Orchard CMS: Adding default data to fields and then querying them

Question

I have added a LinkField called Website to a content type using a part with the same name as the content type.

ContentDefinitionManager.AlterTypeDefinition("MyContentType", a => a
    .WithPart("CommonPart")
    .WithPart("MyContentType")
    .Creatable());

ContentDefinitionManager.AlterPartDefinition("MyContentType", cft => cft
    .WithField("Website", a => a.OfType("LinkField").WithDisplayName("Website")
        .WithSetting("FieldIndexing.Included", "True"))
    .Attachable());

I then create some default content items during the migration.
I'm creating the item before adding the field data because I have had problems with fields not being updated when their values are set before the item is created. (Feel free to shine some light on that, but that isn't my question though)

var myItem = _orchardServices.ContentManager.New("MyContentType");
_orchardServices.ContentManager.Create(myItem);
var websitePart = myItem.Parts.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Fields.Any(y => y.Name == "Website"));
var websiteLinkField = websitePart .Fields.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name == "Website") as LinkField;
websiteLinkField.Value = "http://www.google.com";
websiteLinkField.Text = "Link to google";
_orchardServices.ContentManager.Publish(myItem);

I realize there are more dynamic ways to access the field, but this seems to work too. The data shows up when I view the items, but then I move on to making a Query. I use the UI to build a simple query looking for the word "google" in the text of the LinkField, then I hit preview.
No results are found. I then open up one of the items created from the migration and simply hit the "Save" button. Then I try the preview again and the item I saved now shows up.

So as far as I can tell something is happening when I save a content item that I'm not doing from the migration. But I have been stepping through the code going over all angles, and I just can't find it. I suspect maybe some handler is supposed to get triggered in order to create the FieldIndex'es ? (I know how to trigger an update for the Lucene index, but as one would expect it does not affect querying fields using the Projections module and I'm really lost at this point.)

By now I'm just stabbing blindly in the dark.
Would really appreciate any help I can get, even if it's just something pointing me back in the right direction. Thank you.

Answer 1

You should change

_orchardServices.ContentManager.Create(myItem);

to

_orchardServices.ContentManager.Create(myItem, Orchard.ContentManagement.VersionOptions.Draft);

For understanding look at CreatePOST method of Orchard.Core.Contents.Controllers.AdminController class and Publish method of Orchard.ContentManagement.DefaultContentManager class

In your case when you call a Create(myItem) then created published content item and all handlers are invoked normally (but has not yet set up a desired data). When you call Publish(myItem) nothing happens (no handlers are invoked) because your content is already published.

Answer 2

I've raised this as a bug, vote for it if you think it needs fixed.

@Alexander Petryakov is correct in his description of what is happening and his work around is probably the correct approach, however the behaviour doesn't make sense, which is why I have raised the bug. The code in your question manages to create an inconsistency between the content view of the data, stored in the Orchard_Framework_ContentItemVersionRecord table and the Projections view of the data stored in the Orchard_Projections_StringFieldIndexRecord table. Essentially, the Orchard_Projections_StringFieldIndexRecord contains null because it hasn't processed the publish event after you updated the field.

The code you have essentially does the following things:

• Create a content item + publish it's creation
• Update one of the content items fields this update doesn't change the state of the content
• Try to publish the content item which doesn't do anything because it thinks it is already published.

To me, if you update a field on the content item, then the state of the item you are working on should no longer be published (it's changed since you published it). The Fields provide hooks that allow you to be notified when they are updated, so an alternate way of solving the problem would be to create a class that implements the interface IFieldStorageEvents that updates the published state of the content when a field is updated.

public class FieldUpdateEventHandler  : IFieldStorageEvents {
    public void SetCalled(FieldStorageEventContext context) {
        context.Content.ContentItem.VersionRecord.Published = false;
    }
}

This would allow your original code to run as it was written.