Common (and simple) coding tasks in sharepoint

Well, everyone went to teched last week and I was left at work stuck with a project with a strict deadline. So out of boredom I decided that I will compile a small snippet database for beggining sharepoint developers.I see a lot of people in the microsoft public sharepoint developer forums asking these questions over and over again, so I thought I will save everyone some time by answering these right here.Some people may say these are RTFM questions, since the SDK contains all of these examples, but apperantly people dont bother with the SDK, or find it confusing to navigate through. So here is my 2 cents.
The purpose here is to give some code samples to common tasks like:
getting a reference to a site
Iterating over all lists in a site
getting a reference to a list
getting a reference to an item in a list
getting a reference to the item's properties
getting a reference to a document and its properties
adding a new item to a list
modifying an item in a list
If you feel I should add to this list, let me know and I will write some sample code. However, please remember this is for simple, common tasks and I wont start giving application samples here.
So, lets get down to it!
Getting a reference to a site
Ok, you have a sharepoint site in a URL "http://server/sites/site" and you want to get the object of the site from its URL. What do you do?using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
}
}
Now you have the SPWeb object, allowing you to get information about the site you used in the URL. For example, iterating all lists in the site:using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
string linksHtml = "";
foreach(SPList list in myWeb.Lists)
{
string listLink = "" + list.Title + "("+list.Items.Count+")
";
linksHtml += listLink;
}
}
}
The above example also showed how to get a reference to a list by iterating over the lists in a site. But what if you want a specific list called "contacts"? The following will show you how to get the object for a list that you know the name of:using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
SPList contactsList = myWeb.Lists["Contacts"];
}
}
Now lets iterate through the items in the list and get item's properties:using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
SPList contactsList = myWeb.Lists["Contacts"];
foreach (SPListItem contact in contactsList.Items)
{
string contactLastName = contact["Last Name"].ToString();
}
}
}
Now some of you are saying - "what about documents?", to which I answer that document libraries are the same as lists (ok, there are some differences but we will leave that for future articles). To get to a document in a document library you can either use the code above to iterate through the library and its files, or, if you know the file's URL, you can do this:
using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
SPFile file = myWeb.GetFile("http://server/sites/site/library/folder/file");
}
}
File properties are available through its Item property. If you have for example a text field in the document library called "My Custom String Property", and you want to know the value for that field in a specific file, use the following code:using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
SPFile file = myWeb.GetFile("http://server/sites/site/library/folder/file");
string filePropertyValue = file.Item["My Custom String Property"].ToString();
}
}
We now want to add a new item to a list:
using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
SPList contactsList = myWeb.Lists["Contacts"];
SPListItem newItem = contactsList.Items.Add();
newItem["First Name"] = "Ishai";
newItem["Last Name"] = "Sagi";
newItem.Update();
}
}
Lets change all items in the list to build the email address based on the first and last name (in the format of 'first.last@testing.com') :
using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://server/sites/site"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
SPList contactsList = myWeb.Lists["Contacts"];
foreach(SPListItem existingItem in contactsList.Items)
{
existingItem["E-mail Address"] = existingItem["First Name"] + "." + existingItem["Last Name"] + "@testing.com";
newItem.Update();
}
}
}