The other day I cogitated over potential uses for the getAboutInformation pipeline. Found at /configuration/sitecore/pipelines/getAboutInformation in the Web.config, it can be leveraged to display information on the Sitecore login page, and inside of the About dialog — a dialog that can be launched from the Content Editor.

One thing that came to mind was displaying some information for the Content Management (CM) server where the Sitecore instance lives. Having this information readily available might aid in troubleshooting issues that arise, or seeing the name of the server might stop you from making content changes on the wrong CM server (I am guilty as charged for committing such a blunder in the past).

This post shows how I translated that idea into code.

The first thing we need is a way to get server information. I defined the following interface to describe information we might be interested in for a server:

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Server.Base
{
    public interface IServer
    {
        string Name { get; }

        string Cpu { get; }

        string OperatingSystem { get; }
    }
}

We now need a class to implement the above interface. I stumbled upon a page whose author shared how one can acquire server information using classes defined in the System.Management namespace in .NET.

Using information from that page coupled with some experimentation, I came up with the following class:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Management;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;

using Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Server.Base;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Server
{
    public class Server : IServer
    {
        private string _Name;
        public string Name
        {
            get
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(_Name))
                {
                    _Name = GetServerName();
                }

                return _Name;
            }
        }

        private string _Cpu;
        public string Cpu
        {
            get
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(_Cpu))
                {
                    _Cpu = GetCpuInformation();
                }

                return _Cpu;
            }
        }
        
        private string _OperatingSystem;
        public string OperatingSystem
        {
            get
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(_OperatingSystem))
                {
                    _OperatingSystem = GetOperatingSystemName();
                }

                return _OperatingSystem;
            }
        }

        private Server()
        {
        }

        private static string GetServerName()
        {
            return GetFirstManagementBaseObjectPropertyFirstInnerProperty("Win32_ComputerSystem", "name");
        }

        private static string GetCpuInformation()
        {
            return GetFirstManagementBaseObjectPropertyFirstInnerProperty("Win32_Processor", "name");
        }

        private static string GetOperatingSystemName()
        {
            return GetFirstManagementBaseObjectPropertyFirstInnerProperty("Win32_OperatingSystem", "name");
        }

        private static string GetFirstManagementBaseObjectPropertyFirstInnerProperty(string key, string propertyName)
        {
            return GetFirstManagementBaseObjectPropertyInnerProperties(key, propertyName).FirstOrDefault();
        }

        private static IEnumerable<string> GetFirstManagementBaseObjectPropertyInnerProperties(string key, string propertyName)
        {
            return GetFirstManagementBaseObjectProperty(key, propertyName).Split('|');
        }

        private static string GetFirstManagementBaseObjectProperty(string key, string propertyName)
        {
            return GetFirstManagementBaseObject(key)[propertyName].ToString();
        }

        private static ManagementBaseObject GetFirstManagementBaseObject(string key)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNullOrEmpty(key, "key");
            WqlObjectQuery query = new WqlObjectQuery(string.Format("select * from {0}", key));
            ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
            return searcher.Get().Cast<ManagementBaseObject>().FirstOrDefault();
        }

        public static IServer CreateNewServer()
        {
            return new Server();
        }
    }
}

The class above grabs server information via three separate ManagementObjectSearcher queries, one for each property defined in our IServer interface.

In order to use classes defined in the System.Management namespace, I had to reference System.Management in my project in Visual Studio:

Next, I created a class that contains methods that will serve as our getAboutInformation pipeline processors:

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.GetAboutInformation;

using Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Server.Base;
using Sitecore.Sandbox.Utilities.Server;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetAboutInformation
{
    public class GetContentManagementServerInformation
    {
        private static readonly string CurrentServerInformationHtml = GetCurrentServerInformationHtml();

        public void SetLoginPageText(GetAboutInformationArgs args)
        {
            args.LoginPageText = CurrentServerInformationHtml;
        }

        public void SetAboutText(GetAboutInformationArgs args)
        {
            args.AboutText = CurrentServerInformationHtml;
        }

        private static string GetCurrentServerInformationHtml()
        {
            return GetServerInformationHtml(Server.CreateNewServer());
        }

        private static string GetServerInformationHtml(IServer server)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(server, "server");
            IList<string> information = new List<string>();

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(server.Name))
            {
                information.Add(string.Format("<strong>Server Name</strong>: {0}", server.Name));
            }

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(server.Cpu))
            {
                information.Add(string.Format("<strong>CPU</strong>: {0}", server.Cpu));
            }

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(server.OperatingSystem))
            {
                information.Add(string.Format("<strong>OS</strong>: {0}", server.OperatingSystem));
            }

            return string.Join("<br />", information);
        }
    }
}

Both methods set properties on the GetAboutInformationArgs instance using the same HTML generated by the GetServerInformationHtml method. This method is given an instance of the Server class defined above by the GetCurrentServerInformationHtml method.

I then connected all of the above into Sitecore via a configuration include file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <getAboutInformation>
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetAboutInformation.GetContentManagementServerInformation, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="SetLoginPageText" />
        <processor type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Pipelines.GetAboutInformation.GetContentManagementServerInformation, Sitecore.Sandbox" method="SetAboutText" />
      </getAboutInformation>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Let’s see this in action.

When hitting the Sitecore login page in my browser, I saw server information in the right sidebar, under the Sitecore version and revision numbers:

Next, I logged into Sitecore, opened the Content Editor, and launched the About dialog:

As you can see, my CM server information is also displayed here.

You might be questioning why I didn’t include more server information on both the login page and About dialog. One reason why I omitted displaying other properties is due to discovering that the login page area for showing the LoginPageText string does not grow vertically — I saw this when I did include a few more properties in addition to the three shown above.

Sadly, I did not see what would happen when including these additional properties in the the About dialog. Ascertaining whether it is possible to include more information in the About dialog is warranted, though I will leave that exercise for another day.

If you have any other thoughts or ideas for utilizing getAboutInformation pipeline processors, or other areas in Sitecore where server information might be useful, please drop a comment.