Sometimes you want to retrieve an item or collection of items using C# and then pass these items to an XSLT rendering. The advantage of this is that you get the processing power of C# with the simple layout and Sitecore XSLT controls of a rendering. To do this the following methods and extension methods should help. The interesting stuff, the code:
public static XPathNodeIterator ToXml(this Item item)
{
return ToXml(new Item[] { item });
}
public static XPathNodeIterator ToXml(this Item[] items)
{
return ConvertToXml(items);
}
private static XPathNodeIterator ConvertToXml (Item [] items)
{
var packet = new Packet("values", new string[0]);
foreach (Item item in items)
{
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml(item.GetOuterXml(false));
packet.AddXml(doc);
}
return GetChildIterator(packet);
}
private static XPathNodeIterator GetChildIterator(Packet packet)
{
XPathNavigator xpathNavigator = packet.XmlDocument.CreateNavigator();
if (xpathNavigator == null)
{
return null;
}
xpathNavigator.MoveToRoot();
xpathNavigator.MoveToFirstChild();
return xpathNavigator.SelectChildren(XPathNodeType.Element);
}
Using the Packet class which exists in the Sitecore.Xml namespace we can load our item/items into it and then pass the whole lot back to the XSLT rendering by creating an XPathNodeIterator from the packet . The extension methods allow us to more easily call the method. To call the methods:
public static XPathNodeIterator doQuery(string query)
{
Item[] results = Sitecore.Context.Database.SelectItems(query);
return results.ToXml();
}
Or
public static XPathNodeIterator doQuery(string query)
{
Item result = Sitecore.Context.Database.SelectSingleItem(query);
return result.ToXml();
}
Within our XSLT we can then use it like so:
<xsl:variable select="eic:doQuery($query)" name="results" />
<xsl:for-each select="$results">
<sc:text field="Title" />
</xsl:for-each>
I can iterate over the items as I would normally and can call of the standard Sitecore XSLT controls