Introduction
Depending on business requirements sometimes we tend to implement the best of all
technologies and end up aligning many heterogeneous technologies. If they need these systems to communicate among themselves then we need to contrive a
platform independent protocol so that it can be easily decoded into their
respective dialects. Web services equipped with SOAP protocol are one of those
solutions.
In these days SharePoint is used extensively by organizations as a collaborative platform. Sometimes other systems need to integrate with SharePoint for their array of actions and in terms of business continuity. SharePoint is equipped with many Web Services (you will find them under one roof
i.e. _vti_vin) which can be accessed and consumed by other applications for the sake of collaboration and communication.
Though there are many web services (packed with many web methods) exposed by a SharePoint server, none of them are covered extensively. Here is my effort to
cover some of the these Web methods available in a web service(List web service)
illustrating how these can be used in tandem to accomplish a technical
requirement.
Overview
Unless a SharePoint site is anonymously accessible we have to pass a valid user
credential that has access to the web service (otherwise we can access it with the Default credential). To store a user credential, a resource file (Resource1.resx)
is added to the project( because it is very easy to read an embedded resource
file, of course).
Besides that, a user input form is there (see figure-1) which accepts a Site URL
and a list name as user input. Then using the below web methods, it reads the list and
displays data in a GridView control.
[Definition and description of parameters of the web method GetListItems is
interpreted in the below table.]
|
GetListItems(string listName, string viewName, XmlNode query, XmlNode
viewFields, string rowLimit, XmlNode queryOptions, string webSiteId ) |
|
String listName
(Mandatory) |
Accepts GUID of List
only. If you are aware about the GUID then fine. Otherwise you can get
it by calling web method "GetListCollection()"
of List web service. See code for illustration. |
|
String viewName
(optional) |
Accepts GUID of View
only. If passed empty or null, default view is queried.
|
|
XmlNode query
(optional) |
In case there is no
condition, pass XmlNode object with "Query" as tagname. For
detail refer code. |
|
XmlNode viewFields
(optional) |
In case you want to
see all columns then build an XmlNode object with "ViewFields" as
tagname and pass it as parameter. We are using web method "GetListAndView"
to get all user defined columns. |
|
String
rowLimit(optional) |
To view all rows set "rowLimit"
to string.Empty. Otherwise pass the number of rows you want see. In case
no. of rows available in list is lesser than the rowLimit defined by
you, all records are fetched. |
|
XmlNode
queryOptions(optional) |
In case there is no
condition simple pass XmlNode object with "QueryOptions" as tag name.
For detail refer code where it is defined. |
|
String
webSiteId(optional) |
If string.Empty is
passed, then default site is queried. Otherwise site with given GUID is
searched for. |
![shrpntList.gif]()
Figure 1
Description
As a prerequisite, you need to have VS2010 or VS Framework 3.5 or more to run
this project. The project is developed and tested with SharePoint 2007.
After giving the SharePoint site URL and a list name in user interface and when the user clicks the "submit" button (refer Figure-1), the SharePoint Server is queried by its web service
and results are returned back to the windows application. After that a dataset is
generated out of the XML returned by the web service and bound to a GridView
control. It is described comprehensively below.
- All actions occur in response to the button click. Associated event is "buttonSubmit_Click".
- First it accepts the User given SiteUrl
and List name.
- Call the function "LoadAppResource()" to
load the user credential from resource file. If the site is anonymously accessible
then pass the default credential (System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials).
- Call the web method "GetListCollection()" of
List webservice to get the GUID of the list. The user only needs to provide the List
Name, however, the GetListItems() web method needs a GUID as the parameter.
- Call the web method "GetListAndView()" to get
a list of columns marked as viewable in the default view. This column list
will be passed as a parameter to the web method GetListItems().
- Call the web method GetListItems() with all required parameters and generate a dataset with the XML returned by the web
method.
- Bind that dataset to a GridView control to
display the final results.
