So I'm currently building a little blog, nothing too fancy, but I wanted next and previous buttons, which don't come out of the box. First thing I did, like the good little developer that I am, was google it. I forgot to put "OrchardCMS" in the first time so just got a bunch of posts on Wordpress forums complaining that they couldn't add said buttons. Not particularly helpful. So I amended my query and what did I find? A module that called Mod.NextPreviousItem, that I wrote back in 2013! Random. Anyway, so this module is old and more complicated than I needed for my simple next/previous blog post. So I stole a few lines of code and tada, next/previous buttons.

I added a new driver for the blog post part to return my fancy new links.

using System.Linq;
using Orchard.Blogs.Models;
using Orchard.ContentManagement;
using Orchard.ContentManagement.Drivers;
using Orchard.Core.Common.Models;

namespace Travail.Drivers {
    public class BlogPostPartDriver : ContentPartDriver<BlogPostPart> {
        private readonly IContentManager _contentManager;

        public BlogPostPartDriver(IContentManager contentManager) {
            _contentManager = contentManager;
        }

        protected override DriverResult Display(BlogPostPart part, string displayType, dynamic shapeHelper) {
            return ContentShape("Parts_NextPreviousBlogPost", () => {
                var createdDate = part.As<CommonPart>().CreatedUtc;

                var next = _contentManager.Query(VersionOptions.Published, "BlogPost")
                    .Join<CommonPartRecord>()
                    .Where(cr => cr.Container.Id == part.BlogPart.Id)
                    .Where(common => common.CreatedUtc > createdDate)
                    .OrderBy(cr => cr.CreatedUtc)
                    .Slice(0, 1).FirstOrDefault();

                var previous = _contentManager.Query(VersionOptions.Published, "BlogPost")
                    .Join<CommonPartRecord>()
                    .Where(cr => cr.Container.Id == part.BlogPart.Id)
                    .Where(common => common.CreatedUtc < createdDate)
                    .OrderByDescending(cr => cr.CreatedUtc)
                    .Slice(0, 1).FirstOrDefault();


                return shapeHelper.Parts_NextPreviousBlogPost(Next: next, Previous: previous);
            });
        }
    }
}

I added this to my theme (naughty, I know) but you could add it to a module for better reusability. Next we just need a simple view called Parts.NextPreviousBlogPost.cshtml that you can pop into your Views folder.

@using Orchard.ContentManagement;

@{
    ContentItem next = Model.Next;
    ContentItem previous = Model.Previous;
}

<div class="clearfix">
    @if (next != null) {
        @Html.ItemDisplayLink("Up next: " + Html.ItemDisplayText(next), next, new { @class= "next-post"})
    }
    @if (previous != null) {
        @Html.ItemDisplayLink("Previously: " + Html.ItemDisplayText(previous), previous, new { @class = "previous-post" })
    }
</div>
<hr />

And if you need it, a bit of css to make it look pwetty.

.next-post {
    float: right;
}

.previous-post {
    float: left;
}

When I wrote "and a bit of css to make it look pwetty", I didn't realise I had literally written two lines. Not very pretty at all. A bit pathetic really.

Anyway, hope this helps!