Updating URL field using Lists.asmx

Updating URL field using SharePoint Lists Web Service (Lists.asmx)

One thing that I always complain about SharePoint 2007 web service is lack of documentation and samples.  This is the most neglected areas of SharePoint 2007.  I hope this have been improved in SharePoint 2010 especially since Microsoft has added a lot of new web services.

I had been working on a jQuery based SharePoint solution to display a modal popup to all the visitors. Apart from displaying the jQuery pop up dialogue on page load, I also had to record the history about visitor.

I had to update the list items using Lists.asmx UpdateListItems() method. 

My custom list had following fields:-

Field Name	Type	Description
Title	Text	This field is used to record the login name of logged in user
URL	URL	This field is used to store the link of a text file hosted on server.

After struggling for some time I found that updating the URL field requires some additional attention, since the SharePoint URL field value consists of two parts <URL>, <Description>. Even when working with Object Modal we have to use SPUrlFieldValue.

Please make sure to follow these guidelines while updating the URL field through web services.

-          Please notice that URL needs to include “http://” e.g. http://www.google.com/, generally we write http://www.google.com/ and think that SharePoint should be intelligent enough to append http, but this is not the case.

-          The other thing is that we need to make sure to include a space between the comma (,) and description.  So our URL field value needs to have <URL including http://>,<SPACE><Description>, e.g. http://www.google.com/, Google.

Please pay extra attention while updating/Reading the URL field (through Web Service or thorough object modal).

Here is how the element should look in your soap envelope.

<Field Name=”URL”>http:\\www.google.com, Google</Field>

Here is my soap envelop for calling the UpdateListItems() method. I have omitted the other parts of calling the web service for clarity. (You get lots of examples through Google)

                // The SOAP Envelope

var soapEnv =

"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?> \

                <soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" \

                xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\" \

                xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\"> \

                <soap:Body> \

                <UpdateListItems xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/\"> \

                <listName>Audit</listName> \

 <updates> \

<Batch OnError=\"Continue\"> \

                                                                                <Method ID=\"1\" Cmd=\"New\"> \

                                                                                                <Field Name=\"Title\">Some Text</Field> \

<Field Name=\"URL\">http://www.google.com, Google</Field> \

                                                                                </Method> \

</Batch>

                </updates> \

                </UpdateListItems> \

                  </soap:Body> \

                </soap:Envelope>";

Hope this helps someone in need J

Regards,
Sudhir Kesharwani 
MCTS - MOSS 2007 | MCTS - WSS 3.0 | MCPD-EA | MCSD.NET