Typically, up until this point, I had been dealing with simply uploading new files to a SharePoint library when a feature was activated. Simple enough, however, what happens if you’re trying to overwrite a file that already exists? I’ve attached the file to this post here for reference, but let’s go over the basics for doing something of this sort.

1. The first step was to create a new feature and overwrite the FeatureActivated method. I’ll assume you’re familiar with this already, but if not, feel free to drop me a note and I’ll assist where I can.
2. The code inside of the FeatureActivated method is pretty straightforward. Create a web object, declare a variable to store the file system path where the feature was activated so that we can grab the file we want to overwrite with and finally, call another method to do the file overwriting, with elevated privileges.

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   override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)   {   WriteMessageToEventLog(“Feature Activated”);   try   {   web = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent;   // set the directory path on the file system where the feature was activated   directoryPath = properties.Definition.RootDirectory;   // run with elevated permissions so we can overwrite the file   SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(OverwriteFile);   }   catch (Exception ex)   {   WriteMessageToEventLog(ex.ToString());   }   }

3. Now let’s look at the OverwriteFile method. What we’re doing here is reading the contents of the file into a byte array and uploading that file into the Editing Menu folder, specifiying that we want to overwrite the file.

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   public void OverwriteFile()   {   // create a new site object so that elevation works properly   SPSite site = new SPSite(web.Site.ID);   // copy to location   string url = null;   // get the url to the local file   string[] localFile = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(directoryPath, ”*.xml”, System.IO.SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);   // define a fstream object so we can read the contents of the file into a byte array   FileStream fstream = File.OpenRead(localFile[0]);   byte[] contents = new byte[fstream.Length];   fstream.Read(contents, 0, (int)fstream.Length);   fstream.Close();   // get a handle to the master page gallery   SPList masterPageGallery = site.OpenWeb().Lists[“Master Page Gallery”];   // get a handle to the folder we want to upload the file to   SPFolder editingMenuFolder = masterPageGallery.RootFolder.SubFolders[“Editing Menu”];   SPFile customQuickAccessFile = editingMenuFolder.Files[“CustomQuickAccess.xml”];   // build the destination copy url   url = site.Url + ”/” + editingMenuFolder.Url + > ”/”;   // check out the file, replace it with the modified one, and check it back in, publish and approve   customQuickAccessFile.CheckOut();   customQuickAccessFile.CopyTo(url + “CustomQuickAccess_Original.xml”, true);   WriteMessageToEventLog(editingMenuFolder.ServerRelativeUrl);   WriteMessageToEventLog(editingMenuFolder.Url);   // check in new file   customQuickAccessFile = editingMenuFolder.Files.Add(url + “CustomQuickAccess.xml”, contents, true);   customQuickAccessFile.CheckIn(“File over-written by activiating the Published Page View Feature”);   customQuickAccessFile.Publish(“File published by activating the Published Page View Feature”);   customQuickAccessFile.Approve(“Approved by Published Page View Feature”);   site.Close();   }

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