Thursday, July 3, 2008

Programatically Manage Remote Documents with the FrontPage RPC Library

We've rolled up some of the ideas in previous posts about FrontPage Server Extensions RPC methods into a free CC licensed c# code library.

You can download the source code along with a demo copy of HubKey's SharePoint Client API from HubKey's website - click here for details.

Documentation about the members exposed through the HubKey.Net.FrontPageRPC.WebClient class can be found online here.

Features of the class include:


  • Upload or download many documents in one web request using the 'get documents' and 'put documents' methods.

  • True file streaming (without pre-loading to memory) for faster uploads.

  • Asynchronous methods including an asynchronous MoveDocuments method.

  • Auto detection of FrontPage dll paths and versions.



The following FrontPage Server Extensions RPC Methods are included in the library:


  • checkin document method - remotely check-in a document to source control.

  • checkout document method - remotely check-out a document from source control.

  • getDocsMetaInfo method - download document metadata to a client machine.

  • get document method - remotely download a document with metadata from a web folder or SharePoint document library. Includes an asynchronous method.

  • get documents method - programatically download documents with metadata from a web folder or SharePoint document library in one web request. Includes an asynchronous method.

  • list documents method - obtains a list of files and folders on the web or SharePoint server. Sorts the results into a tree structure to allow for use in a TreeView control.

  • list versions method - retrieves metadata for all the versions of the specified document.

  • move document method - programatically move (rename) or copy a file or folder. Allows for moves between webs or even servers by downloading and then uploading the file.

  • open service method - list service meta information.

  • put document method - programatically upload a file to a SharePoint document library or web server with meta info. Includes an asynchronous method.

  • put documents method - remotely upload files to a SharePoint document library or web server with meta info. Includes a method to asynchronously upload large files. Allows true streaming (without loading into memory first) for large file uploads.

  • remove documents method - delete files or folders from a SharePoint document library or web server.

  • setDocsMetaInfo method - update document meta data from a client computer.

  • uncheckout document method - revert a document to the version before it was checked out.

  • url to web url method - break a url into its web and web relative components.



A very brief code example follows - we'll cover an in depth sample application in a future post:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
 
namespace HubKey.Net.FrontPageRPC
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
 
            //upload a document and check it in
 
            MetaInfoCollection meta = new MetaInfoCollection();
            meta.Add("vti_title", "My Title");
            UploadDocumentResponse uploadDocumentResponse = webClient.UploadDocument("https://localhost/Docs1/test.txt", @"C:\test.txt", meta);
            if (uploadDocumentResponse.Document.IsCheckedOut)
                webClient.CheckInDocument(uploadDocumentResponse.Document, "uploaded via RPC");
 
            //move a document between servers
 
            MoveDocumentResponse moveDocumentResponse = webClient.MoveDocument("http://localhost/Docs2/test.txt", "https://remoteserver/Docs2/test.txt");
        }
    }
}