Can I guarantee publishing of an item I've just created? - sitecore

I've got a situation where I want end-users to be able to create new Sitecore items... and then immediately be able to navigate to the Item's URL. Obviously the item will have to be published... but this happens in something of a black box. Is there a way to guarantee an item has been published from Master to Web?
Alternately, I could create the Item in the Web DB... then re-create/copy a Master version at some point. But this strategy seems fraught with peril. And maybe just a bad idea in general.
Suggestions? Am I being needlessly paranoid about creating items directly in Web?

I'll start by saying my answer is not necessarily advisable. However, depending on your situation it should work.
If the items that users are creating always have the same template you could try creating a custom item resolver that falls back to using the Master database.
Allow Sitecore to attempt to resolve the item normally.
When it fails, look in the Master database.
If the item is in there, make sure it has the correct template
Set the found item as the context item.
Using this method, you can publish the items from Master->Web s normal, but you don't have to wait until publishing is completed to see it.
Once again, this should solve the problem, but it's up to you to weigh the risks of serving up Master DB content.

You can't "guarantee" because publishing may be queued and won't go live instantly. Instead if you need instant access, I recommend a preview site that points to the master database:
How to Setup a Sitecore Preview Site to Review Content Before Publishing

You could create a event mapping to a class with the code to publish the item. In the code you can define any rule you want regarnding whether to publish or not.
<event name="item:saved">
<handler type="YourType.ItemEventHandler, YourType" method="OnItemSaved" />
</event>
And the OnItemSaved would look like this: (not tested)
protected void OnItemSaved(object sender, EventArgs args)
{
if (args == null)
{
return;
}
Item item = Event.ExtractParameter(args, 0) as Item;
var webDb = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("web");
var masterDb = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("master");
foreach (Language language in masterDb.Languages)
{
var options = new PublishOptions(masterDb, webDb, PublishMode.SingleItem, language, DateTime.Now)
{ RootItem = item, Deep = true };
var myPublisher = new Publisher(options);
myPublisher.Publish();
}
}
And about creating the item in the web db, I also wouldn`t go that way. It would be replaced by the default publishing process unexpectedly.

Personally i don't like front-end user creating items in master database, i feel only content authors/editors should be the ones who create items from either content editor or page editor.
There is no guarantee the item gets published instantly, I would recommend you to store any user-created data in a separate database and on the redirect URL just read the data from this database.

Related

How to get all goals triggered during Sitecore session in commitDataSet Analytics pipeline?

I have an Analytics pipeline added just before the standard one in section to delete duplicate triggered pageevents before submitting all to database so I can have unique triggered events as there seems to be a bug on android/ios devices that triggers several events within few seconds interval.
In this custom pipeline I need to get the list of all goals/events the current user triggered in his session so I can compare with the values in dataset obtained from args parameter and delete the ones already triggered.
The args.DataSet.Tables["PageEvents"] only returns the set to be submitted to database and that doesn't help since it is changing each time this pipeline runs. I also tried Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Visitor.DataSet but I get a null value for these properties.
Does anyone knows a way how to get a list with all goals the user triggered so far in his session without requesting it directly to the database ?
Some code:
public class CommitUniqueAnalytics : CommitDataSetProcessor
{
public override void Process(CommitDataSetArgs args)
{
Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
var table = args.DataSet.Tables["PageEvents"];
if (table != null)
{
//Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Visitor.DataSet.PageEvents - this list always empty
...........
}
}
}
I had a similar question.
In Sitecore 7.5 I found that this worked:
Tracker.Current.Session.Interaction.Pages.SelectMany(x=>x.PageEvents)
However I'm a little worried that this will be inefficient if the Pages collection is very large.

Bulk content load and Page Creation in Sitecore

I have a process where i am getting xml resultset , from which i can process the data and programmatically create pages in Sitecore. This is simple if we have to few pages that even once .
Now my problem is that i have to create minimum 50k pages in Sitecore twice a day from xml.So to load that much data in sitecore once is really slow process.
Is there is a optimum way to create these pages in Sitecore .
I am using Sitecore 7.
process for page creation
using (new Sitecore.SecurityModel.SecurityDisabler())
{
for (int i = 0; i < item.count; i++)
{
Item newCityItem = parentCityItem.Add("Page_" + i, template1);
newCityItem.Editing.BeginEdit();
try
{
newCityItem.Fields["html"].Value = mPages[i].ToString();
newCityItem.Editing.EndEdit();
}
catch (System.Exception ex)
{
// The update failed, write a message to the log
Sitecore.Diagnostics.Log.Error("Could not update item " + newCityItem.Paths.FullPath + ": " + ex.Message, this);
// Cancel the edit (not really needed, as Sitecore automatically aborts // the transaction on exceptions, but it wont hurt your code)
newCityItem.Editing.CancelEdit();
}
}
}
Any help ...
Wrap your loop in a BulkUpdateContext which disables events, indexes, etc
using(new BulkUpdateContext())
{
// code here
}
I don't think it's another way to create Sitecore Items.
What I suggest you, to disable indexing on master database, because it will slow a little bit when new items are created. If you need to index after creating your items you can enable again the indexes and start reindexing.
If these items are being replaced twice a day in Sitecore, I assume that they're not being edited and you're using Sitecore for the presentation layer.
If so, you could map your xml as a Sitecore DataProvider. This way, the xml is used as the source of the items - although they can still be read in Sitecore, and the Sitecore presentation layer sees them as regular sitecore items.
There's a blog post explaining it at http://blog.horizontalintegration.com/2013/03/17/an-introduction-to-sitecore-data-providers/, as well as some documentation in the SDN.
Edit (thanks to jammykam)
I wouldn't map direct to an xml file - maybe put that into a db and then map that into sitecore.
Everytime when you save an item, the statistics were updated (like modified user, modified date etc.) and all the events were fired (item saved, index building, etc). You can disable both of these:
item.Editing.BeginEdit();
item["Title"] = "My new title";
item.Editing.EndEdit(false, true);
Depending on your requirements you may need to rebuild the index at the end of your import.

