As I was walking along a beach near my apartment tonight, I thought “wouldn’t it be nifty to have a button in the Sitecore ribbon to accept all notifications on clones of an Item instead of having to accept these manually on each clone?”

I immediately returned home, and whipped up the following command class:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using Sitecore.Data.Clones;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands;

namespace Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Commands
{
    public class AcceptAllNotificationsOnClones : Command
    {
        public override CommandState QueryState(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            IEnumerable<Item> clones = GetClonesWithNotifications(GetItem(context));
            if(!clones.Any())
            {
                return CommandState.Hidden;
            }

            return CommandState.Enabled;
        }

        public override void Execute(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            Item item = GetItem(context);
            IEnumerable<Item> clones = GetClonesWithNotifications(item);
            if(!clones.Any())
            {
                return;
            }

            foreach (Item clone in clones)
            {
                AcceptAllNotifications(item.Database.NotificationProvider, clone);
            }
        }

        protected virtual Item GetItem(CommandContext context)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(context, "context");
            return context.Items.FirstOrDefault();
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<Item> GetClonesWithNotifications(Item item)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, "item");
            IEnumerable<Item> clones = item.GetClones();
            if(!clones.Any())
            {
                return new List<Item>();
            }
            
            IEnumerable<Item> clonesWithNotifications = GetClonesWithNotifications(item.Database.NotificationProvider, clones);
            if(!clonesWithNotifications.Any())
            {
                return new List<Item>();
            }

            return clonesWithNotifications;
        }

        protected virtual IEnumerable<Item> GetClonesWithNotifications(NotificationProvider notificationProvider, IEnumerable<Item> clones)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(notificationProvider, "notificationProvider");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(clones, "clones");
            return (from clone in clones
                    let notifications = notificationProvider.GetNotifications(clone)
                    where notifications.Any()
                    select clone).ToList();
        }

        protected virtual void AcceptAllNotifications(NotificationProvider notificationProvider, Item clone)
        {
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(notificationProvider, "notificationProvider");
            Assert.ArgumentNotNull(clone, "clone");
            foreach (Notification notification in notificationProvider.GetNotifications(clone))
            {
                notification.Accept(clone);
            }
        }
    }
}

The code in the command above ensures the command is only visible when the selected Item in the Sitecore content tree has clones, and those clones have notifications — this visibility logic is contained in the QueryState() method.

When the command is invoked — this happens through the Execute() method — all clones with notifications of the selected Item are retrieved, and iterated over — each are passed to the AcceptAllNotifications() method which contains logic to accept all notifications on them via the Accept() method on a NotificationProvider instance: this NotificationProvider instance comes from the source Item’s Database property.

I then registered the above command class in Sitecore using the following configuration file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <commands>
      <command name="item:AcceptAllNotificationsOnClones" type="Sitecore.Sandbox.Shell.Framework.Commands.AcceptAllNotificationsOnClones, Sitecore.Sandbox"/>
    </commands>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

We need a way to invoke this command. I created a new button to go into the ‘Item Clones’ chunk in the ribbon:

Let’s take this for a test drive!

I first created some clones:

I then changed a field value on one of those clones:

On the clone’s source Item, I changed the same field’s value with something completely different, and added a new child item — the new button appeared after saving the Item:

Now, the clone has notifications on it:

I went back to the source Item, clicked the ‘Accept Notifications On Clones’ button in the ribbon, and navigated back to the clone:

As you can see, the notifications were accepted.

If you have any thoughts on this, please share in a comment.