ContentService Events

The ContentService class is the most commonly used type when extending Umbraco using events. ContentService implements IContentService. It provides access to operations involving IContent.

Usage

Example usage of the ContentService events:

using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.Events;
using Umbraco.Core.Models;
using Umbraco.Core.Publishing;
using Umbraco.Core.Services;

namespace My.Namespace
{
    public class MyEventHandler : ApplicationEventHandler
    {

        protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, ApplicationContext applicationContext)
        {
            ContentService.Published += ContentServicePublished;
        }

        private void ContentServicePublished(IPublishingStrategy sender, PublishEventArgs<IContent> args)
        {
            foreach (var node in args.PublishedEntities)
            {
                if (node.ContentType.Alias == "Comment")
                {
                    SendMail(node);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Events

What happened to Creating and Created events?

Both the ContentService.Creating and ContentService.Created events have been obsoleted. Why? Because these events are not guaranteed to trigger and therefore should not be used. This is because these events only trigger when the ContentService.CreateContent method is used which is an entirely optional way to create content entities. It is also possible to construct a new content item - which is generally the preferred and consistent way - and therefore the Creating/Created events will not execute when constructing content that way.

Further more, there's no reason to listen for the Creating/Created events. They are misleading since they don't trigger before and after the entity has been persisted. They trigger inside the CreateContent method which never persists the entity, it constructs a new content object.

What do we use instead?

The ContentService.Saving and ContentService.Saved events will always trigger before and after an entity has been persisted. You can determine if an entity is brand new in either of those events. In the Saving event - before the entity is persisted - you can check the entity's HasIdentity property which will be 'false' if it is brand new. In the Saved event you can use this extension method