Set multiple values to Enterprise Keywords TaxonomyField

Question

I want to programmatically set the values of the Enterprise Keywords Managed Metadata field. This field supports multiple values, but I can only get it to take one at a time.

I have the following method:

public void AddKeywords(SPListItem item, string keywordString)
{
    TaxonomyField managedField = item.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName(Fields.Keywords) as TaxonomyField;

    if (managedField != null)
    {
        TaxonomySession session = new TaxonomySession(item.Web.Site, false);
        TermStore termStore = session.TermStores[managedField.SspId];
        TermSet termSet = termStore.GetTermSet(managedField.TermSetId);

        string[] keywords = keywordString.Split(',').Select(s => s.Trim()).ToArray();

        foreach (string keyword in keywords)
        {
            Term keywordTerm;
            if (!termSet.Terms.Any(t => t.Name == keyword))
            {
                keywordTerm = termSet.CreateTerm(keyword, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.LCID);
                termStore.CommitAll();
            }
            else
            {
                keywordTerm = termSet.Terms[keyword];
            }

            managedField.SetFieldValue(item, keywordTerm);
        }
    }
}

After this is executed, only the last keyword is set at the value, overwriting any previous values on this field.

How can I set multiple values to the Enterprise Keywords Managed Metadata Field?

Answer 1

In your example you are setting the value of the field, then overwriting it when your loop gets to the next keyword.

Rather than calling managedField.SetFieldValue every time you should be collecting all your terms in some form of collection, then calling it with this overload : TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue

for example

    var terms = new List<Term>();

    foreach (string keyword in keywords)
    {
        Term keywordTerm;
        if (!termSet.Terms.Any(t => t.Name == TaxonomyItem.NormalizeName(keyword)))
        {
            keywordTerm = termSet.CreateTerm(keyword, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.LCID);
            termStore.CommitAll();
        }
        else
        {
            keywordTerm = termSet.Terms[keyword];
        }

        terms.Add(keywordTerm);
    }

    managedField.SetFieldValue(item, terms);

Another completely unrelated suggestion I would make is call TaxonomyItem.NormalizeName on your keyword before comparing it, or keywords with & will complicate things.