Accessing SharePoint List Data using Linq

Recently I wanted to return a SharePoint list as an List<> of a business object.

I did some scouring on the internet, as there is no point re-inventing the wheel.  But was generally disappointed with the results, as they required a lot of iterations and loops. Eric White’s blog here got me thinking, that we could do it with Linq

So here is what I did Projects my business object looks like this

Property	Data Type
ProjectOwner	string
KPI	string
SKU	string
DateRequired	DateTime?
DueDate	string

And here is the code, which expects a result set from a Sharepoint Web Service GetListItems() method.

Code Snippet

1. private static List<ProjectStatus> GetProjectStatusesFromXmlNode(XmlNode resultNode)
2.     {
3.         var list = (from r in resultNode.GetXElement().Descendants()
4.                     where r.Name.LocalName == "row"
5.                     select new ProjectStatus
6.                     {
7.                         Project = (string)r.Attribute("ows_LinkTitle"),
8.                         DateRequired = DateTime.Parse(((string)r.Attribute("ows_DateRequired"))),
9.                         DueDate = (string)r.Attribute("ows_ECRDueDate"),
10.                         SKU = (string)r.Attribute("ows_SKU"),
11.                         Status = (string)r.Attribute("ows_Status"),
12.                         ProjectOwner = (string)r.Attribute("ows_AssignedTo"),
13.                         KPI = (string)r.Attribute("ows_tKPI")
14.                     }
15.                     ).ToList();
16.         return list;
17.     }

You will also need Eric White’s extension

Code Snippet

1. public static class Extensions
2. {
3.     public static XElement GetXElement(this  XmlNode node)
4.     {
5.         XDocument xDoc = new XDocument();
6.         using (XmlWriter xmlWriter = xDoc.CreateWriter())
7.             node.WriteTo(xmlWriter);
8.         return xDoc.Root;
9.     }
10.  
11. }