1. What the heck is a Umbraco property
editor value converter?
Jeavon Leopold - Twitter: @crumpled_jeavon
e: jeavon@crumpled-dog.com www.crumpled-dog.com

2. What the heck?
What is a data type property editor?
• Property editors are the actual editors that are rendered to the content editors, implemented using
AbstractDataEditor or IUsercontrolDataEditor
• Data types (stored in DB) implement a selected property editor (coded in C#)
• Content values are stored as a string in prevalue(s) (often as CSV, Json or XML)
So what is a property editor value converter?
• Introduced in Umbraco v4.10
• Applies to MVC razor rendering only
(there is a similar mechanism for razor macros called Razor Model Binding)
• Converts the stored content value string to some other type e.g IPublishedContent
• Can be included with a property editor (especially if property editor is a package)
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3. How is this useful?
How many times have you had to split in Razor to use MNTP?
• My version for Razor Macros:
• In MVC (using dynamics), a little better, maybe 
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4. How is this useful?
• In MVC (typed), definitely no better 
Pretty complicated for a front end developer
trying to do some basic Razor templating?
With a property editor value converter implemented on MNTP (using dynamics)
Definitely better 
Complicated now?
• Doesn’t matter if XML or CSV storage type used by MNTP, the converter takes care of it
• Implemented in both Typed and Dynamics
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5. How to implement a converter?
Implement IPropertyEditorValueConverter
• Found in Umbraco.Core.PropertyEditors namespace
• Two methods: IsConverterFor & ConvertPropertyValue
• Use UmbracoHelper if it helps
Example converter for Content Picker
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6. Quick demo
• Fresh Umbraco v6.0.3 using NuGet
• Install Standard Website MVC
• Build MNTP Property editor value converter
• Copy dll into solution
• Update the Razor slideshow
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7. More?
Umbraco Core Property Editor Converter Package (Umbraco v6 only)
• Implements converters for Umbraco Core property editors
• Will hopefully be merged in Umbraco pre v7
• http://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/umbraco-core-property-editor-converters
• Check out the source code https://bitbucket.org/jeavon/umbraco-core-property-editor-converters
• Helper method WIP – provides access to the data type settings so that you can alter the return type
depending on the settings
Documentation
• http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Extending-Umbraco/Property-
Editors/PropertyEditorValueConverters
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8. Thank you.
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