Why hidden fields will always be null inside my ItemUpdated Event receiver , if i checked them using properties.AfterProperties

Question

I am working on a SharePoint 2013 on-premises farm. and i have added an ItemUpdated event receiver for my custom list, as follow:-

public override void ItemUpdated(SPItemEventProperties properties)
        {
            base.ItemUpdated(properties);
            var abcd = properties.AfterProperties["OrderInternalStage2"];
            var abcd2 = properties.ListItem["OrderInternalStage2"];

now in my case the OrderInternalStage2 is a hidden field inside the content type. And if i check the value using properties.ListItem["OrderInternalStage2"] the value will be correct, but inside the properties.AfterProperties["OrderInternalStage2"]; the value will always be null??? now if i change the field from being hidden to optional, then the value will be presented inside the properties.AfterProperties["OrderInternalStage2"]; .. so i am not sure what is the reason behind this behavioure, why hidden fields will be null inside the AfterProperties for the Itemupdated event recevier ??

Thanks

Answer 1

The reason if a hidden column has a default value and when you hit save it saves it by default. In an event receiver when you hit save afterproperties is responsible to show 'newly changed' value which is NULL correct behaviour when the column is hidden.

Reference Before vs After properties and MSDN Documentation