Ektron Taxonomy Order with the API

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

If you have used the Ektron API to pull a branch from the CMS Taxonomy tree, you may have noticed some unexpected results.  The taxonomy nodes are returned to you, ordered sequentially by the id assigned to the node upon creation.  Many times this order will not differ from the order of the items in the Workarea (if the default order has been preserved).  However, often the CMS admin will reorder the taxonomy into a specific order:

In the Workarea, under Modules -> Taxonomy -> {a specific tax category}
You can right-click 'Reorder' and choose 'Items' from the drop-down in the menu.  This will allow an admin to order the heirarchical display taxonomy items.

In this case, if you are pulling the taxanomy tree from the CMS via the API, you will produce a different display order than the Workarea.  To display the taxonomy items in their proper order, use the normal tax api but with SortOrder and SortDirection...

Dim i As Integer
Dim TaxAPI As New Ektron.Cms.API.Content.Taxonomy
Dim TaxRequest As New Ektron.Cms.TaxonomyRequest
Dim TaxData As Ektron.Cms.TaxonomyData

'where taxid is the id of the taxonomy branch
TaxRequest.TaxonomyId = taxid
TaxRequest.TaxonomyLanguage = 1033
TaxRequest.IncludeItems = True
TaxRequest.Depth = 1
TaxRequest.SortOrder = "taxonomy_item_display_order"
TaxRequest.SortDirection = "Ascending"

TaxData = TaxAPI.LoadTaxonomy(TaxRequest)

If TaxData.TaxonomyItemCount > 0 Then
For i = 0 To TaxData.TaxonomyItemCount - 1
'whatever processing is desired
Next
End If

From Ektron 7.5.2 onward, the taxonomy sort is available via the .SortOrder property.

Options are "date_created", "last_edit_date", "content_title", and "taxonomy_item_display_order"