Provisioning Publishing Page Content using a Feature

Question

I'm provisioning a bunch of Publishing pages using a feature, using the template redirection technique.

<Module Name="Page-Not-Found" Url="$Resources:cmscore,List_Pages_UrlName;">
    <File Url="Page-Not-Found.aspx" Path="Root\template.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary">
      <Property Name="Title" Value="Page Not Found"/>
      <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/MyPageLayout.aspx, My Page Layout Name" />
      <Property Name="ContentType" Value="My Content Type Name" />
    </File>
</Module>

The pages are provisioned correctly:

• The Title property is set correctly
• The page is created using the appropriate page layout and is bound to the correct content type
• It's not shown here, but I can also use AllUsersWebPart to provision web parts onto the page

The problem I'm having is that I'm unable to populate the Html fields on the page with content; for example, by adding a property like:

<Property Name="PageContent1" Value="&lt;h1&gt;Page Not Found&lt;/h1&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, that page doesn&#39;t exist.&lt;/p&gt;"/>

I tried some alternate syntax, such as:

<Property Name="PageContent1">
    <![CDATA[<h1>Page Not Found</h1><p>Sorry, that page doesn't exist.</p>]]>
</Property>

but that didn't work either. The field PageContent1 is always empty, and I see no errors in the logs.

I only see this issue for HTML fields like PageContent1. I'm using the same technique to set the value of a Lookup Column and Note field on the page and have no problems there.

Is anybody using this technique to provision Publishing pages and populate them with content?

Thank you

Answer 1

When provisioning Publishing Pages, you need to load an instance of the Template Redirection Page (found under SiteTemplates\SPS\default.aspx), but set the Url for the page to the name that you want to create, and set the properties such as content type and page layout in the normal way.

Have a look at this for an example: http://stefan-stanev-sharepoint-blog.blogspot.com/2010/07/provision-publishing-pages-in-sandbox.html

But modify the Feature Module to look like this:

<Module Name="MyPages" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\SPS" Url="Pages">
    <File Url="Page-Not-Found.aspx" Path="default.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary">
      <Property Name="Title" Value="Page Not Found" />
      <Property Name="ContentType" Value="My Content Type Name" />
      <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/MyPageLayout.aspx, My Page Layout Name" />
      <Property Name="PageContent1" Value="&lt;h1&gt;Page Not Found&lt;/h1&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, that page doesn&#39;t exist.&lt;/p&gt;"/>
    </File>
  </Module>

Answer 2

The common practice to place content on a published page is to use Content Editor Web Part. Look at this post how to configure provision in this case.

Answer 3

If your trying to add content to a SharePoint content area then this article shows you how to add a web part to it, the code would only need adapting slightly to add content. http://blog.mastykarz.nl/programmatically-adding-web-parts-rich-content-sharepoint-2010/