Working with Sharepoint

From IronPython Cookbook

This is an abbreviated version of a blog entry by Jon Udell.

Every SharePoint list offers an “export to Spreadsheet” link which produces an XML dump. Given that export URL, here’s a recipe for reading the data (from a Windows client that’s already authenticated to the server) and converting it to a list of Python dictionaries.

import clr
clr.AddReferenceByPartialName('System.Xml')
import System.Xml
from System.Xml import *
from System.Net import WebRequest
from System.IO import StreamReader

def getDataAsListOfXmlNodes(URL):
  request = WebRequest.Create(URL)
  request.Method = "GET"
  request.UseDefaultCredentials = True
  response = request.GetResponse()
  result = StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd()
  doc = XmlDocument()
  doc.LoadXml(result)
  nsmgr = XmlNamespaceManager(doc.NameTable)
  nsmgr.AddNamespace( 'z', '#RowsetSchema')
  nodes = doc.SelectNodes ("//z:row", nsmgr )
  return nodes

def convertNodesToDicts(nodes):
  listOfDicts = []
  for node in nodes:
    attrs = node.Attributes
    dict = {}
    for a in attrs:
      dict[a.Name] = a.Value
    listOfDicts.append(dict)
  return listOfDicts

nodes = getDataAsListOfXmlNodes('http://host/sites/mysite/_vti_bin/...')
dicts = convertNodesToDicts(nodes)

To upload the merged data to the server, I used the IronPython “Dynamic Web Services Helpers” from the Web Services sample. These wrappers make it trivial to consume a WSDL-based web service.

Here, for example, is a snippet that uploads a photo using the Imaging web service:

import System, clr
clr.AddReference("DynamicWebServiceHelpers.dll")
from DynamicWebServiceHelpers import *

filename = 'jon.jpg'
ws = WebService.Load('http://HOST/_vti_bin/Imaging.asmx')
ws.UseDefaultCredentials = True
bytes = open(filename,'rb').read()
bytes = map (ord, list(bytes))
bytes = System.Array.CreateArray(System.Byte,bytes)
ws.Upload('Photos','',bytes,filename,True)

A generic service to upload any file to any document library was much harder. In the end I used a plain old HTTP PUT:

def upload(HOST,fname,rdir,rfile):
  wc = WebClient()
  wc.UseDefaultCredentials = True
  bytes = open(fname,'rb').read()
  bytes = map(ord,list(bytes))
  bytes = System.Array.CreateArray(System.Byte,bytes)
  url = '%s/%s/%s' % (HOST, rdir, rfile)
  wc.UploadData(url,'PUT',bytes)

And presto. A local file called, say, myfile.html, lands someplace like http://host/sites/mysite/MyLibrary/myfile.html.

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