MOSS 2007 reading from list including attachments

The following code sample display how to read from a Sharepoint 2007 list which includes also attachments. I haven't used this code for MOSS 2010!

    

    private ICredentials GetCredentials()
    {
      return new NetworkCredential("username", "password", "domain");
    }

private DataRowCollection LoadSharepointData(string viewFields, string listName)
    {
      WebServiceRef.Lists sp = new WebServiceRef.Lists();
      sp.Url = "http://your.sharepoint.com/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx";
      sp.Credentials = GetCredentials();

      // this part is needed to receive the link to document attachments and all specified fields
      XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
      XmlNode ndQuery = xmlDoc.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element, "Query", "");
      XmlNode ndViewFields = xmlDoc.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element, "ViewFields", "");
      XmlNode ndQueryOptions = xmlDoc.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element, "QueryOptions", "");
      ndQueryOptions.InnerXml = "<IncludeAttachmentUrls>TRUE</IncludeAttachmentUrls>";
      ndViewFields.InnerXml = viewFields;
      ndQuery.InnerXml = ""; // <Query />

      XmlNode allLists = sp.GetListCollection();
      XmlNode lists = sp.GetListItems(listName, "", ndQuery, ndViewFields, "10000", ndQueryOptions, "");

      XmlNodeReader r = new XmlNodeReader(lists);
      DataSet ds = new DataSet();
      ds.ReadXml(r, XmlReadMode.Auto);

      return ds.Tables[1].Rows;
    }

WebServiceRef is a normal Web Service reference to Sharepoints List Webservice:
- http://your.sharepoint.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx

The following code blocks contain various helper classes to extract data row by row, download attachments and saving data to a local folder.

Here we have the class to download files from Sharepoint:

  public class AttchmentHandler
  {
    private static CookieContainer _cookieContainer;
    public static CookieContainer CookieContainer
    {
      get
      {
        if (_cookieContainer == null)
        {
          _cookieContainer = new CookieContainer();
        }
        return _cookieContainer;
      }
    }

    public class CookieAwareWebClient : WebClient
    {
      protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
      {
        WebRequest request = base.GetWebRequest(address);
        if (request is HttpWebRequest)
        {
          (request as HttpWebRequest).CookieContainer = AttchmentHandler.CookieContainer;
          (request as HttpWebRequest).KeepAlive = false;
        }
        return request;
      }
    }

    public string DownloadSharepointAttachment(string url, string filename, ICredentials credentials)
    {
      string localFolder = @"D:\\LocalFolder\\";
      
      // ensure we do not overwrite files with the same name.
      string uniqueGuid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
      //now the code that will download the file 
      try
      {
        using (WebClient client = new CookieAwareWebClient())
        {
          client.Credentials = credentials;
          // client.DownloadFile("http://address.com/somefile.pdf", @"c:\\temp\savedfile.pdf");
          client.DownloadFile(url, localFolder + uniqueGuid + "_-_" + filename);
          client.Dispose();
        }
        return localFolder + uniqueGuid + "_-_" + filename;
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
        Console.WriteLine("DownloadSharepointAttachment: " + ex.Message);
        return string.Empty;  
      }
    }
  }

To extract data from the DataRowCollection we have to Parse each row. For that i had to write 2 methods, one which retrieves the row and another one which extract the data from the column.

    public void ParseAndExtractRow(System.Data.DataRow data, ICredentials credentials)
    {
      this.ContentTypeId = this.GetRowValue(data, "ows_ContentTypeId");
      this.Title = this.GetRowValue(data, "ows_Title");
      this.Date = this.GetRowValue(data, "ows_Date");

      if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.Date))
        this.Date = DateTime.Now.ToString();

      DateTime.TryParse(this.Date, out this.DateTimeSorting);
      
      this.Attribute_01 = this.GetRowValue(data, "Attribute_01");
      // add here all other attributes
      // ....
      // ...
      // ...
    }

    private string GetRowValue(System.Data.DataRow data, string columnName)
    {
      try
      {
        if (data[columnName] != null)
          return data[columnName].ToString();
        else
          return string.Empty;
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
        // Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
        return string.Empty;
      }
    }

Finally a method which uses all this code:

    private List<Data> ExtractList()
    {
      string listname = "SharepointListName";

      string viewFields = "";
      DataRowCollection rows = LoadSharepointData(viewFields, listname);
      List<Data> data = new List<Data>();
      int i = 0;
      foreach (DataRow row in rows)
      {
        Data b = new Data();
        try
        {
          b.ParseAndExtractRow("Name", row, GetCredentials());
          data.Add(b);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
          Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
        }
        finally
        {
          b = null;
        }
      }
      return data;
    }

enjoy