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