[CSOM on SharePoint Online Error] Upload & Update Items occasionally hits "File has been modified by XXX"

Question

Hello,

I am trying to use CSOM to upload & update many files with field values to a document library on SharePoint Online.

This is what I have done on each files:

1. Upload the file
2. Update Modified, Modified Date, Created, Created Date ( listItem.UpdateOverwriteVersion() )
3. Update Several fields at once like this:

//ListItem listItem
foreach(var fieldInfo in allFieldInfos)
{
	//here: parse the values into the listItem according to the field type & value etc.
	// in short, the code is something like this:
	listItem[fieldInfo.Key] = fieldInfo.Value;
	//btw I noticed that if there is Yes/No Field here, an extra update & ExecuteQuery() is needed for some reason, otherwise the field may not be updated
}
listItem.SystemUpdate();
ctx.ExecuteQuery(); // actually, I have also applied a retry on the execution here for handling 429 or 503 (throttling), but it only catches WebException

Which works fine when I upload a few hundreds of files when I am trying. However, when I try uploading thousands / ten thousands of files, sometimes the code stopped with the following error:

Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ServerException: The file {Filename} has been modified by {user in step2} on {datetime in step2}.

Any idea on why it happens and how to prevent it? or should I just simply apply another retry on the same attempt?

Answer 1

Hi @William Ng,

You could apply some type of retry strategy. Please refer to following code

public static bool TryUploadFile(ClientContext ctx, string sourceFilePath, string targetUrl, IDictionary<string, string> fileProperties)
{
        using (var fileStream = new FileStream(sourceFilePath, FileMode.Open))
        {
            var fileInfo = new FileCreationInformation()
            {
                ContentStream = fileStream,
                Overwrite = true,
                Url = Path.GetFileName(sourceFilePath)
            };

            var targetFolder = ctx.Web.GetFolderByServerRelativeUrl(targetUrl);
            var uploadFile = targetFolder.Files.Add(fileInfo);
            var listItem = uploadFile.ListItemAllFields;
            foreach (var p in fileProperties)
            {
                listItem[p.Key] = p.Value;
            }

            return TrySaveListItem(listItem, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2));
        }
}


private static bool TrySaveListItem(ListItem listItem, TimeSpan retryInterval, int retryCount = 3)
{
        while (true)
        {
            try
            {
                listItem.Update();
                listItem.Context.ExecuteQuery();
                return true; 
            }
            catch
            {
                if (--retryCount == 0) return false;
                Thread.Sleep(retryInterval);
            }
        }
}

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