Create a new version of item, in different language

Question

This should be super simple but for some reason I can't get it to work. I am writing code for migrating data and the items has several versions in both English and Swedish. For some reason I cannot get Sitecore to create a version in English. I'm obviously doing something wrong. I'm not able to track down what is causing it?

the migratedItem is the item I just migrated in Swedish and that I want to add a English version too.

Item englishItemVersion;
try
{
   using (new LanguageSwitcher("en"))
   {
      englishItemVersion = migratedItem.Versions.AddVersion();                    
   }
}

Answer 1

In your code, I can see that you are trying to add a new version of the item in the context language, as opposed to the language of the actual item. Remember that each instance of a Sitecore item is actually only a single language version of the item. Don't believe me? Have a look at your item.ItemUri and see for yourself!

In order to add a new language version to an item, the first thing that you need to do is get the item in the language that you wish to add a new version for. As such, if your code had been the following, it would have worked:

using (new LanguageSwitcher("en"))
{
   var migratedItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(migratedItemId);
   englishItemVersion = migratedItem.Versions.AddVersion();                    
}

Of course, you can still do the above without a Switcher, if you want to:

var migratedItem = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(migratedItemId, "en");
englishItemVersion = migratedItem.Versions.AddVersion();

Answer 2

Try something like this:

// get the item in en language - you should get the item but versions count should be 0
Item enItem = migratedItem.Database.GetItem(migratedItem.ID, enLanguage);

// edit the item and create a version
enItem.Editing.BeginEdit();
enItem.Versions.AddVersion();
enItem.Editing.EndEdit();