How to disable the editing of the item after it was approved in SharePoint (WSS)?

Question

Is there a way to disable editing after the the item was approved?

One option I thought about is writing an event handler that will fire when user tries to edit the item and allow the operation based on the approval state.

Does anyone have more straight forward solution to this problem?

P.S. Owner of the item should stay the same.

Answer 1

These are the steps i would take:

1. Create an ItemUpdated event hanlder.
2. In the event handler check the status column.
3. If status is approved, break permission inheritance on the item, remove contribute permission and add read permission.

P.S. You could also do it with no code by using Sharepoint Designer Workflow and custom activities at http://spdactivities.codeplex.com

Answer 2

You could add an ItemUpdating handler and just cancel out of future update operations with a sensible error message for the user. That makes it a little goofy, though, because you're still giving them an opportunity to attempt to edit the item before slamming the door in their face.

OTTOMH, you might want to declare a custom edit form in your schema.xml file for your list definition. For the edit form, you could direct to a custom application page that would assess the editability of your item. If the item is editable, it redirects to the regular edit form. If it's not editable, it shows the sensible error message.

Unclepaul84's idea is good, especially if you want to make sure that the user doesn't even see the "edit" menu for an item. You would have the responsibility of going through any existing list data and applying those security settings, and if your rules change, you will have to go back and re-apply the correct settings. This might not be a big concern for you, but if your rules might someday change or if your rules are really more dynamic in nature, I think intercepting the edit form might give you better mileage.