Entity not being populated in controller DXA .Net

Question

I'm having some issues recovering a Tridion component content in a controller in my DXA project.

The component schema is called AutocompleteResults and it has 2 fields:

• hotels: Component Link of Hotel (a schema including name, category, email... and other text fields) allowing multiple values.
• destinations: Component Link of City (a schema including name and country) allowing multiple values.

I created some components using the schema Hotel and some using City. Then, I created a component AutocompleteResults using the schema AutocompleteResults, and added the hotel and city components as component links.

I also created a component template adding "Default Component Template Finish Actions" and "Render Component Presentations" and vinculating the schema AutocompleteResults. I configured it like this:

I also created a page template Autocomplete adding "Render Page Content" and "Default Page Template Finish Actions" and configured it like this:

Then, I created a page Autocomplete inheriting from the above page template and adding the presentation Component/Component template created before.

I have published the page, publish settings and components (this last ones just in case), but I can't get the information in my DXA .NET project.

This is the controller and the action I created, but entity is not being populated:

The view AutocompleteResults referenced in the component template is also created, and it's registered in the CoreAreaRegistration (I've tried also without the last parameter "Page").

The model AutocompleteResults has the same structure as the schema of the component in Tridion:

Could anyone help me to see what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks a lot!

Mer

Answer 1

Your log file reveals that there is an HTTP Request directly to the Entity Action of your custom Entity Controller. That is not the way that Entity Controllers are normally used and no CM Model Mapping will occur in that manner.

Entity Controllers are normally invoked as part of the Page rendering flow. You can let your custom Entity Controller inherit from EntityController and override the EnrichModel method to dynamically populate your Entity Model (after regular CM model mapping happened).

I’m not sure how you expect your Controller to be used and what is generating the HTTP Request on your Controller’s Entity Action?

UPDATE:

If your Component is part of a Page, you don’t need a custom Controller in order to make CM model mapping work.

If you want to retrieve the Component as a separate entity, you will have to use a dynamic CT, so the Component gets published as separate entity (Dynamic Component Presentation). DXA currently does not have a built-in Controller action to retrieve Entity Models (for DCPs) separately, but you can create a custom Controller action to do that. Your custom Controller (inherited from BaseController) can use ContentProvider.GetEntityModel to obtain the Entity Model for the DCP.

Answer 2

First of all your component template needs to be dynamic and not published as part of the page. And you will need to use default DXA TBBs that will output json format to the Broker database.