Sync a single bucketed item to change its path

Question

I've written a custom bucket action to set the path based on a template date field, rather than the created date. I based this information off this blog: http://techitpro.com/uncategorized/sitecore-bucket-structure-item-field-value-based/

On creation, the template date field is set via a standard value to today's date, but this could be changed on edit. I found an old article asking about this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32612278/sitecore-8-sync-a-bucket-item-on-save. The original answer mentioned using the BucketManager.Sync function, which would sync the entire bucket, but a comment suggested there was a way to sync a single item and have its path alter like the entire bucket sync had been done.

Since this bucket is going to contain thousands of items, I'd like to avoid syncing the whole bucket on save each time. Is syncing a single item a feasible option in Sitecore 9.1.1, or is that not advisable?

Answer 1

You can achieve this by programmatically moving the bucketed item to the root of the bucket with the BucketManager. Doing this will force it to reevaluate the bucket rules and reorganize it:

BucketManager.MoveItemIntoBucket(bucketedItem, bucketItem);

In our solutions, we typically create an item:saved event handler to do this automatically:

using Sitecore.Buckets.Managers;
using Sitecore.Buckets.Util;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Events;
using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace Custom.Events.ItemSaved
{
    public class ReorganizeBucketedItemInBucket
    {
        public void OnItemSaved(object sender, EventArgs args)
        {
            var bucketedItem = Event.ExtractParameter(args, 0) as Item;

            // If we don't have an item or we're not saving in the master DB, ignore this save
            if (bucketedItem == null || !"master".Equals(bucketedItem.Database?.Name, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                return;

            if (!bucketedItem.TemplateID.Equals(new ID("{bucketed-item-template-id}"))) return;

            var itemChanges = Event.ExtractParameter(args, 1) as ItemChanges;

            // If there were no changes or the changes didn't include the date field, ignore this save
            if (itemChanges == null || !itemChanges.HasFieldsChanged || !itemChanges.IsFieldModified(new ID("{field-id-of-date-field}")))
                return;

            Item bucketItem = bucketedItem.GetParentBucketItemOrParent();

            // If this item isn't in a bucket (or is in a bucket of another, unexpected type), ignore it
            if (bucketItem == null) return;

            Item parent = bucketedItem.Parent;
            BucketManager.MoveItemIntoBucket(bucketedItem, bucketItem);

            // Delete empty ancestor bucket folders
            while (parent != null && !parent.HasChildren && parent.TemplateID == BucketConfigurationSettings.BucketTemplateId)
            {
                Item tempParent = parent.Parent;
                parent.Delete();
                parent = tempParent;
            }
        }
    }
}

And don't forget your patch config, of course:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
    <sitecore>
        <events>
            <event name="item:saved">
                <handler type="Custom.Events.ItemSaved.ReorganizeBucketedItemInBucket, Custom.Events" method="OnItemSaved"></handler>
            </event>
        </events>
    </sitecore>
</configuration>