So the following lines of code look pretty simple:

SPSite site = new SPSite(sSiteURL);
...
web.Site.ReadOnly = true;

...

What's even better is that they actually work.  Until that is they become part of a GET request (i.e. from a web page).  If your application is web based and this code is run as the result of a get request then the operation will fail with an error such as:

Updates are currently disallowed on GET requests.  To allow updates on a GET, set the 'AllowUnsafeUpdates' property on SPWeb.

I tried just about everything I know to get it going but it wouldn't work.  Some examples of the code I tried follow:

Attempt 1:

SPSiteAdministration siteAdm = new SPSiteAdministration(sSiteURL);
siteAdm.LockIssue = "test";
siteAdm.WriteLocked = true;
siteAdm.Dispose();

Attempt 2:

using (Identity.ImpersonateAdmin())
            {
                SPGlobalAdmin ga = new SPGlobalAdmin();
                SPVirtualServer v = ga.OpenVirtualServer(new Uri(sTopSite));

                for (int x = 0; x < v.Sites.Count; x++)
                {
                    if (v.Sites[x].Url.ToUpper() == sSiteURL.ToUpper())
                    {
                        v.Sites[x].AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                        v.Sites[x].LockIssue = "Locked through code";
                        v.Sites[x].WriteLocked = true;
                        v.Sites[x].Close();
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }

Attempt 3:

SPSite site = new SPSite(sSiteURL);
site.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
web.Update();

web.Site.WriteLocked = true;

web.Update();
web.Close();

Attempt 4:

            SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
            {
                SPSite site = new SPSite(sSiteURL);
                SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                site.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                web.Update();

                web.Site.ReadOnly = true;

                web.Update();
                web.Close();
            });
            return true;

Attempt 5:

        public bool lockSite(string sSiteURL)
        {
            SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
            {
                using (SPSite _SPSite = new SPSite(sSiteURL))
                {
                    _SPSite.WriteLocked = true;
                }
            });
            return true;
        }

In the end I put it down as a bug and rewrote the web application to make a post request (via a button) and hey presto, it works fine.

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Posted 01-21-2008 4:20 PM by Andrew Noon