Creating LinkField from XML

Question

Sitecoore 9: I need to create a LinkField from a general link's xml

E.g.

<link
text="Text"
linktype="internal/external"
url="url"
anchor="anchor"
title="title"
class="class"
querystring="querystring"
target="target"
id="id" />

But I can only create a link field based on an id which I don't have without parsing this xml string.

How can I create a LinkField from this xml? Ultimately, Im trying to get the url for this General Link and I only have access to the xml

Answer 1

In theory you can extend LinkUrl class and pass the xml instead of the LinkField object like that:

using System.Xml;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Xml.Xsl;

namespace My.Assembly.Namespace
{
    public class ExtendedLinkUrl : LinkUrl
    {
        public string GetUrl(string linkFieldXml, Database database)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(linkFieldXml) || database == null)
                return null;

            var xmlDocument = new XmlDocument();
            xmlDocument.LoadXml(linkFieldXml);
            var linkElement = xmlDocument.DocumentElement;

            if (linkElement == null)
                return null;

            string linkType = linkElement.GetAttribute("linktype");
            string url = linkElement.GetAttribute("url");
            string id = linkElement.GetAttribute("id");
            string anchor = linkElement.GetAttribute("anchor");
            string queryString = linkElement.GetAttribute("querystring");

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(anchor))
                anchor = "#" + anchor;

            switch (linkType)
            {
                case "anchor":
                    return anchor;
                case "external":
                    return GetExternalUrl(url);
                case "internal":
                    return GetInternalUrl(database, url, id, anchor, queryString);
                case "javascript":
                    return GetJavaScriptUrl(url);
                case "mailto":
                    return GetMailToLink(url);
                case "media":
                    return GetMediaUrl(database, id);
                default:
                    return string.Empty;
            }
        }
    }
}