Orchard Harvest 2024 survey, Lombiq Login as Anybody for Orchard Core - This week in Orchard (09/02/2024)

Gábor Domonkos's avatar
Orchard Harvest, Announcement, Media Library, This week in Orchard, Content field, Liquid

Use the file name instead of the technical name in the Media Field, add Environment accessor in Liquid, a demo about our Login as Anybody module, and a survey about the upcoming Harvest conference! We have a lot to cover today, so let's get started!

Orchard Core updates

Use the file name instead of the technical name in the Media Field

When selecting a file using the attached Media Field, it shows the technical name, which is not user-friendly. With this change, we use the uploaded file name if it exists. Let's try it out quickly!

If you set up your site using the Blog recipe, it will create a predefined Blog Post content type. That content type has one Media Field called, Banner Image. We uploaded a new image to the Media Library (Content -> Media Library) and will use that for the predefined Blog Post content item. Once we select our file and click on it, you can see the Media Field displays the file name (Loki.jpg) instead of its technical name.

Use file name instead of technical name in Media Field

Add Environment accessor in Liquid

Currently, you can't check if you are in the Development or the Production environment in Liquid. This change introduces a new environment accessor in Liquid which represents the current hosting environment. The following properties are available on the Environment object as mentioned in the docs:

  • IsDevelopment: Checks if the current hosting environment name is Development.
  • IsStaging: Checks if the current hosting environment name is Staging.
  • IsProduction: Checks if the current hosting environment name is Production.
  • Name: Gets hosting environment name.

Here, we have created a new template under Design -> Templates with the name Content__BlogPost. This template is called when displaying the Blog Post content item with the Detail display type, for instance, when accessed from its URL. We have one predefined Blog Post content item so we will use that one for testing purposes.

The template itself is straightforward, we just print the name of the environment and two boolean values, as you can see in the screen below.

Add Environment accessor in Liquid

Demos

Lombiq Login as Anybody for Orchard Core

This demo is about the Lombiq Login as Anybody module for administrators to be able to log in as any user. This feature is only available to site owners, thus it's no way to get around security.

It's time to see this feature in action! The easiest way is to clone Lombiq's Open-Source Orchard Core Extensions solution. This Orchard Core Visual Studio solution contains most of Lombiq's open-source Orchard modules and themes, as well as related utilities and libraries, containing the Lombiq Login as Anybody module too.

Let's run the Open-Source Orchard Core Extensions solution and head to Configuration -> Features to enable the Lombiq Login as Anybody feature. After enabling the module you'll see a new button on the Security -> Users page. You can log in as any registered user there. This is useful if you want to see how your Orchard Core app behaves for certain users. Here you can see that we are logged in with the admin user, and the Log in as user button appears near the two other users on the list.

Log in as user button

Once you hit that button, you will be logged in as the selected user and will be redirected to the homepage of the site with a notification "Successfully logged in as {UserName}." If you want to see a short demo of this feature, don't forget to head to YouTube for a recording!

News from the community

Orchard Harvest 2024 survey

For those too young to remember, we had Orchard conferences, called Orchard Harvest. And the conference website was available under orchardharvest.org, but unfortunately, it's not anymore. The last in-person one was in 2017 in New York. So, having another get-together is very much overdue. If you would like to see or get a feeling of how this looked like before, we have a couple of mood videos on the Orchard YouTube channel, like this one from the first conference.

The point is that we should think about organizing the next in-person one, and we at Lombiq can take part in that or provide an organizing role with anybody who wants to take part.

After last year, the Orchard Harvest Conference will be held again in 2024. Last year it was held online due to economic reasons. But first, we would like to assess the potential interest and what would be needed. You can fill in the questionnaire here, which should take about 5 minutes.

Share your thoughts with us in the survey. We are curious about who we will meet in 2024! :)

Orchard Harvest 2024 survey

Work with Lombiq!

Do you like developing apps with Orchard Core? Would you like to apply your skills to some of the most challenging Orchard Core apps out there, working with other OC experts? Then come work with us at Lombiq, the biggest Orchard Core team in the world!

We've been contributors, supporters, and users of Orchard Core and Orchard 1 for more than a decade (Benedek Farkas and Zoltán Lehóczky, the two founders, for even more), with a huge open-source portfolio. There you can also check out the code we write, and some of the projects you could take part in.

We do a lot. Ready for keywords? Open-source, Orchard Core CMS, .NET software development, ASP.NET Core MVC, distributed team, cloud-first, Microsoft Azure, self-funded R&D, Vue.js, jQuery, Bootstrap, SASS, training, hosting and operations, GitHub Actions, TeamCity, support, SaaS (the only Orchard CMS SaaS, DotNest), Selenium UI testing, xUnit, university courses. And also, greenfield experimental projects like Hastlayer, turning software into computer chips.

Write to us at [email protected], and let's talk!

Lombiq's GitHub page

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If you are interested in more news about Orchard and the details of the topics above, don't forget to check out the recording of this Orchard meeting!

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