3. About Me
• Senior SharePoint Architect with Allin Consulting
• Technical Contributor to the Pluralsight On-Demand Library
• Microsoft MVP, MCPD, MCT
• Founder and Past-President of the North Toronto .NET UG
• Co-author of Prof. Visual Basic 2010 and .NET 4 (Wrox)
4. Lists
• The data storage mechanism in SharePoint
Virtually all content stored in lists
• Provisioning engine handles list creation and schema management
• SharePoint provides interface to add, edit, delete and view items
• Lists support:
Multiple views (for sorting, filtering, grouping)
Simple validation
Content approval
Item versioning
• Data stored in rows and columns
More like Excel worksheets than database tables
5. Accessing and Updating List Items
• Field values accessed via SPListItem indexer
• Generally accessed by internal name
• Weakly typed
var web = SPContext.Current.Web; var web = SPContext.Current.Web;
var list = web.Lists.TryGetList("Products"); var list = web.Lists.TryGetList("Products");
if (list == null) return; if (list == null) return;
foreach (SPListItem item in list.Items) foreach (SPListItem item in list.Items)
{ {
Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1})", var price = Convert.ToDouble(
item["Title"], item["UnitPrice"]);
item["UnitPrice"]); price *= 1.1;
} item["UnitPrice"] = price;
item.Update();
}
6. Field Names
• Fields have three names
Display name
The name displayed to the end user
Can be changed
Internal name
Set when field is created
Does not change
Non-alphanumeric chars escaped (e.g. Unit_x0020_Price)
Find using Server Explorer
Static name
Used by custom field types
7. CAML Queries
• Query list items using XML syntax
• SPQuery
Query single list
Returns SPLitsItemCollection
• SPSiteDataQuery
Query multiple lists across site collection
Returns DataSet
9. “All we can do is decide what to do with
the time tools that is are given us”
Image from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by New
Line Cinema
10. Large List Throttling
• Lists can store millions of items
• Retrieval of items is throttled
Max 5,000 items
Max 20,000 for Owners
No max for local admin
• Can override limits in code
QueryThrottleMode
• Can configure time window
where limits are ignored
For reporting, list aggregation, etc
Done during off-peak hours
12. Joins in CAML Queries
• SPQuery supports joins
SPSiteDataQuery does not
• Joins can only be done on lookup columns
• Key properties
Joins: Define joins to other lists
ProjectedFields: Fields being projected from the foreign list
• Only inner and left outer joins are supported
14. Querying Multiple Lists with SPSiteDataQuery
• Core properties the same as SPQuery
• Cannot query lists outside site collection
• Key additional properties
Lists
Defines which lists will be included in query
Use ServerTemplate for OOB content types
Use BaseType plus filter for ID in where clause for custom content
types
Webs
Defines the scope of the query
SiteCollection
– Query all matching lists in site collection
Recursive:
– Query all matching lists in current Web and it’s children
17. REST APIs
• Generally used by remote applications
• Uses Open Data (oData) Protocol
Also known as: Astoria, ADO.NET Data Services, WCF Data Services
Data centric (REST) Web service
Data returned in AtomPub or JSON format
Metadata is available
Allows creation of service proxy
Strongly-typed access to data
Requests for collections may not return all items
Max 1,000 items returned per request
Need to check for continuation
18. REST APIs
• Urls map to SharePoint resources
Example: ListData.svc/Products(2)/Category maps to the category
for the product with id == 2
• Protocol commands
$filter={simple predicate}
$expand={Entity}
$orderby={property}
$skip=n
$top=n
$metadata
21. Consuming Data via REST APIs
var context = new DemoDataContext(new Uri(
SiteUrl + @"_vti_bin/ListData.svc"));
context.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
var query = from detail in context.OrderDetails
where detail.UnitPrice < 100
select detail;
22. Consuming Data via REST APIs
var context = new DemoDataContext(new Uri(
"http://localhost/sites/demo/_vti_bin/ListData.svc"));
context.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
var query = from detail in context.OrderDetails
where detail.UnitPrice < 100
select detail;
var queryCount = query.Count();
var details = new List<OrderDetailsItem>();
var dsquery = query as DataServiceQuery<OrderDetailsItem>;
var response = dsquery.Execute() as QueryOperationResponse<OrderDetailsItem>;
details.AddRange(response);
var token = response.GetContinuation();
while (token != null)
{
response = context.Execute(token);
details.AddRange(response);
token = response.GetContinuation();
}
23. Consuming Data via REST APIs
var url = "http://localhost/sites/demo/_vti_bin/ListData.svc";
var context = new DemoProxy.DemoDataContext(new Uri(url));
context.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
var products = from product in context.Products
where product.Category.Title == "Condiments" &&
product.UnitsInStock > 0
select product;
foreach (var product in products)
{
product.UnitsInStock += 1;
context.UpdateObject(product); // don’t forget this
}
context.SaveChanges();
25. LINQ to SharePoint
• LINQ provider generates CAML for query
Requires reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq.dll
• Only available to server object model
• Queries are strongly-typed
• Entities created using SPMetal command-line utility
Similar to SqlMetal in LINQ to SQL
Located in <System root>bin
Basic usage
spmetal /web:<site url> /code:<file name>
Code generation can be customized via parameters XML file
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee535056.aspx
26. Consuming Data with LINQ to SharePoint
var url = "http://localhost/sites/demo";
var context = new SPNorthwind.SPNorthwindDataContext(url);
// context.Log = Console.Out;
var products = from product in context.Products
where product.Category.Title == "Condiments" &&
product.UnitsInStock > 0
select product;
foreach (var product in products)
{
product.UnitsInStock += 1;
}
context.SubmitChanges();
28. Thank You
• Big thanks to the organizers, sponsors and you for making
this event possible
• Please fill out your evaluation
• Please keep in touch
rwindsor@allin.com
@robwindsor
msmvps.com/blogs/windsor
