Question

I have a simple IBackgroundTask implementation that performs a query and then either performs an insert or one or more updates depending on whether a specific item exists or not. However, the updates are not persisted, and I don’t understand why. New items are created just as expected.

The content item I’m updating has a CommonPart and I’ve tried authenticating as a valid user. I’ve also tried flushing the content manager at the end of the Sweep method. What am I missing?

This is my Sweep, slightly edited for brevity:

public void Sweep()
{
    // Authenticate as the site's super user
    var superUser = _membershipService.GetUser(_orchardServices.WorkContext.CurrentSite.SuperUser);
    _authenticationService.SetAuthenticatedUserForRequest(superUser);

    // Create a dummy "Person" content item
    var item = _contentManager.New("Person");
    var person = item.As<PersonPart>();
    if (person == null)
    {
        return;
    }
    person.ExternalId = Random.Next(1, 10).ToString();
    person.FirstName = GenerateFirstName();
    person.LastName = GenerateLastName();

    // Check if the person already exists
    var matchingPersons = _contentManager
        .Query<PersonPart, PersonRecord>(VersionOptions.AllVersions)
        .Where(record => record.ExternalId == person.ExternalId)
        .List().ToArray();
    if (!matchingPersons.Any())
    {
        // Insert new person and quit
        _contentManager.Create(item, VersionOptions.Draft);
        return;
    }

    // There are at least one matching person, update it
    foreach (var updatedPerson in matchingPersons)
    {
        updatedPerson.FirstName = person.FirstName;
        updatedPerson.LastName = person.LastName;
    }

    _contentManager.Flush();
}

Answer 1

Try to add _contentManager.Publish(updatedPerson). If you do not want to publish, but just to save, you don’t need to do anything more, as changes in Orchard as saved automatically unless the ambient transaction is aborted. The call to Flush is not necessary at all. This is the case both during a regular request and on a background task.