Making a Variant Provider v3.1

Overview

This tutorial runs through the process of creating a new Variant Provider that uses the time of day on the server to return a greeting that reflects the time of day.

This demonstrates how variants can be set within a consumer app.

Prerequisites

1. You should be familiar with how to create components, pages, variants, content definitions and content items in Forrit. Review the earlier sections in the documentation if this is not the case.

2. You should have completed the previous tutorial Making a Simple Consumer App, as this forms the starting point in Visual Studio

3. Configure Forrit page content:

   1. Create three variants in Forrit, called "Morning", "Afternoon" and "Night".

   2. Add a component to a page in Forrit, ensuring that the component is enabled for the three variants completed above.

   3. Edit the page content so that the page displays different content for all variants, for example "Good Morning", "Good Afternoon" and "Good Evening".

Update .NET app

1. In Visual Studio, create a new class called TimeOfDayVariantProvider and ensure that it implements IVariantProvider:

   CODE

   public class TimeOfDayVariantProvider : IVariantProvider

2. In TimeOfDayVariantProvider, Implement the single required method of IVariantProvider:

   CODE

   public ValueTask<Guid> GetVariantAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
   {
       string variant;
       DateTime systemDateTime = DateTime.Now;
   
       if (systemDateTime.Hour >= 0 && systemDateTime.Hour < 12)
       {
           variant = "{UID-for-morning-variant}";
       }
       else if (systemDateTime.Hour >= 12 && systemDateTime.Hour < 18)
       {
           variant = "{UID-for-afternoon-variant}";
       }
       else
       {
           variant = "{UID-for-night-variant}";
       }
   
       return new ValueTask<Guid>(new Guid(variant));
   }

   This simple logic looks at the time of day on the server, and selects an appropriate variant based on that time.

3. In Startup.cs, replace this line at the end of the ConfigureServicesfunction:

   CODE

               services.AddSingleton<IVariantProvider, TimeOfDayVariantProvider>();

4. Run the application and check that the correct variant is selected and that the correct content is displayed in the website.

The new variant provider is now running in your Consumer App successfully.

Troubleshooting

• Check that you have created a new release containing the updated pages, and that the release has been published to the correct consumer app

• Check that the UIDs you used for variants in the Forrit Marketing Portal are the same as the UIDs your variant provider returns