Zbu.ModelsBuilder

Introduction

Zbu.ModelsBuilder is an experimental tool that can generate a complete set of strongly-typed published content models for Umbraco 7.1.4+. These models can be used anywhere content is retrieved from the content cache, ie in MVC views, controllers, etc. In other words, the content cache does not just return IPublishedContent objects anymore, but strongly typed models.

For each content (media, and member) type in the Umbraco setup, the generator creates a *.generated.cs file, corresponding the content type, and looking like:

namespace MyModels
{
  public partial class NewsItem : PublishedContentModel
  {
    public string Title { get { return this.GetPropertyValue<string>("title"); } }
    public IHtmlString BodyText { get { return this.GetPropertyValue<IHtmlString>("bodyText"); } }
  }
}

Umbraco's content cache returns these objects natively: no need to map, convert, anything, the following code just runs:

@inherits UmbracoViewPage<NewsItem>
@using MyModels
<h1>@Model.Title</h1>
@Model.BodyText

The models builder respects the content types inheritance tree, ie models inherit from each other if required, and mixins (content types compositions) are represented by interfaces.

The models builder is a "code-after" solution. It only generates code from content types that already exist in Umbraco. It is not a "code-first" solution -- code-first is a much more complex question.

Status

As of june 23, 2014 the project is being polished so that a beta release can be published before the end of the month. Stay tuned!

Documentation

At the core of the strongly typed models "experience" is the IPublishedContentModelFactory interface, which has been made public with Umbraco version 7.1.4. This interface is part of Core. It is responsible for mapping the internal IPublishedContent implementations that would be returned by the content cache, to strongly typed models. Although there is a default factory shipped with Umbraco, it is possible to replace it by custom implementations. And even using the default factory, models do not necessarily need to be generated by Zbu.ModelsBuilder. See the IPublishedContentModelFactory page.

Zbu.ModelsBuilder is just one way to generate models for the default, built-in factory. Models can be generated either straight from the Umbraco back-end, or via a console application, or via a Visual Studio extension. See the Using the Models Builder page.

Models generation can be configured and extended to some point. TODO: create a page documenting it.