Refer below code snippet for further details.
using
System;
using
System.Collections.Generic;
using
System.ComponentModel;
using
System.Data;
using
System.Drawing;
using
System.Linq;
using
System.Text;
using
System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Xml;
using
ManageListItems.ManageList;
using
System.Reflection;
using
System.Resources;
using
System.Collections;
using
System.Globalization;
namespace
ManageListItems
{
public partial
class Form1 :
Form
{
ManageList.Lists listService;
string url =
string.Empty;
string listName =
string.Empty;
string listGuid =
string.Empty;
string userName =
string.Empty;
string password =
string.Empty;
string domain =
string.Empty;
string rowLimit =
"";
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
listService =
new Lists();
}
private void
buttonSubmit_Click(object sender,
EventArgs e)
{
url = textBoxURL.Text;
listName = textBoxListName.Text;
listService.Url = url + "/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx";
try
{
LoadAppResource(); //Loades username,
password, domain from resource file
listService.Credentials = new
System.Net.NetworkCredential(userName,
password, domain);
//listService.Credentials =
System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials; // if Site is annonymously
accessible
//Get List GUID, GetListItem
webmethod needs GUID of the List to retrieve items
XmlNode lists =
listService.GetListCollection();
foreach (XmlNode
list in lists)
{
if (list.Attributes["Title"].Value
== listName)
{
listGuid = list.Attributes["ID"].Value;
break;
}
}
//Automating the process of getting display columns by
using WebMethod GetListAndView...
//Get
Display Columns of the View(that is default view)
System.Xml.XmlNode
nodeViewListView = listService.GetListAndView(listName,
string.Empty); //second argument is empty
because
//we are querying for default
view. Other wise pass GUID of the View to query for specific view
XmlDocument xmlDoc =
new XmlDocument();
xmlDoc.LoadXml(nodeViewListView.OuterXml);
XmlNodeList xnList =
xmlDoc.GetElementsByTagName("ViewFields");
//returns all columns associated
with the default view
xmlDoc =
new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
System.Xml.XmlElement query =
xmlDoc.CreateElement("Query");
System.Xml.XmlElement
viewFields = xmlDoc.CreateElement("ViewFields");
XmlNode nodes = xnList.Item(0);
string queryInnerXml =
string.Empty;
for (int i = 0;
i < nodes.ChildNodes.Count; i++)// looping to get all
display coulumns associatef with the view
{
if (nodes.ChildNodes[i].Attributes["Name"].Value
!= "Edit") // We do not need Edit column
{
queryInnerXml += "<FieldRef
Name=\"" + nodes.ChildNodes[i].Attributes["Name"].Value
+
"\" />";
}
}
viewFields.InnerXml = queryInnerXml.Trim();
//associating with view fields query
System.Xml.XmlElement
queryOptions = xmlDoc.CreateElement("QueryOptions");
queryOptions.InnerXml = "<IncludeMandatoryColumns>TRUE</IncludeMandatoryColumns>";
System.Xml.XmlNode
nodeListItems =
listService.GetListItems(listName,
string.Empty, query, viewFields, rowLimit, queryOptions,
null);
System.IO.StringReader
xmlSR = new System.IO.StringReader(nodeListItems.InnerXml);//creating
string reader to get XML and load it to get a dataset object
DataSet dsList =
new DataSet();
dsList.ReadXml(xmlSR);
dataGridView1.DataSource = dsList.Tables[1];
}
catch (Exception
ex1)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex1.Message,
"Error",
MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
}
}
private void
LoadAppResource()
{
ResourceSet resourceSet;
resourceSet = ManageListItems.Resource1.ResourceManager.GetResourceSet(CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture,
true, true);
foreach (DictionaryEntry
d in resourceSet)
{
if ((string)d.Key
== "Username")
userName = (string)d.Value;
if ((string)d.Key
== "Password")
password = (string)d.Value;
if ((string)d.Key
== "Domain")
domain = (string)d.Value;
}
}
}
}
Conclusion
A developer's life would never have been so easy unless SharePoint was packed up
with these web services. I will keep on posting one by one, but if you want to
realize the power of SharePoint Web services try them with InfoPath!