How to programmatically update references in sitecore? - sitecore

Question

I have 2 templates: ArticleItem and ArticlePageItem, the ArticlePageItem has a ReferenceField 'Content.Reference' that links to an ArticleItem. Below is the code to create an article:
Item articlePageItem = articlePageParentItem.Add(articleItem.Name, new TemplateItem(master.GetItem(ConstantString.ArticlePageTemplateID)));
using (new UserSwitcher(Sitecore.Context.User))
{
articlePageItem.Editing.BeginEdit();
articlePageItem.Fields["Content.Reference"].Value = articleItem.ID.ToString();
articlePageItem.Editing.EndEdit();
}
But after I execute the code above, I cannot get the ArticleItem reference through Globals.LinkDatabase.GetReferences(articlePageItem), even though I use Globals.LinkDatabase.UpdateReference(articlePageItem).
Does anyone know how to implement this?
[Update]
Below is our environment:
We have a website based on Sitecore, and we're developing another system aims to simplify the article management. We use .NET 4 & ASP.NET MVC 3 to implement this system, and reference Sitecore.Kernal.dll & Sitecore.Client.dll to our project. But our sitecore version is 6.2 which is incomplatible with .NET 4, so I just copied part of the configurations. I think it maybe dues to the incomplete web.config.

Answer 1

If you are executing the above code you should also consider publishing the item changes.
This can be done by using the following code snippet:
// publish all changed content
Database webDatabase = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("web");
PublishOptions publishOptions = new PublishOptions(masterDatabase, webDatabase, PublishMode.Smart, Sitecore.Context.Language, DateTime.Now);
publishOptions.RootItem = vacatureRoot;
publishOptions.Deep = true;
Publisher publisher = new Publisher(publishOptions);
publisher.Publish();
Where 'vacatureRoot' is the root -> in your case articlePageParentItem
After publishing the references should be set automatically and should be retrievable by using the normal way of getting Fields.
It looks like you are using a ReferenceField and therefore your code should look something like this:
ReferenceField rfRef = Sitecore.Context.Item.Fields["Content.Reference"];
if(rfRef != null && rfRef.TargetItem != null)
{
//Your logic here
}
Answer for comment:
I think you could best use the following code fragment ->
Sitecore.Globals.LinkDatabase.UpdateReferences(articlePageItem);
I think this will do what the name says, update the references for this item.
Hope this will work for you!