Viewpoint for Sharepoint Web Services

This is a Ruby client library for Sharepoint Web Services. If you've used my Viewpoint library for Exchange Web Services you will no doubt notice a similar feel to this library. It however cannot be a one-for-one do to the way Sharepoint splits its web services among many different services.

There is still quite a lot that needs to be done with the model layer. However, if you are a more daring personality the web service back-end is fairly complete for the web services I've chosen to expose thus far. I've also tried to document each back-end method to its fullest and to provide links to the Microsoft docs where I fall short. Documentation should be up to date on rubydoc.info.

Example Usage

Connecting

require 'viewpoint/spws'
site = 'https://myspsite/site_a/Default.aspx'
# If using GSSAPI and the 'gssapi' gem you do not need to specify a user/pass
scli = Viewpoint::SPWSClient.new(site)
# Otherwise you can specify a user/pass
scli = Viewpoint::SPWSClient.new(site, user, pass)
# You can also specify a timezone (more on this below)
scli = Viewpoint::SPWSClient.new(site, user, pass, 'Australia/Melbourne')

Getting Lists

# Retrieve all Lists for this site
lists = scli.get_lists
# Retrieve a specific list
taskl = scli.get_list('Task List')
# Retrieve a specific list by GUID
mylist = scli.get_list('{9202CCD0-2EA7-012F-0C9A-58D3859A6B00}')

Information about a List

taskl.title
# => "Task List" 
taskl.description
# => "Test Task List" 
taskl.created
# => #<DateTime: 2010-02-17T04:44:28+00:00 ((2455245j,17068s,0n),+0s,2299161j)> 
taskl.modified 
# => #<DateTime: 2012-01-09T06:03:25+00:00 ((2455936j,21805s,0n),+0s,2299161j)> 

Retrieving Items

# Retrieves an Array of Items
tasks = taskl.items

Retrieving Items with View fields

# Retrieves an Array of Items with fields & it's values
list_name = 'ListOfProjects'
view_name = scli.get_view_collection(list_name).first.name
view = scli.get_view(list_name, view_name)
scli.get_list_items('ListOfProjects', :view_name => view_name, :view_fields => view.view_fields).each do |i|
    fields_hash = i.fields
    ....
end

Creating/Renaming/Deleting a Task (other types of ListItems are forthcoming)

t1 = taskl.add_item!(:title => "New Task")
# Set and call #save!
t1.rename  'My New Task'
t1.save!
# or use the autosave method
t1.rename! "My Really New Task"
# or use an auto-saving transaction
t1.update! do |l|
  l.rename 'New Name'
  l.set_priority :low
  l.set_status :waiting
end
t1.delete!

Upload a file to a DocumentLibrary List

doclib = scli.get_list 'Personal Documents'
doclib.add_file! :file => '/path/to/file'

Download a file from a DocumentLibrary List

doclib = scli.get_list 'Some Documents'
doc = doclib.items.first
doc.content_type
# => 'text/plain'
document_contents = doc.download!
# => "This is just a text file\nDownloaded from sharepoint"

Timezones

SPWS servers return times in the zone the Sharepoint Web Front End (WFE) is configured in. For example, say I have a Sharepoint WFE located in Perth, Australia (GMT+8, no DST), with its system time set to local time. If Sharepoint wishes to express the actual time 2014-01-01T00:00:00Z, the string 2014-01-01T08:00:00Z will be returned by the web service, which is incorrect unless the timezone fragment is ignored.

To work around this, a timezone can be specified while creating the SPWS client object. This will cause the times returned by SharePoint to be converted correctly.

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