Best practice to add list item in SharePoint Server OM?

Question

from the below codes, which one is best practice and performance wise also:-

CASE 1:

using (SPSite oSPsite = new SPSite("http://website url/"))
{
using (SPWeb oSPWeb = oSPsite.OpenWeb())
      {
            oSPWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

            // Fetch the List
            SPList list = oSPWeb.Lists["MyList"];

            //Add a new item in the List
            SPListItem itemToAdd = list.Items.Add();
            itemToAdd["Title"] = "Test Title";
            itemToAdd["Description"] = "Test Description";
            itemToAdd.Update();

            // Get the Item ID
            listItemId = itemToAdd.ID;

            // Update the List item by ID
            SPListItem itemToUpdate = list.GetItemById(listItemId);
            itemToUpdate["Description"] = "Changed Description";
            itemToUpdate.Update();

            // Delete List item
            SPListItem itemToDelete = list.GetItemById(listItemId);
            itemToDelete.Delete();

            oSPWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
       }
}

Reference: http://www.mindfiresolutions.com/Add-Update-and-Delete-List-Items-Programmatically-in-Sharepoint-372.php

CASE 2:

SPWeb mySite = SPContext.Current.Web;
SPListItemCollection listItems = mySite.Lists[TextBox1.Text].Items;

SPListItem item = listItems.Add();

item["Title"] = TextBox2.Text;
item["Stock"] = Convert.ToInt32(TextBox3.Text);
item["Return Date"] = Convert.ToDateTime(TextBox4.Text);
item["Employee"] = TextBox5.Text;

item.Update();
}

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ms467435(v=office.14).aspx. There is no mention of allow unsafe updates in this code? Is that OK?

Answer 1

AllowUnsafeUpdates=true; is not required to add/delete/update list items unless you are doing these operations in Page_Load or other Get methods. Both CASE 1 and CASE 2 does not look good in terms of best practice. Problems with both case code:

Do not use oSPWeb.Lists["MyList"]; instead use oSPWeb.Lists.TryGetList("MyList1"); Do not use list.Items.Add(); instead use list.AddItem();

Always dispose objects (Best to use using(), done correctly in case 1, but try to avoid hard coded url if it is a webpart or user control etc)

Add null check for list object before using it.

Best practice code:

using (SPSite oSPsite = new SPSite("http://website url/"))//try not use hard code url unless no other option
            {
                using (SPWeb oSPWeb = oSPsite.OpenWeb())
                {
                    // Fetch the List
                    SPList list = oSPWeb.Lists.TryGetList("MyList1");
                    if (list != null)
                    {
                        //Add a new item in the List
                        SPListItem itemToAdd = list.AddItem();
                        itemToAdd["Title"] = "Test Title";
                        itemToAdd["Description"] = "Test Description";
                        itemToAdd.Update();

                        // Get the Item ID
                        listItemId = itemToAdd.ID;

                        // Update the List item by ID
                        SPListItem itemToUpdate = list.GetItemById(listItemId);
                        itemToUpdate["Description"] = "Changed Description";
                        itemToUpdate.Update();

                        // Delete List item
                        SPListItem itemToDelete = list.GetItemById(listItemId);
                        itemToDelete.Delete();
                    }
                }
            }

Always run sharepoint code analyser on your code.You can download it here

Answer 2

Both look same apart from the fact that AllowUnsafeUpdates is used in the second example. However, the better way of adding list items is SPList.AddItem() instead of SPList.Items.Add() See this for more explanation: SPList.Add() vs SPList.AddItem() SharePoint 2010

Answer 3

A lot of things to note here:

• In case #1, you open new SPSite/SPWeb objects (resulting in a need for AllowUnsafeUpdates). You open new objects only in case you want to run code in an elevation section (or with System user token, with leads more or less to the same result).
• In both cases, you use list.Items.Add(); witch is a very bad practice: you consumme SQL resources to read all records in the list (may be 1000s of items!), network between SP and SQL, and SP RAM to load all these items... list.AddItem() is definitely the way to go.

• You get access to the list with oSPWeb.Lists["MyList"]; witch may fail if the list is renamed. The only correct way to get a list for sure, even if it's renamed is:

  oSPWeb.GetList(SPUrlUtility.CombineUrl(oSPWeb.Url, listUrl))

listUrl being the site-relative URL of the list (e.g. Lists/Contacts).