Preventing alerts from being sent when programmatically updating list item

Question

I have a feature receiver which batch updates a particular field / column in my list. Code is provided below.

NB: This is very simple list item batch processing code which I got from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc404818(v=office.12).aspx. I do this instead of looping through the entire list because it has 1000s of rows.

    public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
    {
        using (SPWeb web = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb)
        {
            SPList list = web.Lists["MyList"];
            SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
            query.RowLimit = 100;

            do
            {
                // Get the next batch of 100 uninitialised items.
                SPListItemCollection uninitialisedItems = list.GetItems(query);

                // Batch update the list items.
                StringBuilder methodBuilder = new StringBuilder();
                string batchFormat = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>" +
                    "<ows:Batch OnError=\"Continue\">{0}</ows:Batch>";
                string methodFormat = "<Method ID=\"{0}\">" +
                        "<SetList>{1}</SetList>" +
                        "<SetVar Name=\"Cmd\">Save</SetVar>" +
                        "<SetVar Name=\"ID\">{2}</SetVar>" +
                        "<SetVar Name=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#MyField\">{4}</SetVar>" +
                    "</Method>";

                for (int i = 0; i < uninitialisedItems.Count; i++)
                {
                    int itemID = uninitialisedItems[i].ID;
                    methodBuilder.AppendFormat(methodFormat, itemID, list.ID.ToString(), itemID, 1);
                }

                // THIS IS THE LINE THAT IS CAUSING MY ALERTS TO BE SENT.
                list.ParentWeb.ProcessBatchData(string.Format(batchFormat, methodBuilder.ToString()));

                query.ListItemCollectionPosition = uninitialisedItems.ListItemCollectionPosition;
            } while (query.ListItemCollectionPosition != null);
        }
    }

The problem here is that an email alert is being sent for every one of my list items saying that it has changed. I want to prevent this alert from being sent as I am merely setting a field that is not made visible to the user. Any idea how to do this?

FYI: I am using MOSS 2007

Answer 1

You could use SystemUpdate instead of ProcessBatchData. False should mean modified date doesn't change:

SPListItem item = ???;
item["myField"] = "my value";
item.SystemUpdate(false);

Of course, this means you have to update each item one at a time instead of the batch process which may lead to performance issues.

See also, how to temporarily disable email notification while updating items in code?.

Answer 2

If ProcessBatchData is required due to performance/load constraints, you can programmatically disable alerts by iterating through SPWeb.Alerts and finding those associated with your list.

This answer gives a good code example for this: Deactivate email-notifications for SPLists only temporally (and programmatically)

This is applicable in SP2007 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spweb.alerts(v=office.12).aspx)