Provides a means to retrieve identity information about an object.

Its methods primarily allow you to retrieve an object’s ID, as well as its associated class and object store IDs.

You can get an instance of an object’s unique identity by calling GetObjectReference() on the IIndependentObject and IPropertyEngineObject interfaces.

IIndependentObject.equals delegates to ObjectReference.equals for object comparisons. Neither considers update sequence number (USN) in the comparison. If both IObjectReference objects being compared have GUIDs (available within the client object) or paths or names, they are compared. Otherwise, the objects are considered to be not equal. No implicit round-trips to the Content Engine server are performed to resolve an identity to a GUID.


The following tables list the members exposed by IObjectReference.

Public Methods

 NameDescription
Public methodGetClassIdentityReturns the class name of the object represented by this identity.
Public methodGetObjectIdentityReturns the ID, name, or path of an independent object to which this identity refers.

The returned string can be an ID (in GUID format) or, if fetchless instantiation was used to create the object, the string might contain a name or path. This method returns Null if the identity is referencing a dependent object or an unevaluated object.

Public methodGetObjectStoreIdentityReturns the ID or name of the object store in which the referenced object resides.

The returned string is an ID (in GUID format) or, if fetchless instantiation was used to create the object, the string contains the object store name. For non-object store references, this method returns Null.

Public methodIsResolvedReturns True when this identity is an ID (GUID), as it would be if resolved by the server.

Some factory methods instantiate an object using a name or a path and do not make a round-trip to the server (referred to as "fetchless instantiation"). If an object reference exists as a result of a call to one of these factory methods, this method returns False, indicating that there is no ID known to the API (that is, the reference is not "resolved"). If the object was instantiated with a method that persists the object to the object store immediately, or the object has been explicitly saved, this method returns True.

Public methodToStringReturns a String representation of the object represented by this identity.
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