I am attempting to hook into the Tridion Event System to insert a component's WebDAV URL into a MetaData field on that component during the save process. I have been led to understand that the WebDAVUrl is the best identifier to use for a Tridion element since it maintains a consistent value across environments when ported (we cannot rely on the Tridion id to be the same when content is ported). Also, since dynamic components are not published with the WebDAV URL as metadata by default like other elements, we must find a way to dynamically insert these values.

The issue I am having is that when hooking into the Save Event of the Event System for components on the EventPhases.Initiated phase, the component WebDAV URL is not reflective of any title changes that have occurred on the component.

Here is my sample custom Event Hook, based on sample code provide here: Performance Counters Example

using System;
using Tridion.ContentManager.ContentManagement;
using Tridion.ContentManager.ContentManagement.Fields;
using Tridion.ContentManager.Extensibility;
using Tridion.ContentManager.Extensibility.Events;

namespace com.TridionEvents
{
    [TcmExtension("Tridion2011EventSystemRC")]  // This needs to be unique per Event System
    public class EventSystem : TcmExtension
    {
        public EventSystem()
        {
            Subscribe();
        }

        public void Subscribe()
        {
            // OnComponentSavePre
            EventSystem.Subscribe<Component, SaveEventArgs>(OnComponentSavePre, EventPhases.Initiated);

        }

        private static void OnComponentSavePre(Component comp, SaveEventArgs args, EventPhases phase)
        {        
            String title = comp.Title; //This is a new title and should be part of the new WebDAV URL

            ItemFields metadataFields = new ItemFields(comp.Metadata, comp.Schema);
            EmbeddedSchemaField schemaField = (EmbeddedSchemaField)metadataFields["WebDAVPath"];
            SingleLineTextField webDavText = (SingleLineTextField) schemaField.Values[0]["WebDAV"];
            webDavText.Value = comp.WebDavUrl; // Here the comp.WebDavUrl is not reflective of the new title and what the WebDavUrl actually will become, post save.
            comp.Metadata = metadataFields.ToXml();
             
            args.ContextVariables.Add("StartTime", DateTime.Now);
        }
    }
}

I have configured the custom event system correctly, and I am able to debug, and see that what I am trying to accomplish is actually working, with the exception that the WebDavUrl is not updated.

For example, on a newly created component with the title "Foo", the WebDavUrl at this point will still be something like: "/some/path/New%20Component.xml"

If I go back and change the title of the component to: "Bar", the WebDavUrl at this point will be something like: "/some/path/Foo.xml", reflective of the previous state of the component.

I presume this may have something to do with the fact that component WebDavUrl is not resolved until after the component has been successfully saved.

My questions then are:

• Is there some way of getting the newest WebDAVUrl in the pre-save phase?
• Is there some other event phase that can give me this information and allow me to save it into component metadata?
• Is there some other way outside of the event system that can accomplish the same thing (while still allowing me to query the Content Delivery API for this component by the WebDAV URL)?