Select(genre => GenreTaxonomyKeys[genre]).ToArray();
        }
    }
}

Finally make sure the example CSV file is in the root of your app and run the application.

Summary

We hope this demonstrates how simple it is to import basic entries using the .NET Management API.

Still need help?

If you still need help after reading this article, don't hesitate to reach out to the Contensis community on Slack or raise a support ticket to get help from our team.

New support request