Create a usercontrol that finds nodes of the DocumentType in question, cycle through all of them and replace the text when needed:

Quick and dirty way would be 

using System;
using umbraco;
using umbraco.BusinessLogic;
using umbraco.cms.businesslogic.web;

namespace GlobalConnect.usercontrols.umbraco
{
    public partial class ChangeProperty : System.Web.UI.UserControl
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            var type = DocumentType.GetByAlias("AliasOfDoctype");
            var docIds = Document.getAllUniqueNodeIdsFromObjectType(type);

            foreach (var docId in docIds)
            {
                var doc = new Document(docId);
                if (doc.getProperty("ContactPerson").Value == "Person A")
                {
                    doc.getProperty("ContactPerson").Value = "Person B";
                    doc.Publish(Page.User as User);
                    library.UpdateDocumentCache(docId);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Warning this has not been tested, use at own risk.

You might want to make this a two-step proces: first get the documents that would be altered with the code, and print out the nodenames, and the property value in a repeater or something like that.

Then have a button below that executes the code above when clicked.

Regards
Jesper Hauge

Forgot to mention that this usercontrol is designed to be used through the Umbraco backend. Set it op in a dashboard tab through the dashboard.config file.

.Jesper

Cool! Seems perfectly what I want, I'll test asap, and get back. Thanks alot! I think I will publish with doc.User though, if that is possible.

DocumentType.GetByAlias("AliasOfDoctype"); and var docIds = Document.getAllUniqueNodeIdsFromObjectType(type); was new too me.

Testing, wondering why I cannot get my array of nodeid\s, this always becomes zero

Document.getAllUniqueNodeIdsFromObjectType(DocumentType.GetByAlias("CommonArticlepage").UniqueId).Length

Thanks Jesper, getContentOfContentType is da funk. :-)

I went this way, a vb-function in xlst. There is a preview-parameter (doChange=false), it searches nodeFactory nodes, so unpublished ones will not be changed. I use more than one document type with the same property alias, so I loop through all docs:

    Public Function searchAndReplacePropertyValue(ByVal nodeId As Integer, ByVal searchForDatatypeAlias As String, ByVal searchForValue As String, ByVal replaceWithValue As String, ByVal doReplace As Boolean) As String
        Dim myNode = New Node(nodeId)
        Dim resultHtml As New Text.StringBuilder
        If myNode.Children.Count > 0 Then
            resultHtml.Append("<ul>")
            For Each thisNode As Node In myNode.Children
                Dim replaceValue As Boolean = False
                If Not (thisNode.GetProperty(searchForDatatypeAlias) Is Nothing) Then
                    If thisNode.GetProperty(searchForDatatypeAlias).Value = searchForValue Then replaceValue = True

                    If replaceValue Then
                        resultHtml.Append("<li style='color:red;'>")
                    Else
                        resultHtml.Append("<li style='color:black;'>")
                    End If
                    resultHtml.Append("<strong>")
                    resultHtml.Append(thisNode.Name)
                    resultHtml.Append("</strong>")
                    resultHtml.Append(" : ")
                    resultHtml.Append(thisNode.GetProperty(searchForDatatypeAlias).Value)

                    If replaceValue And doReplace Then
                        Dim thisDocument As New Document(thisNode.id)
                        thisDocument.getProperty(searchForDatatypeAlias).Value = replaceWithValue
                        thisDocument.Publish(thisDocument.User)
                        umbraco.library.PublishSingleNode(thisDocument.id)
                    End If

                End If
                If thisNode.Children.Count > 0 Then resultHtml.Append(searchAndReplacePropertyValue(thisNode.Id, searchForDatatypeAlias, searchForValue, replaceWithValue, doReplace))
                resultHtml.Append("</li>")
            Next thisNode
            resultHtml.Append("</ul>")
        End If
        Return resultHtml.ToString()
    End Function

We had to do this for a client once, but instead of replacing a value in a specific property, it was across multiple (text) fields. So we did this real quick-n-dirty script ... direct on the SQL Server (2005) database 'cmsPropertyData' table:

--BEGIN TRAN;

DECLARE @rootNodeId NVARCHAR(50);
SET @rootNodeId = '1050';

DECLARE @search NVARCHAR(50);
SET @search = 'Person A';

DECLARE @replace NVARCHAR(50);
SET @replace = 'Person B';

UPDATE
    cmsPropertyData
SET
    dataNvarchar = REPLACE(dataNvarchar, @search, @replace),
    dataNtext = CAST(REPLACE(CAST(dataNtext as NVARCHAR(4000)), @search, @replace) AS NTEXT)
FROM
    cmsPropertyData AS d
    INNER JOIN umbracoNode AS n ON n.id = d.contentNodeId
WHERE
    n.path LIKE ('-1,%' + @rootNodeId + '%')
    AND
    (
        d.dataNvarchar LIKE ('%' + @search + '%')
        OR
        d.dataNtext LIKE ('%' + @search + '%')
    )
;

--ROLLBACK TRAN

This applies to all property data - regardless of where it was used; doc-types, media-types, etc.

After running this script, we had to republish all the content pages.  Job done ... not very pretty, (it was a desperate measure!)

Just wanted to show off an alternative approach.

Cheers, Lee.

Awesome bit of SQL, going into my snippets folder - thanks

Hi All,

An old thread but relevant to my current problem.

I have a site with circa 1100 nodes of content. The document types are quite indepth and contain many property types.

A change in terminology has meant that several values that are selected via Drop Down lists need to be updated across the board.

I've done some pretty hairy SQL stuff directly against the cmsPropertyData in the past but that is not something I want to repeat.

First question: is anyone aware if there any packages / tools out there that can carry out this kind of change? Have not been lucky so far.

If not, then a user control of some sort (as per this thread) is probably the way to go.

Confession: I have no experience of user controls - I've had a go with XSL and Razor but never delved into .NET.

I am not even sure if it is possible to use Razor to update values in the Database?

Many thanks, Ben

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