Create Friendly URLs for Catalog Items

Version:

Create URLs to content without using query strings.

Complete the following prerequisites:

Associate an Existing Catalog to a SitecoreSite
There are one or more virtual or base catalogs containing product and category definitions.

At your Visual Studio solution setup:

Create a new pipeline processor web.config file in /configuration/sitecore/pipelines/httpRequestBegin under the httpRequestBegin pipeline, inserted before the ItemResolver processor.

This processor will find urls of a specific format and the associated item, then set Sitecore.Context.Item to that item.

MVCSite.SitecorePipelines
{
    using Sitecore;
    using Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest;
 
    public class CatalogItemResolver
    {
        public override void Process(PipelineArgs args)
        {
            if (Context.Item == null)
            {
                return;
            }
 
            // insert item resolver code here
        }
    }
}

Edit your patch config file.

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
            <sitecore>
                        <pipelines>
                                    <httpRequestBegin>
                                                <processor type="MVCSite.SitecorePipelines.CatalogItemResolver, MVCSite" patch:before= "processor[@type='Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.ItemResolver, Sitecore.Kernel']" />
                                    </httpRequestBegin>
                        </pipelines>
            </sitecore>
</configuration>

Parse URLs with Routes.

public virtual CatalogRouteData GetCatalogItemFromIncomingRequest()
{
    var routeData = RouteTable.Routes.GetRouteData(new HttpContextWrapper(System.Web.HttpContext.Current));
 
    if (routeData != null)
    {
        var data = this.GetRouteDataValue(routeData);
 
        return data;
    }
 
    return null;
}
 
public virtual CatalogRouteData GetRouteDataValue(RouteData routeData)
{
    var data = new CatalogRouteData();
 
    if (routeData.Values.ContainsKey(ItemTypeField))
    {
        data.IsProduct = routeData.Values[ItemTypeField].ToString() == ProductItemType ? true : false;
    }
 
    if (routeData.Values.ContainsKey(IdField))
    {
        data.Id = routeData.Values[IdField].ToString();
    }
 
    if (routeData.Values.ContainsKey(CatalogField))
    {
        data.Catalog = routeData.Values[CatalogField].ToString();
    }
 
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(data.Catalog))
    {
        var defaultCatalogItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(CommerceConstants.KnownItemIds.DefaultCatalog);
 
        if (defaultCatalogItem != null)
        {
            data.Catalog = defaultCatalogItem[CommerceConstants.KnownFieldIds.CatalogSettingValue];
        }
    }
 
    return data;
}

Retrieve the item using SearchNavigation.GetProduct or SearchNavigation.GetCategory

Sitecore.Data.Items.Item foundItem = null;
foundItem = SearchNavigation.GetProduct(routeData.Id, routeData.Catalog);

Cache the mapping between the URL and the Sitecore item id.

ICacheProvider cacheProvider = CommerceTypeLoader.GetCacheProvider(CommerceConstants.KnownCacheNames.FriendlyUrlsCache);
var id = cacheProvider.GetData<ID>(CommerceConstants.KnownCachePrefixes.Sitecore, CommerceConstants.KnownCacheNames.FriendlyUrlsCache, cachekey);
if (foundItem != null)
{
    cacheProvider.AddData<ID>(CommerceConstants.KnownCachePrefixes.Sitecore, CommerceConstants.KnownCacheNames.FriendlyUrlsCache, cachekey, foundItem.ID);
}

Create a new link provider that will render links for catalog and product items in a specific form.

Inherit from the Sitecore LinkProvider and call the base provider if the item is not a product or category
public class MyLinkProvider : LinkProvider

Check if an item is a product or category by using SearchHelpers.IsItemProduct or SearchHelpers.IsItemCategory

var searchManager = CommerceTypeLoader.CreateInstance<ICommerceSearchManager>();
if (searchManager.IsItemProduct(item))
{
    // build and return Product link
}
else if (searchManager.IsItemCategory(item))
{
    // build and return Category link
}

/configuration/sitecore/linkManager
<linkManager defaultProvider="sitecore">
      <patch:attribute name="defaultProvider">MyLinkProvider</patch:attribute>
      <providers>
        <add name="MyLinkProvider" addAspxExtension="true" alwaysIncludeServerUrl="false" encodeNames="true" languageEmbedding="asNeeded" languageLocation="filePath" lowercaseUrls="false" shortenUrls="true" useDisplayName="false" type="MySite.SitecorePipelines.MyLinkProvider, MySite"/>
      </providers>
    </linkManager>

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