How can I retrieve a list of a folder's images so I can randomly select one of them?

Question

I am using dxa's java project and need to implement a condition where I randomly pick an image out of a list of images.

I don't necessarily want to link 20 images to a component to fetch this list of media files.

I have kept the images (existing Image schema) in a folder under Content\Images\MyImages.

How can I publish this to Binary folder or DB and how do I get the list of these images so I can run my code to randomly select an image from it?

Answer 1

The easiest part is to get the images published: I would create a template building block that loops the folder and adds the images to the publishing package, with a specific file path.

Component mmComp = engine.GetObject(uri) as Component;
Tridion.ContentManager.Publishing.Rendering.Binary binary = engine.PublishingContext.RenderedItem.AddBinary(mmComp);
string publishedPath = binary.Url;
Item packageItem = package.CreateMultimediaItem(mmComp.Id);
package.PushItem(filename, packageItem);

Add this TBB to a CT or PT that you very seldom publish. Reason for this is that you just want to publish these images if you add new ones...

Not so easy/not tried is how to retrive them: I would try to use the BinaryMetaFactory to search for the specific file path. I'm more used to .Net than Java. Therefore the example below is with C#.

var binaryMetaFactory = new BinaryMetaFactory()
var binaryMetas = binaryMetaFactory.GetMetaByUrl(binaryUrl);

Hope this at least gives you an idea how to accomplish it.