Manage SPListItem publishing programatically

Recently, I had to work on converting a regular SPList to have similar to a publishing feature. Like, have an item edited, review it and then publish the page for public.

I made the below modifications to the list settings to enable versioning of list items.
Go to the List Setting page and select "Versioning Settings" and set the options to the same as below.

 

This enables the list items in the list to be version controlled. The author can save a version of the list item, review it and publish it at any point of time or revert to its previously published version.

I wanted to do it programatically using a layouts page (application page) since we are using the application pages as the default display form of the particular content type.

For saving a new SPListItem, the code should look similar to this. This will save the list item content and assign the status to "Pending".

var item = SPContext.Current.ListItemitem["Title"] = SPHttpUtility.ConvertSimpleHtmlToText(this.txtTitle.Text, 255);
//this will set the status of the current item to "Pending"
item.Update();

To know how to get the CurrentListItem in an app page, please see my other post here

To publish the list item, the code would look like this.

if (SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation != null)
{
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Status = SPModerationStatusType.Approved;
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Comment = String.Format("Published on {0} by {1}",  
                                                   DateTime.Now.ToString(), SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.Email);
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.Update();
    

    //Added to refresh the page content and hide the publishing controls 

    Response.Redirect(SPContext.Current.ListItem.Url);
}

To revert a saved list item to it's previously published version, the code would look like below:

if (SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation != null && SPContext.Current.ListItem.Level != SPFileLevel.Published)
{
    //Getting the last published version of the current item

    var lastPublishedVersionInfo = SPContext.Current.ListItem.Versions.Cast<SPListItemVersion>()
                                                                            .Where(v => v.Level == SPFileLevel.Published)
                                                                            .OrderByDescending(l => l.Created).Take(1);
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.Versions.RestoreByID(lastPublishedVersionInfo.First().VersionId);
 
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Status = SPModerationStatusType.Approved;
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Comment = String.Format("Reverted on {0} by {1}", 
                                                               DateTime.Now.ToString(), SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.Email);
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.Update();
 
    Response.Redirect(BlogManager.GetBlogPostUrl(SPContext.Current.Web, SPContext.Current.List.ID, SPContext.Current.ListItem.ID));
}

Hope this helps some one or even myself somewhere in the future.

Thanks
Senthil S

Filtering list items by user id using CAML in SPSiteDataQuery

I had some struggle finding out how to filter the list items by a particular user (SharePoint user). I am sure that this can be done but the filter does not seem to work for me if it is using the field value as "Integer". It was working very fine if the filter is applied for current logged in user as below:

<Query>
  <Where>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="Author" />
      <Value Type="Integer">
        <UserID Type="Integer" />
      </Value>
    </Eq>
  </Where>
</Query>

Of course, this only works if the filtering is applied for the currently logged in user. so, what does need to happen when the query needs to filter based on another user?

I tried the above CAML by replacing the <UserID Type="Integer" /> with the particular user's id value (SPUser.ID). This does not seem to work. Always it returns no items.

<Query>
  <Where>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="Author" />
      <Value Type="Integer">
        75
      </Value>
    </Eq>
  </Where>
</Query>

It turns out to be an attribute "LookupId" needs to be added to the <FieldRef> element as below.

<Query>
  <Where>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="Author" LookupId="True"/>
      <Value Type="Integer">
        75
      </Value>
    </Eq>
  </Where>
</Query>

Happy Coding.
Senthil S

Get items from multiple webs using SPSiteDataQuery

I know there is no easy way to get list items from multiple webs using SPSiteDataQuery. But I had to work on a similar situation for one of my projects. Looking deep into the list items attributes I came to know that there is a possibility to do the filtering based on the web itself (given some other small conditions)

Properties "ServerUrl" (server Relative Url) and "EncodedAbsUrl" (Encoded Absolute Url) cannot be used since the field values are of type "Computed" and SPSiteDataQuery does not filter based on "Computed" field values (there are some workarounds for some computed fields as well)

So I started looking into "FileRef" (URL Path) and "FileDirRef" (Path) for filtering. It seems to be working for me.

For a particular SPFile/SPListItem the above field values would give the exact location of the item.the values would look similar like below:

Publishing Content Types:

FileDirRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Pages
FileRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Pages/default.aspx

Non-Publishing Content Types: (normal SPListItems)

FileDirRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Lists/{ListRootFolderUrl}
FileRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Lists/{ListRootFolderUrl}/{ItemName}

Using the above field values and with proper CAML filter xml, items can be filtered from multiple webs.

In my case I was querying against non-publishing content types. So I was applying ContentTypeId filter primarily to filter based on content type. Above that, I was applying filters for "FileRef" values to get the items from multiple webs.

Sample CAML Query would look like this:
(The first one with value "Lists" is to filter the items in the root web)

In addition to the above filters, I was also using the "ContentTypeId" filter to get list items of particular type.

NOTE: If you are using just "SubSite1/SubSite12" to filter on the items, it would include the sub webs as well. Include the "/Lists" or "/Pages" at the end of web relative url to restrict to a single site.

If you have any questions, please add a comment.

Thanks
Senthil S

Error while adding Site columns (fields) to list content types

Recently, I had a situation where I need to add site columns (available in root web) to a content type reference in a particular list under a particular web.

I wrote the code below 

var field = web.Site.RootWeb.AvailableFields[new Guid("<<FieldID>>")];
foreach (SPContentType cType in web.Lists["ListName"].ContentTypes)
{
    cType.Fields.Add(field);
    cType.Update();
}

but it was not working as expected and throwing the below exception

"This functionality is unavailable for field collections not associated with a list."

After some research, I came to know that the field needs to be added as a SPFieldLink and not as SPField itself since the field already exists in the root web. The below modified code is working fine for me.

var field = web.Site.RootWeb.AvailableFields[new Guid("<<FieldID>>")];
foreach (SPContentType cType in web.Lists["ListName"].ContentTypes)
{
    SPFieldLink fieldLink = new SPFieldLink(field);
    cType.FieldLinks.Add(fieldLink);
    cType.Update();

}

Hopefully this helps some one or may be myself in the future when I struggle with the same issue.

Thanks

Senthil S

Java script error when trying to change Page Layout

Recently, I faced a weird issue with SharePoint publishing pages and changing the layout of the page. I was able to add a new publishing page with different layouts in a pages library. But when I try to change the page layout of an existing page, I got a java script error in cui.debug.js. Just like the one below, I was not even be able to get the drop down with different page layouts to change

 

To fix this issue I had to debug the java script (CUI.debug.js) file in IE 8 or greater using the Developer tools. Once the exception occurred in the java script, traced the function calls using the "Call Stack" option and found a variable "$v_0.PopulationXML" and inspected the XML in VS and found the malformed XML.

After some research, I came to know that there was a orphaned page layout in the "Master Pages and Page Layouts" gallery. I was testing something else with page layout and content type relationships and left it there. But I removed the content type associated with the page layout.

After I deleted the particular page layout from the gallery, everything started to work fine.

Thanks

Senthil S