Viewing eZ Publish content objects by content class
By: Cosmin Atanasiu | May 25, 2012 | eZ Publish add-ons, eZ Publish, objects by content class, and content class manager
If you've ever had a hard time finding content objects of certain classes in your eZ Publish installation, you might write one-off PHP scripts or worse, dive directly into the database. This is often the case on unfamiliar sites (where you get lost in the content tree) and/or sites that have a large number of content objects. Mugo Content Class Manager is a simple but powerful extension that displays content objects grouped by their content class.
Installing the extension
Mugo Content Class Manager works out of the box: just extract the "mugocontentclassmanager" folder in your eZ Publish extension/ folder, then activate it for your Administration Interface siteaccess in site.ini.append.php via the ActiveAccessExtensions[] array: ActiveAccessExtensions[]=mugocontentclassmanager. You can alternatively activate it globally in settings/override/site.ini.append.php, but remember that the array is called ActiveExtensions[] instead of ActiveAccessExtensions[]. Then, clear the INI and template cache.
Using the extension
Once installed, the extension should show a new tab in the Administration Interface called "Objects by content class". This tab contains the interface for the entire extension:
Main View
The first screen is useful if you want to sort all content classes in the system by name or ID, since this functionality is not available by default in the eZ Publish Setup tab. However, this extension is most useful when selecting a content class:
Blog Post Class View
The class view lets you see all the content objects of a particular content class. For example, if you've had a report about an issue with image galleries but just can't find one to test, you can quickly pull up a list of all of them. Or, if you have multiple blogs across the website and want to see the latest blog post no matter the location, you can sort the blog posts by publish date; if you want to find a blog post with a specific title, you can find it by sorting the blog post objects by name. There are many other use cases, but I won't go in too much detail here. The extension itself should be straightforward and has come in handy many times!
