Update Sitecore Item programmatically

There are two ways where you can put an item in editing mode and update its fields.

1. Sitecore.Data.Items.ItemEditing

2. Sitecore.Data.Items.EditContext (Deprecated)

If you are saving any item field without using above statements, it might give you exception that Item was not in Edit Mode. Let's see how we can update item

Sitecore.Data.Items.ItemEditing

See below code which allows to save any item.

    Sitecore.Data.Database masterDB = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("master");
    Sitecore.Data.Items.Item home = masterDB.GetItem("/sitecore/content/Home");

    //Begin Editing Sitecore Item
    home.Editing.BeginEdit();
    try
    {
        home["Title"] = "Title from Code Behind";

        // This will commit the field value
        home.Editing.EndEdit();
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
        //Revert the Changes
        home.Editing.CancelEdit();
    }

This function has three variants, means it allows to item save in two different options.

item.Editing.EndEdit()

This save will actually do 3 steps:

1. Save item
2. Update item statistics, means updates Modified Date, Modified By User, etc. statistics information of item
3. It will execute events related to Item Save.

item.Editing.EndEdit(updateStatistics, silent)

This save will allow us to choose which operations to do. This is going to save item same as above. But it will do update statistics or execute events or not depending on the parameters passed.

If we pass updateStatistics as false, it will not update Modified Date and Modified By fields. This is really useful when we need to update items in background. This will update item in read-only mode. If we pass true, then it will update this information.

If we pass silent as true, it will temporarily disable events. So, event this item's save will not be logged in EventQueue.

Below is the code to understand what EndEdit does:

public bool EndEdit()
{
    return this.EndEdit(true, false);
}

public bool EndEdit(bool updateStatistics, bool silent)
{
    bool flag2;
    bool readOnlyStatistics = this.m_item.RuntimeSettings.ReadOnlyStatistics;
    try
    {
        if (!updateStatistics)
        {
            this.m_item.RuntimeSettings.ReadOnlyStatistics = true;
        }
        if (!silent)
        {
            flag2 = ItemManager.SaveItem(this.m_item);
        }
        else
        {
            using (new EventDisabler())
            {
                flag2 = ItemManager.SaveItem(this.m_item);
            }
        }
    }
    finally
    {
        this.m_item.RuntimeSettings.ReadOnlyStatistics = readOnlyStatistics;
    }
    return flag2;
}

Sitecore.Data.Items.EditContext

Note: Sitecore EditContext is deprecated,  and Sitecore team recommends using ItemEditing (1st approach).

The above thing is also possible using Sitecore.Data.Items.EditContext in below manner:

Below is example of Sitecore item save using Default parameters. Here, updateStatistis is by default true and silent is false.

Sitecore.Data.Database masterDB = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("master");
Sitecore.Data.Items.Item home = masterDB.GetItem("/sitecore/content/Home");

//Begin Editing Sitecore Item
using (new EditContext(home))
{
    home["Title"] = "Title from Code Behind";
}

We can also pass parameters of updateStatistics and silent in EditContext like below example.

bool updateStatistics = false;
bool silent = true;
using (new EditContext(home,updateStatistics, silent))
{
    home["Title"] = "Title from Code Behind";
}

We can also pass parameters of checking security or not while updating the item like below.

using (new EditContext(home, SecurityCheck.Disable))
{
    home["Title"] = "Title from Code Behind";
}