Sitecore workbox does not track changes, can I override this?

Sitecore workbox does not create a new version hence it does not track the change set. (Workbox being used by staff people, admin needs to track these changes.)
According to what I have noticed, When the item is not in the final workflow state, Sitecore allows to override the content, but if the item is in the final workflow state, it will create a new version, which tracks all these changes.
Is it possible to create a new version for non final workflow states? Is it a good idea? Why Sitecore does not do this by default?
The behavior you described is what documentation says. New version of item is created only when item is in final workflow state and
The next time a content author clicks Edit for this item to lock it
before making changes, Sitecore automatically creates a new version of
the item and places the new version in the Draft state, while the
first version remains published.
There is also important information:
Make sure that content authors or other workflow users don't have a
Sitecore administrator account. Otherwise, the workflow will behave
differently. For more information about why the workflow behavior is
different for a Sitecore administrator, see the section Using a
Workflow.
According to workflow reference documentation you can use __OnSave command to create new version of item when a user saves changes to an item.
Use the /sitecore/templates/System/Workflow/Action template to create custom action.
Create a class that implement your desired behavior.
namespace OnAction
{
public class WorkflowAction
{
public void Process(WorkflowPipelineArgs args)
{
}
}
}
Here is example of creating new item version:
var language = Sitecore.Globalization.Language.Parse("en");
var item = master.GetItem(itemPath, language);
using (new Sitecore.SecurityModel.SecurityDisabler())
{
try
{
item .Versions.AddVersion();
item .Editing.BeginEdit();
....
item .Editing.EndEdit();
item .Editing.AcceptChanges();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
item .Editing.CancelEdit();
}
}
More information about creating custom action here. Link to workflow reference.

Sitecore - Publish subitems checkbox dynamically populating

I have seen a post in Stackoverflow regarding how to hide the "Publish sub items" from Sitecore publish pop up by overriding the visibility of the checkbox. This is really good which can avoid so many performance issues when there is large amount of content in the content tree.
Is it possible to dynamically hide this checkbox? Coz, as a developer I need to publish other Sitecore items (Templates, Settings etc.) when it comes to deployments. Therefore "Publish sub items" is a essential feature for me. Still I need it to be hidden from content editors.
How can I achieve this task?
(If there was a security configuration to control access to this feature it would have been ideal)
First of all you need to change Publish.xml file from Folder:
\web\sitecore\shell\Applications\Dialogs\Publish\
You need to change CodeBeside it will look like this :
<WizardForm CodeBeside="YourNameSpace.CustomPublishForm,YourAssembly">
Your class will be :
class CustomPublishForm:PublishForm
{
public CustomPublishForm()
: base()
{
}
protected override void OnLoad(System.EventArgs e)
{
base.OnLoad(e);
//you need to change here with users that you want to see CheckBox
if (Sitecore.Context.User.Name.Equals("lorenipsum"))
{
base.PublishChildren.Visible = true;
}else
{
base.PublishChildren.Visible = false;
}
}
}
I tested and it's working fine this solution you have just to do minor changes to your requirements.
Here is the post: Sitecore - Hide "Publish Subitems" from publish pop up
You'll want to alter the CodeBeside attribute from Sitecore.Shell.Applications.Dialogs.Publish.PublishForm,Sitecore.Client to your own class that wraps that one. In your own class override any methods you need to in order for the logic to show or hide the box per your needs, e.g. user is in a certain role.
Be aware that such modifications make upgrades a bit harder.
Copying the Publish.xml and triggering this from a new button makes it clear for everyone, that this is not Sitecore but your own logic.

SharePoint List item BRIEFLY appears as edited by 'System Account' after item.update

I have a shopping cart like application running on SharePoint 2007.
I'm running a very standard update procedure on a list item:
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
{
web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
SPList list = web.Lists["Quotes"];
SPListItem item = list.GetItemById(_id);
item["Title"] = _quotename;
item["RecipientName"] = _quotename;
item["RecipientEmail"] = recipientemail;
item["IsActive"] = true;
item.Update();
site.Dispose();
}
This item updates properly, however it briefly appears as modified by System Account. If I wait a second and refresh the page, it shows up again as modified by CurrentUser.
This is an issue because on Page_Load I am retrieving the item that is marked as Active AND is listed as Modified By the CurrentUser. This means as a user updates his list, when the PostBack finishes, it shows he has no active items.
Is it the web.AllowUnsafeUpdates? This is necessary because I was getting a security error before.
What am I missing?
First off, it's not AllowUnsafeUpdates. This simply allows modifying of items from your code.
It's a bit hard to tell what's going on without understanding more of the flow of your application. I would suggest though that using Modified By to associate an item to a user may not be a great idea. This means, as you have discovered, that any modification by the system or even potentially an administrator will break that link.
I would store the current user in a custom field. That should solve your problem and would be a safer design choice.
There could be some other code running in Event Receivers and updating the item. Because event recievers runs in context of system user account, and if you update item from event reciever, the modified field will show just that: the system account has modified the item.