How to disable event firing in custom code

Recently I worked on application page which updates list item, which in turn causes item update event to fire. The goal was to avoid any event execution. I have done this many times before, but had a hard time recalling. This post is a note to myself, so I know where to look for code sample, if I forgot again. :)

If I am writing event receiver, I can use EventFiringEnabled property to disable events temporarily. But in application page I don’t’ have access to SPEventReceiverBase which exposes this property. So here is the coed I used to temporarily disable event firing.

public class DisableItemEventFiring : SPItemEventReceiver, IDisposable 
{ 
  public ItemEventFiring() 
  {
    this.EventFiringEnabled = false; 
  }
  
  public void  Dispose() 
  {
    this.EventFiringEnabled = true; 
  }
} 

Now we have defined class for disabling list item event, I can use this class in application page,

using (DisableItemEventFiring disableEvt = new DisableItemEventFiring ())
{
  //no event will be fired
  item.SystemUpdate(); 
}

//event firing enabled again
item.SystemUpdate(); 

Hope this helps.

-Javed