{"id":994,"date":"2011-01-27T17:00:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-27T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/?p=994"},"modified":"2015-09-08T20:33:39","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T18:33:39","slug":"upgrading-a-feature-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/upgrading-a-feature-property\/","title":{"rendered":"Upgrading a feature property"},"content":{"rendered":"

In SharePoint 2010 features can be upgraded, awesome!
\nI was just testing this when I discovered something curious when updating a property.<\/p>\n

Suppose the following feature definition file:<\/p>\n

\r\n<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>\r\n<Feature xmlns="http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/sharepoint\/" Version="1.0.0.0">\r\n\u00a0 <Properties>\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <Property Key="MyProp" Value="initialValue" \/>\r\n\u00a0 <\/Properties>\r\n<\/Feature>\r\n<\/pre>\n
The property value of the MyProp key \u00a0is “initialValue”.<\/p>\n
After adjusting the feature definition file to perform an upgrade the file looks like this:<\/p>\n
\r\n<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>\r\n<Feature xmlns="http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/sharepoint\/" Version="1.1.0.0">\r\n\u00a0 <UpgradeActions>\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <VersionRange BeginVersion="1.0.0.0" EndVersion="2.0.0.0">\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <CustomUpgradeAction Name="UpgradeToOtherVersion"\/>\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/VersionRange>\r\n\u00a0 <\/UpgradeActions>\r\n\u00a0 <Properties>\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <Property Key="MyProp" Value="newValue" \/>\r\n\u00a0 <\/Properties>\r\n<\/Feature>\r\n<\/pre>\n
And I changed the property value of the MyProp key\u00a0to “newValue”.
\nIn the FeatureUpgrading event receiver I was checking the property value with the following statement:<\/p>\n
\r\nSPFeatureProperty property1 = properties.Feature.Properties["MyProp"];\r\nstring initalValue = property1.Value;\r\n<\/pre>\n
and the result of property1.Value: “initialValue” ! I was suprised because I expected “newValue”.<\/p>\n
After checking some other values and reading documentation on MSDN I came up with the following code to get the new property value:<\/p>\n
\r\nSPFeatureProperty property2 = properties.Definition.Properties["MyProp"];\r\nstring updatedValue = property2.Value;\r\n<\/pre>\n
And the result:
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThe difference according to the documentation on MSDN is:
\nproperties.Feature.Properties[“MyProp”] – Gets the collection of properties for the Feature Link to MSDN<\/a>
\nproperties.Definition.Properties[“MyProp”] – Gets a standardized property bag object that contains per-Feature settings that are specified in the Feature definition Link to MSDN<\/a><\/p>\n
So I guess my conclusion is:
\nthe property bag for the feature is updated to the new value after upgrading the feature and the property of the feature isn’t.<\/p>\n
This sounds weird to me and I’m not sure I understand. Has anyone suggestions or experience with it?<\/p>\n
[UPDATE]
\nWhile tweeting about this issue Chris O’Brien <\/a>helped me out on this:
\nA feature has 1 definition and n instances. The code in FeatureUpgrading is used to upgrade the instances.
\nThe property in the example updates the feature definition and not the running instances.
\nSo properties.Feature.Properties[“MyProp”] gets the property value of the running instance and properties.Definition.Properties[“MyProp”] get the value of the property in the feature definition.<\/p>\n
That’s it and not so weird after all! Thanks Chris!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In SharePoint 2010 features can be upgraded, awesome! I was just testing this when I discovered something curious when updating a property. Suppose the following feature definition file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <Feature xmlns="http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/sharepoint\/" Version="1.0.0.0"> \u00a0 <Properties> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <Property Key="MyProp" … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[20,42,6],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sharepoint-2010","tag-c","tag-sharepoint-2010","tag-visual-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itidea.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}