This topic targets, and was tested with, the Orchard 1.10.2 release.
In Orchard, you can use rules to determine the visibility of both layers (see Managing widgets) and elements within a Layout.
A rule is composed of one or more conditions which are combined using one or more logical operators such as AND, OR and NOT. This article describes how to compose a rule using conditions and lists the conditions that are available within a standard Orchard installation.
Rules
A rule is constructed by using one, or more, conditions that are checked to determine whether the rule overall evaluates to true or false. If the rule evaluates to true, the associated content will be displayed, if not, then it won't.
There are two basic conditions provided by the Orchard.Conditions module, these are:
authenticated- Whether the current user is authenticated, or noturl- To allow you to check whether the current request matches a certain URL, or not
These allow you to compose rules that determine whether a given layer or element is visible, for example:
(not authenticated and url("~/about")) or authenticated
If this rule was applied to a certain layer, the contents of the layer would be visible if:
- the user is not logged in AND the page is the "about" page, or
- the user is logged in
There are also other conditions that you can use to compose rules, implemented by other Orchard modules, that are described in detail below.
Available Conditions
There are several conditions provided by the core Orchard modules, over and above the authenticated and url ones provided by the Orchard.Conditions module itself. In order to use a condition, the module it's provided by must be both installed and enabled, otherwise you may receive the below error message when attempting to use the condition:
The rule is not valid: Expression is not a boolean value
The conditions provided are:
| Condition Syntax | Module | Description |
|---|---|---|
| authenticated | Orchard.Conditions | True if the user is logged in. |
| ContentType("<Type>") | Orchard.Widgets | True if the content type being view matches the content type specified e.g. ContentType("Page") |
| culturecode("<Culture-Code>"[]) | Orchard.Localization | Check to see if the culture of the content being rendered matches, for example culturecode("en-gb") will match the 'English - United Kingdom' locale |
| culturelcid(<LocaleId>[]) | Orchard.Localization | Check to see if the Locale ID of the content being rendered matches, for example culturelcid(1033) will match the 'English - United States' locale |
| cultureisrtl(true|false) | Orchard.Localization | Check to see if content is being rendered Right To Left, or not, for example cultureisrtl(true) will return false for non-RTL content |
| culturelang("<Language>"[]) | Orchard.Localization | Check the language that content is being rendered for, for example culturelang('en') will return true for English content |
| url("<url path>") | Orchard.Conditions | True if the current URL matches any of the specified paths. If you add an asterisk (*) at the end of the path, all pages found in subfolders under that path will evaluate to true (for example, url("~/home*")), multiple urls can be specified by separating them with ',' (for example, url("~/home*", "~/about")). |
| role("<role>"[]) | Orchard.Roles | Allows you to test the current user to see if they're a member of a specific role, for example, role("Moderator") (Note: These are case-sensitive, 'Moderator' will be matched, 'moderator' won't) |
| not | n/a | Logical NOT. |
| and | n/a | Logical AND. |
| or | n/a | Logical OR. |
The presence of [] in the condition syntax denotes the fact that this condition accepts multiple parameters. Examples of using these conditions with multiple parameters are given below.
You can find modules that implement additional conditions by searching the gallery for the term 'rules'.
Conditions that take multiple parameters
Several of the conditions provided within core Orchard modules allow you to specify more than one parameter. Both examples for each of the following rules (where the condition is used with a logical or and where the condition has an array of parameters passed to it) are equally valid:
A rule to display content for either the en-gb or en-us culture code:
culturecode("en-gb") or culturecode("en-us")
culturecode("en-gb", "en-us")
A rule to display content for either the English, or French language:
culturelang("en") or culturelang("fr")
culturelang("en", "fr")
A rule to display content for either of the 1033 and 2057 (en-us and en-gb) locales:
culturelcid(1033) or culturelcid(2057)
culturelcid(1033, 2057)
A rule to display content for users who are members of the Moderator or Administrator roles:
role("Moderator") or role("Administrator")
role("Moderator", "Administrator")
Places you can use rules
You can use rules to determine the visibility of things in at least these places:
- Layers - to determine when a layer is visible
- Layouts - to determine when individual elements within the layout are visible
- Pages - to determine when individual elements within the page are visible (this is effectively the same as for a Layout as from Orchard v.1.9 onwards, by default the Page content type has a LayoutPart instead of the BodyPart)