Existing Views Are Overwritten When Creating a New Template

Linked to #3494

This issue was closed at the time and haven’t been able to re-open so just raising the issue again here (and have updated for Umbraco 8).

Bug summary

When creating a new template via code, if a view exists with the same name, it is overwritten. I believe there should be a check in place that if the view exists, it’s left alone but the template is added to the database regardless. If the file doesn’t exist, only then should it create a new, blank one.

Specifics

Umbraco version: 8.1.2

Steps to reproduce

Create a new view in ~\Views called Test.cshtml (not through the CMS). Enter some content, for example:

@{
    Layout = null;
}

<h2>Homepage</h2>

Create a component that creates a new template:

using Umbraco.Core;
using Umbraco.Core.Composing;
using Umbraco.Core.Models;
using Umbraco.Core.Services;

namespace UmbracoTemplateTest.Components
{
    [RuntimeLevel(MinLevel = RuntimeLevel.Run)]
    public class ContentTypeComposer : IUserComposer
    {
        public void Compose(Composition composition)
        {
            composition.Components().Append<ContentTypeComponent>();
        }
    }

    public class ContentTypeComponent : IComponent
    {
        private readonly IFileService _fileService;

        public ContentTypeComponent(IFileService fileService)
        {
            _fileService = fileService;
        }

        public void Initialize()
        {
            ITemplate template = _fileService.GetTemplate("test");

            if (template == null)
            {
                template = new Template("Test", "test");

                _fileService.SaveTemplate(template);
            }
        }

        public void Terminate() { }
    }
}

See that Test.cshtml has been overwritten by a basic Umbraco template view:

@inherits Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoTemplatePage

@{
    Layout = null;
}

Expected result

When the template is saved, existing views with the same name aren’t overwritten.

Actual result

A blank/basic view is written into the contents of the view in the place of already existing content.

This was fixed when creating the template through the CMS but, if you create the file then create a template using code, the file is overwritten.

Thanks,

Ben

[nul800sebastiaan]

I am not sure if the FileService should be responsible for that, but I can ask around.

For convenience it would be nice, but for now you could load the file contents yourself;

            var templateAlias = "test";
            ITemplate template = _fileService.GetTemplate(templateAlias);

            if (template == null)
            {
                template = new Template("Test", templateAlias);
                var existingFilePath = HostingEnvironment.MapPath($"~/Views/{templateAlias}.cshtml");
                if (System.IO.File.Exists(existingFilePath))
                {
                    var existingFile = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(existingFilePath);
                    template.Content = existingFile;
                }
                
                _fileService.SaveTemplate(template);
            }

[Shazwazza]

This has been fixed at various levels a few times but I guess for just specific circumstance, for example, in the implementation of IFileService, in the methods: CreateTemplateForContentType, CreateTemplateWithIdentity any existing view will not be overwritten with checks to GetViewContent.

You can utilize the CreateTemplateWithIdentity instead of doing

 template = new Template("Test", "test");
_fileService.SaveTemplate(template);

and that should solve your problem.