Intercepting content and member save events in Umbraco

In Umbraco, you may want to perform certain actions when a content item or member is being saved or created. This post shows you how to do that.

This is relevant for Umbraco projects that use MVC.

Prevent creation or editing of content items which have a certain documentTypeAlias

using System.Linq;
using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.Events;
using Umbraco.Core.Services;
using Umbraco.Core.Models;
using Umbraco.Web;

namespace CodeShare.Web.EventHandlers
{
    public class ContentEventHandler : ApplicationEventHandler
    {
        protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, ApplicationContext applicationContext)
        {
            ContentService.Saving += ContentService_Saving;
        }

        private void ContentService_Saving(IContentService sender, SaveEventArgs<IContent> e)
        {
            foreach (IContent contentItem in e.SavedEntities.Where(x => x.ContentType.Alias == "aliasFoo"))
            {
                if (contentItem.Id <= 0) //new record
                {
                    e.CancelOperation(new EventMessage("Foo permissions", "You cannot create foo items", EventMessageType.Error));
                }
                else //existing record
                {
                    if (contentItem.IsDirty())
                    {
                        e.CancelOperation(new EventMessage("Foo permissions", "You cannot edit foo records", EventMessageType.Error));
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

When it finds a new record it cancels the save event and returns an error message

e.CancelOperation(new EventMessage("Foo permissions", "You cannot create foo items", EventMessageType.Error));

You could instead just cancel the event like this

e.Cancel = true;

Send an email to admin when a content item is saved 

using System.Linq;
using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.Events;
using Umbraco.Core.Services;
using Umbraco.Core.Models;
using Umbraco.Web;
using CodeShare.Library;

namespace CodeShare.Web.Helpers
{
    public class ContentEventHandler : ApplicationEventHandler
    {
        protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, ApplicationContext applicationContext)
        {
            ContentService.Saved += ContentService_Saved;
        }

        private void ContentService_Saved(IContentService sender, SaveEventArgs<IContent> e)
        {
            foreach (IContent contentItem in e.SavedEntities)
            {
                if (contentItem.ContentType.Alias == "aliasBar")
                {
                    EmailService.SendEmailToAdmin(contentItem.Id);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Send an email to a member when they are approved

using System.Linq;
using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.Events;
using Umbraco.Core.Services;
using Umbraco.Core.Models;
using Umbraco.Web;
using CodeShare.Library;

namespace CodeShare.Web.Helpers
{
    public class MemberEventHandler : ApplicationEventHandler
    {
        protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, ApplicationContext applicationContext)        
        {
            MemberService.Saving += MemberService_Saving;
        }

        private void MemberService_Saving(IMemberService sender, SaveEventArgs<IMember> e)
        {
            foreach (IMember member in e.SavedEntities)
            {
                //Check user is approved and the approve status has only just been changed (isdirty)
                if (member.IsApproved && member.HasProperty("umbracoMemberApproved") && member.Properties["umbracoMemberApproved"].IsDirty())
                {
                    EmailService.SendApprovalEmailToMember(member);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

I hope you find this post useful. As always, please feel free to share with your friends and colleagues.