Working with Layout Controls Programmatically

Sitefinity's backend UI allows adding various configurations for layout controls to control the page layout display and in this blog post I will provide a sample on how to create new layout controls on a page using the API and how to query layout controls on pages.

1. To create Layout control on a page refer to the sample method below, it refers to this documentation sample and extends it.


The code creates a new control in the page and sets its ObjectType to the type of the Sitefinity layout controls.


The other required property to make the PageDraftControl layout control is 


Each layout control is different and to make the control place specific layout control on the page, you need to create a new property for the control with Name "Layout" and as value pass the path to the layout control template. All layout control paths can be found in Administration->Settings->Advanced->Toolboxes->Toolboxes->PageLayouts->Sections->TwoCol. To select the layout control you want to use, refer to its Layout Template textbox.



2. Once added, the layout controls can be queried so you can find what is the placeholder id of each layout control and use it to place controls into it. To query layout controls based on different properties refer to the sample below.


In the query for retrieving layout controls I have used several properties to demo the available ways to query layout controls by different property to server different cases:


 For caption enter the name of the layout control used. If the control is called "CustomLayoutControl", in its caption use this name to find specific controls:


 The placeholder name which each layout control produces is the property "placeholderId". Use this placeholder name to nest other controls in this layout control.