Edting collection of items is slow in Sitecore - sitecore

Question

I've implemented an on item:saved handler per this question I posted here: Run code when Publishing Restriction is saved in Sitecore
When an author changes the publishing restrictions on a page, I iterate through each of the related components for that page, updating the publishing restrictions on each to match the page item. This works, but some pages have 150 or so components and the process of editing each is taking for ever. The result is that the UI hangs for up to 5 minutes while it runs. Not good.
I'm doing this:
compItem.Editing.BeginEdit();
compItem.Publishing.ValidFrom = pageItem.Publishing.ValidFrom;
compItem.Publishing.ValidTo = pageItem.Publishing.ValidTo;
compItem.Editing.EndEdit(true, true);
I've played around with the updateStatistics and silent arguments. If do it "silent" the UI responds, but of course it still takes forever for the update to run in the background which could cause issues, since there will be a window of time where the pub restrictions between the page and components would be out of sync.
Any thoughts on why updating 150 items is so slow? Any ways to speed it up?
Here's the full code:
public void OnItemSaved(object sender, EventArgs args)
{
Item item = Event.ExtractParameter(args, 0) as Item;
if (item == null)
return;
//if it's a page, then update the page component templates with the same publish restrictions.
if(this.HasBaseTemplate(item, GlobalId.PageBaseTemplate))
{
ItemChanges itemChanges = Event.ExtractParameter(args, 1) as ItemChanges;
if (itemChanges != null &&
(itemChanges.FieldChanges.Contains(__Validfrom) || itemChanges.FieldChanges.Contains(__Validto)))
{
foreach (Item i in this.GetPageComponents(item))
{
try
{
i.Editing.BeginEdit();
i.Publishing.ValidFrom = item.Publishing.ValidFrom;
i.Publishing.ValidTo = item.Publishing.ValidTo;
i.Editing.EndEdit(true, false);
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
i.Editing.CancelEdit();
}
}
}
}
}
protected IEnumerable<Item> GetPageComponents(Item page)
{
var links = page.Links.GetAllLinks(false, true);
var foundIds = new HashSet<ID>();
var foundComponentIds = new HashSet<ID>();
var componentIds = new List<ID> { page.ID };
using (var context = ContentSearchManager.GetIndex("sitecore_master_index").CreateSearchContext())
{
while (componentIds.Any())
{
var query = context.GetQueryable<LinkSearchResultItem>();
var predicate = PredicateBuilder.False<LinkSearchResultItem>();
foreach (var id in componentIds)
{
predicate = predicate.Or(sri => sri.ItemId == id);
}
query = query.Where(predicate);
var results = query.GetResults().Hits.Select(h => h.Document);
foundIds.Add(componentIds);
componentIds.Clear();
componentIds.AddRange(results
.Where(sri => (sri.Path.StartsWith("/sitecore/content/BECU/Global/Page Components/", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) || sri.ItemId == page.ID) && sri.Links != null)
.SelectMany(sri => sri.Links)
.Except(foundIds));
foundComponentIds.Add(results
.Where(sri => (sri.Path.StartsWith("/sitecore/content/BECU/Global/Page Components/", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)))
.Select(sri => sri.ItemId));
}
}
var database = page.Database;
return foundComponentIds.Select(id => database.GetItem(id)).Where(i => i != null);
}

Answer 1

I would recommend that you try wrapping your edit code with a Sitecore.Data.BulkUpdateContext as follows
...
using(new Sitecore.Data.BulkUpdateContext())
{
foreach (Item i in this.GetPageComponents(item))
{
try
{
i.Editing.BeginEdit();
i.Publishing.ValidFrom = item.Publishing.ValidFrom;
i.Publishing.ValidTo = item.Publishing.ValidTo;
i.Editing.EndEdit(true, false);
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
i.Editing.CancelEdit();
}
}
}
...
When an item is updated in Sitecore, several other background processes and events as a result of updating the item. Such an example is indexing which will slow down the update of a large number of items at once.
The BulkUpdateContext will disable most of these events and processes until the update is complete thereby hopefully speeding up the update of your items.
Note: I have yet to use this BulkUpdateContext myself but I found several posts including this Stackoverflow question where it claims that the BulkUpdateContext only improves item creation speed, not updates. However that may only apply to the particular version of Sitecore that was being used at the time. It may may no longer be the case with new versions of Sitecore (7.X and 8), so I think it is still worth a try.