April 25, 2005

Content connection and languages

Because of the daily work (most MCMS programming) little time remains left for investigation. So I am still working to find out what is the best way to connect CMS and Commerce through MSIB.

OK, my goal is: get rid of the Commerce Catalog Manager and do all the product management from within CMS.
What I have done so far: I got into the CMS approve event and created a Commerce product using the Catalog Web Service. I did not call the Catalog Web Service directly, but used the Microsoft.CatalogServer.Bridge.dll as suggested by Vinayak Tadas (see blog April 19th). I made a CMS template file with placeholders for the product properties, and ProductPropertyDataSetPlaceholders to connect Commerce product properties to CMS placeholders. Finally, in the approve event of  CMS, after I created the product, I made a new ProductPosting and called the MakeRich method like this:

ProductPosting productPosting = new ProductPosting(<ProductCode>, ProductDefinition>, <CatalogName>, postingBeingApproved);
productPosting.MakeRich(postingBeingApproved);

This in order to make my recently made product rich, i.e. store the CMS guid in the RichPostingId field of the product in Commerce. Unfortunately, instead of what I expected, the program returns the error message "the language you specified is not associated with the current catalog.". I have created the catalog for the culture "nl-NL" and have deleted the standard "en-US" culture. Does MSIB have trouble with cultures other than "en -US". Why is it not clear that the catalog is "nl-NL"? The catalog I have has only one culture. Now I wonder how MSIB wants you to implement multiple cultures. Should there be a product posting for each culture? Or should all the cultures be integrated in one posting. Logically speaking, only the first option makes sense. I hope to come back soon and inform you further on my investigations. 

Posted by Peter at 20:52:06 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |
Comments
1 - >> OK, my goal is: get rid of the Commerce Catalog Manager

What about a CS enabled version of RAPID http://www.mcmsrapid.com ? (Comment this)

Written by: Mark at 2005/04/25 - 21:28:39
2 - From what I have understood from MCMS Rapid it provides enhancements above the core of MCMS. This can be an interesting product, but I did not find anything about a connection to Microsoft Commerce Server. Does MCMS Rapid provide such a connection? (Comment this)

Written by: Peter at 2005/05/03 - 18:40:36
3 - Correct - there is no out of the box connection to CS ... yet. So thats what would need to be developed. (Comment this)

Written by: Mark at 2005/05/03 - 20:07:57
4 - We have been developing our Catalog Manager to better maintain CS2002 Catalogs. Would love to share some of that at some point. I can been reached at matt@montare.net (Comment this)

Written by: Matthys van Leeuwen at 2005/06/12 - 00:46:48
5 - Hi Peter,

Good article. Here i have requirement for a client and the scenario is as follows.

I have a WebForm1.aspx in which i will be accepting productId, Description, Image etc. Now the following should happen.

1. Should Create a product in the catalog. This is done.
2. Need to create rich product page for the above product.

Could you please lte me know how i can proceed for the second point progrmatically using SDK.

TIA
-Roopesh

 (Comment this)

Written by: Roopesh at 2005/07/14 - 07:42:43
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