Hi Mike,

Quick question... is the second user loading the content (to edit) before the first user has saved it?

If so, then yes it will happen exactly as you described - I believe that's how Umbraco is (currently) intended to work. There is no real-time sync/collaboration of content. (for example, like Google Docs)

Cheers, Lee.

yes, exactly as you have it... for a cms not to have a workflow seems a bit of an oversite and it doesn't have to be realtime... just a "this content has been updated since you loaded it, do you want to overwrite any changes with your version Y/N"

Maybe a nice feature for Umbraco 5?

The immediate solution is to use Concierge, which adds check-in/check-out features for content.

cheers,
doug.

If both editors hit save, won't you at least have a copy in your version history?

Granted, it's not a preventing you from overwriting, but you should at least be able to compare with the previous version and do a manual merge?

Matt

Here's a short video showing it in action... http://vimeo.com/3866212

cheers,
doug.

Rails handles this in a nice easy manner. It has a revision number for each item (document/page/node?!?!) which gets written out into the form while you edit. When you try to save it double checks that this number is the same as the document you are about to save to. If it is then the save goes through just fine, if not then someone else has changed the item while you where editing and you have to review the changes and merge in (actually rails just throws and error you can catch and then you have to do all the hard work but you get the idea) before you can save it again.

This way there is no need for check in/out (which if you've ever tried using in anger can be a pain in the ass) and instead 99% it all works just fine and for that 1% where there is a clash you at least get a heads up without loosing your work or (worse) over-writing someone elses with out knowing about it.

Peter, did a search on Umbraco and Rails and didn't come up with much... am I missing something obvious?

Hi Mike, 

Rails is a completely different framework, nothing to do with Umbraco and won't help you with this particular question.

Rich

Sorry for the confusion Mike. Like Rich says its a completely different framework run on a completely different language! Was just using it as an example of how other setups handle concurrency issue. Should have made that clearer. Its possible that it could be wrapped up into a package which would give this ability to your Umbraco instance. I'm sure it has been added to some of the usual suspects "possible package ideas" lists so will only be a matter of time :)

Pete

(umb: 4.5.2, windows vista, iis 7, .net 3.5 sp1)

Ok, so I ended up writing something for umbraco myself, arround action handlers... (basic premise, on page load set a variable to store the UpdateDate of the document and then check the documents current updatedate against this to ensure it hasn't already changed by another user save/publish when I try to save.)

(ps I couldn't use Document.Version as the save mechanism doesn't seem to update the document version.)  (also I noticed if you look in the audit trail for every single publish you end up with 2 items for the publish in the audit trail....)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using umbraco.cms.businesslogic.web;
using umbraco.BusinessLogic;
using umbraco.BasePages;

namespace UmbracoJPT
{
    public class Concurrency : ApplicationBase
    {
        public Concurrency()
        {
            Document.BeforeSave += Document_BeforeSave;
            Document.AfterSave += Document_AfterSave;

            Document.BeforePublish += Document_BeforePublish;
            Document.AfterPublish += Document_AfterPublish;
        }

        void Document_BeforeSave(Document sender, umbraco.cms.businesslogic.SaveEventArgs e)
        {
            Log.Add(LogTypes.Custom, sender.Id, "Document_BeforeSave - concurrency");
            if (sender.UpdateDate.ToString() != mcUpdateDate.ToString())
            {
                //System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("CANCEL SAVE<br/>");

                if (sender.HttpContext.CurrentHandler is BasePage)
                {
                    ((BasePage)sender.HttpContext.CurrentHandler).ClientTools.ShowSpeechBubble(BasePage.speechBubbleIcon.error, "Concurrency Error", "Updated whilst you have been editing, please reload.");
                }
                e.Cancel = true;
            }
        }

        void Document_AfterSave(Document sender, umbraco.cms.businesslogic.SaveEventArgs e)
        {
            Log.Add(LogTypes.Custom, sender.Id, "Document_AfterSave - concurrency");
            mcUpdateDate = sender.UpdateDate;
        }

        void Document_BeforePublish(Document sender, umbraco.cms.businesslogic.PublishEventArgs e)
        {
            Log.Add(LogTypes.Custom, sender.Id, "Document_BeforePublish - concurrency");
                       if (sender.UpdateDate.ToString() != mcUpdateDate.ToString())
            {
                if (sender.HttpContext.CurrentHandler is BasePage)
                {

                    ((BasePage)sender.HttpContext.CurrentHandler).ClientTools.ShowSpeechBubble(BasePage.speechBubbleIcon.error, "Concurrency Error", "Updated whilst you have been editing, please reload.");
                }
                e.Cancel = true;
            }
        }

        void Document_AfterPublish(Document sender, umbraco.cms.businesslogic.PublishEventArgs e)
        {
            Log.Add(LogTypes.Custom, sender.Id, "Document_AfterPublish - concurrency");
            mcUpdateDate = sender.UpdateDate;
        }

        public DateTime mcUpdateDate
        {
            get { return (DateTime)System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Session["updateDate"]; }
            set
            {
               System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Session.Add("updateDate", value);
            }
        }
    }
}

Compiled into a dll and added into the bin folder.

And a manuall addition to \umbraco\editContent.aspx

<%@ Import Namespace="umbraco.cms.businesslogic.web" %>

<script language="c#" runat=server>

 protected new void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            base.Page_Load(sender, e);
            Document document = new Document(Convert.ToInt32(HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString["id"]));
            if (!IsPostBack)
            {
                Session.Add("updateDate", document.UpdateDate);
            }            
        }
</script>

It seems to work ok, apart from I'd ideally like to persist the updateDate from the pageload in the viewstate, but can't as there isn't a public accessible property on BasePage. And the fact that the e.Cancel of the AfterPublish gives an umbraco default speechbubble rather than my custom one (a 3rd party control cancelled the save) maybe I can hook it into the page validation messages instead...

But think this could be a decent starting point, any one see any gottchas that I have stumbled into?

one other thing I noticed with this that I have started another post on is that the BeforeSave/BeforePublish get called twice for a single save/publish click from the front end.

Great work Mike, speedy too.

Only issue I can see if is if the user's session times out, the update string in the Session will then be empty and the save will go through, or would Umbraco redirect you to the login screen and by pass the save completely? Not sure. Probably not an issue though.

Think you/I spoke to soon... it seemingly works fine in the instance of editing a page directly... but interferes with right click publish on the nodetree, and the publish all pages from the right click content node...

bit more work required.. for next week now...

Hi Mike,

Just a suggestion (if you're concidering packaging it up), you may want to look at attaching the Page_Load functionality dynamically, rather than modifying the editContent.aspx page directly, as this will make it harder to upgrade.

See the following code example from my Page Notifications package for an example on how to do this:

http://pagenotifications.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/02092bb56200#AppBase.cs

Matt

yep that looks like a great enhancement, thanks for that.

Hi, sorry to comment on an old post, but on this piece of code...

((BasePage)sender.HttpContext.CurrentHandler)

I got a warning that sender.HttpContext is deprecated.
How do you get the BasePage now to show the error bubble?

The link posted by Matt is really good, but I'd like to show the bubble as well if possible.

is working on a reply...