A quick note for Vault API developer posterity: PromoteComponentLinks

So - I haven't posted on this blog in forever, but it seems like the best place for this.

Unless you're some kind of regular reader from the mid-2000s and I'm still in your feed - I'm guessing that you found me by googling something like:

How the @#$#%#% do I get Autodesk Vault Items to update their secondary links to files with the Vault API!?!??!

After struggling with this for a while, I figured I would share my knowledge gained so that you don't have to bang your head on the table as long as I did.

Here's the trick:
You need to call a method called ItemService.PromoteComponentLinks.

Here's the code:

 wsm.ItemService.UpdatePromoteComponents(new long[] { item.RevId },  ItemAssignAll.Default, false);

 DateTime timestamp;

 GetPromoteOrderResults promoteOrder =
      wsm.ItemService.GetPromoteComponentOrder(out timestamp);

  if (promoteOrder.PrimaryArray != null && (promoteOrder.PrimaryArray.Length>0))
{
      wsm.ItemService.PromoteComponents(timestamp, promoteOrder.PrimaryArray);
}

 if (promoteOrder.NonPrimaryArray != null && (promoteOrder.NonPrimaryArray.Length>0))
{
      wsm.ItemService.PromoteComponentLinks( promoteOrder.NonPrimaryArray);
}

 ItemsAndFiles itemsAndFiles =
           wsm.ItemService.GetPromoteComponentsResults(timestamp);

newItem = itemsAndFiles.ItemRevArray[0];
 wsm.ItemService.UpdateAndCommitItems(new Item[] { newItem });


How did I figure it out? I broke down and turned on Fiddler to watch the traffic between my Vault Explorer and the server. It's actually a pretty nice hack - thank you to whomever on the Autodesk side added what the currently running command was to the URL query.

Anyway - I'm hopeful that your googling finds the above results, instead of various articles and support forum posts from Doug and Wayne from the beginning of this decade :).