Best practice for updating an SPListItem field without updating metadata?

Question

I'm currently updating a single property on a file (called "Website Link"). As this is updated by an automated event I don't also want to update the file metadata in the process. At the moment I'm doing this by capturing the modified and modified in variables and then saving it back to the item before I do UpdateOverwriteversion() - it makes for some confusing code though. For example:

var spFile = web.GetListItem(_listUrl + item.Name);

var currentModified = spFile["Modified"];
var currentModifiedBy = spFile["Modified By"];

spFile["Website Link"] = hyperlink;
spFile["Modified"] = currentModified;
spFile["Modified By"] = currentModifiedBy;

spFile.UpdateOverwriteVersion();

Surely there's a better way than this?

Answer 1

You'd SystemUpdate like this:

var spFile = web.GetListItem(_listUrl + item.Name);
spFile["Website Link"] = hyperlink;
spFile.SystemUpdate();

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/microsoft.sharepoint.splistitem.systemupdate.aspx

Updates the database with changes that are made to the list item without changing the Modified or Modified By fields.