SPWeb.Alerts.Add() vs. SPUser.Alerts.Add()?

Question

Can someone explain the difference?

Why I want to know:

I needed to use c# to create an alert and assign multiple users to it. I assume that would be SPWeb.Alerts.Add but they both seem to be the same & only take 1 user. In the end I created multiple identical user.alerts, 1 for each a user.

Answer 1

The only difference between calling SPWeb.Alerts.Add(...) and SPUser.Alerts.Add(...) that in case of SPWeb.Alerts.Add(...) alerts are created for current user.

Otherwise, there is no difference, for example, using the following calls:

web.Alerts.Add(tasks,SPEventType.All, SPAlertFrequency.Immediate);

or

web.CurrentUser.Alerts.Add(tasks, SPEventType.All, SPAlertFrequency.Immediate);

creates the same subscription record in Content DB.

Answer 2

There is actually no difference between using SPWeb.Alerts or SPUser.Alerts to add new alerts. They ultimately execute the same code on the backend to create the alert.

When making multiple alerts, you simply need to call one of the methods for each user you are creating the alert for.