Orphan Keywords

Question

What are they (which conditions need to apply for a Keyword to be considered an orphan), how would one exactly make one, and how do you use the OrphanKeywordsFilterData class?

I tried making a Keyword an orphan by deleting all of its parent Keywords (emptying its ParentKeywords property), but all that that does is show the Keyword directly under the Category in the CME. When I applied the OrphanKeywordsFilterData as shown below, I got an empty list.

OrphanKeywordsFilterData filter = new OrphanKeywordsFilterData();
XElement orpahKeywords = client.GetListXml("tcm:0-15-1", filter);

In another try, I set the RootCategory property of the filter to the Category in which I supposedly created the orphan, but still no luck.

Is this something which existed at some point and is kept only for legacy reasons, or am I missing something?

Answer 1

What would you like it to be?

The concept of orpan Keywords is not applicable in most implementations; it is related to Taxonomies which span multiple Categories. This was envisioned, but never fully implemented (at least not in the GUI).

Theoretically, it is possible to define a Taxonomy (e.g. “Location”) which consists of multiple “layers” formed by multiple Categories (e.g. “Country” and “City”). In other words: Keywords from the “City” Category can be children of Keywords from the “Country” Category.

In such a “layered” Taxonomy, Keywords from the lower layers should have at least one Keyword from the higher layer as parent, otherwise they are unreacheable (not part of the Taxonomy) and such Keywords are called orphaned.