Populating form data from SharePoint List Views
The SharePoint list data connection in InfoPath is a great declarative way to bring in data from a SharePoint list, but it does have some limitations. For those willing to put in a little extra effort, there’s much more that can be done with SharePoint lists: you can bind to views based on these lists. Here are the steps for creating the connection to a list view.
First, let’s get the URL:
1. Navigate to the SharePoint site that contains the list, for example:
http://contoso/sites/sales/Sales%20Contacts/Forms/AllItems.aspx
2. Go to “Modify settings and columns”
3. Copy the List={GUID} portion of the URL and paste this into a buffer like a Notepad window.
4. In Notepad, create the following URL (the blue portion us taken from the step 1 URL, and the red portion must be added.
http://contoso/sites/sales/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={GUID}&XMLDATA=TRUE
This will return an xml file that can be used in an XML file data connection, as if it came from a file system. After this, you can use the URL as the location of an XML data file when creating a data connection.
Two caveats:
- Form users must have read access to the SharePoint list.
- During creation of the data connection, do not include the file in the form template, as it should be dynamically generated from the SharePoint list.
Some tricks:
1. When you’re in “Modify settings and columns,” if you click on one of the views in the list at the bottom, you should note that the URL is “enriched” with &View={ANOTHER_GUID}. If you would prefer to use the columns from that view, you should similarly enhance the URL you use above.
2. You can also use the url to filter data rows based on column values. For example:
http://contoso/sites/sales/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={115BC7B7-0A82-403E-9327-F3C73E6D37F3}&XMLDATA=TRUE&FilterField1=xd__x007b_52AE1EF8_x002d_28E7_x002d_4CE4_x002d_AE23_x002d_54E23E80DDB5_x007d_&FilterValue1=Approved
Note: be sure to remove the “ows_” from the beginning of the FilterField ID.
With this filter, the XML file returned will be filtered to only display those projects that have been approved. Without the green portion, you would see all the projects.
In order to populate other fields with data from WSS, you create the secondary data source just like above, then in form code or script, you can use GetDOM(“dataSource”) and walk the DOM normally, updating the main DOM as appropriate.
Ed Essey
Program Manager
