Developer FAQ

What are Page meta types? And how do they differ from Global data types?

Answer:

As is the case with Page data types (data folders), Page meta types differ from Global data types in the way their data items are created and the fact that they are always have a page reference.

You can add data items to a page meta type only if the meta type has been added to a page and thus, has the reference to this page (unlike Global data types).

Creating and customizing a Page meta type is no different from creating and customizing data types in general.

When added, the metadata appears on an ad-hoc tab in the page editor - Metadata. When adding metadata fields to a page, you have a couple of metadata inheritance options.

By setting and using the values in the metadata fields on a page, you can control the behavior of the page as well as manage its content.

A good example is to use metadata to filter content on a page.

You can use XSLT functions to render metadata on pages as well as use them in C# via C1 API.

Like with Global data types and Page data types, you can use data-centric functions (Get<Type>Xml) to retrieve and manage data items in XSLT functions and have the XSLT functions render them. As metadata is always page-specific, you will most likely use ActivePageReferenceFilter to get metadata on that page. (Please see Data-Centric Functions.)