index-v7.md

versionFrom	versionRemoved
7.0.0	8.0.0

Subscribing to events

Subscribing to events allows you to execute custom code on a number of events both before and after the event occurs. All you need to follow this guide is an Umbraco installation with some content, e.g. the Fanoe starter kit.

Subscribing to an event

Let's add a string of text to the log when a document is publish.

We'll start by adding a new class to the project. Call it LogWhenPublished. The events are found in the core services so add using Umbraco.Core; and then we need to inherit from the application event handler : ApplicationEventHandler

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using Umbraco.Core;

public class LogWhenPublished : ApplicationEventHandler
{
    /// Here we'll subscribe to an event
}

First thing to do in our LogWhenPublished class is to override ApplicationStarted and then subscribe to an event in Umbraco.Core.Services.Contentservice.Published.

protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, ApplicationContext applicationContext)
{
    Umbraco.Core.Services.ContentService.Published += ContentService_Published;
}

To execute your custom code add the following (if you are using Visual Studio you can easily add the next bit of code by hitting tab twice after += in the previous code block) :

void ContentService_Published(Umbraco.Core.Publishing.IPublishingStrategy sender,                  Umbraco.Core.Events.PublishEventArgs<Umbraco.Core.Models.IContent> e)
{
    // Your custom code goes here
}

Let's check if it works by adding a message to the log when the event occurs. We'll use the LogHelper for this, so add using Umbraco.Core.Logging; and then :

LogHelper.Info(typeof(LogWhenPublished), "Something has been published");

The entire class should look like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.Logging;

public class LogWhenPublished : ApplicationEventHandler
{
    protected override void ApplicationStarted(UmbracoApplicationBase umbracoApplication, ApplicationContext applicationContext)
    {
        Umbraco.Core.Services.ContentService.Published += ContentService_Published;
    }

    void ContentService_Published(Umbraco.Core.Publishing.IPublishingStrategy sender, Umbraco.Core.Events.PublishEventArgs<Umbraco.Core.Models.IContent> e)
    {
        // LogHelper will write to tracelog.txt
        LogHelper.Info(typeof(LogWhenPublished), "Something has been published");
    }
}

Go to the backoffice and publish a piece of content. Now open tracelog.txt located in App-Data/Logs/, scroll to the bottom of the document and there you should find the log entry.

Before and after

As you can see our custom code has been executed when we published a piece of content. Actually it executed after the item was published because we used the Published event. If you want to run code before publishing, use Publishing. The same goes for most other events so Saving : Saved, Copying : Copied and so forth.

More information

• Events Reference

Umbraco TV

• Chapter: Events