Kit Menke's Blog

Using undefined in JavaScript

Kit — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:37:52 +0000

Working with JavaScript can definitely be painful, but I always love stumbling across interesting and strange features of the language. I just found wtfjs.com which led me to these two answers on stackoverflow.

The first answer made me realize that undefined is not a keyword in JavaScript; it actually is a type that also happens to have a global variable with the same name. This means that you can change the value of undefined (the global variable) to be something else.

>>> typeof undefined === "undefined"
true
>>> undefined = 42
42
>>> typeof undefined === "undefined"
false

And, like shown above, the correct way to check if a variable is undefined is by using typeof.

>>> var myVariable;
>>> typeof myVariable
"undefined"
>>> myVariable = 1;
1
>>> typeof myVariable
"number"

The second feature, is something that I often used but had no idea why it actually worked: void(0).

<a href="javascript:void(0)">do nothing</a>

According to Breton’s excellent explanation, void is actually a prefix operator. When you prefix any expression with void, the result evaluates to undefined. So, using our correct method for checking undefined above you get this in the console:

>>> typeof void(0) === "undefined"
true

Awesome!

Wrap ListViewWebPart Column Headers

Kit — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:55:58 +0000

I recently got asked if it was possible wrap the column headers in a list view web part. The user had a WebPart with quite a few columns with long names and was trying to prevent the page from scrolling left to right.

What we needed to do was wrap the column header so that it fit more to the data in the grid.

The solution is relatively simple to implement; all you need is a Content Editor Webpart at the bottom of the page somewhere with the following JavaScript in it:

A Simple AJAX App using SharePoint Web Services

Kit — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:08:18 +0000

In this era of Web 2.0 web applications, I think it was only a matter of time before I needed to investigate how I could apply AJAX to SharePoint. With a little JavaScript and SharePoint’s web services, you can build fancy apps that can easily be dropped into a document library. And after reading Glen Cooper’s blog post on the subject, I figured it was something definitely worth investigating.

I also took this opportunity to improve a process I have to do all the time: what are the internal column names in a list? To get the list information, I built a simple AJAX app that consumes the Lists.asmx web service. Please keep in mind that this code will have be uploaded into SharePoint in order to work (a document library will work) and will not run from your desktop.

Step 0: HTML for user input and displaying results

Since I will be calling the GetList method on Lists.asmx, I will need two parameters from the user: Site URL and List Name. Site URL gives the web service context to a particular web and List Name should be a list within that web. I also specify a DIV which is where I will display the list’s information.


   
      List Information
      Site URL:

      Example: http://server/sites/SiteCollection/SubSite
      List Name:

      Example: Images
      
   



   (results)

Now that we have our HTML form, we can work on the JavaScript code.

Step 1: Building a SOAP Message

To communicate with the web service, we need to use SOAP. Luckily, Glen has already created a very handy class for taking care of these operations. It is also reusable so it will come in handy for other web service calls. I tweaked his code a little bit and then put it into SoapUtils.js (also, please note this code depends on Prototype.JS):

/*
SoapUtils.js
Author: Glen Cooper

http://blog.glenc.net/2007/04/20/calling-sharepoint-web-services-from-javascript/

*/
var Soap = {
   createEnvelope: function(action, ns, parameters) {
      var soap = '';
      soap += '';
      soap += '  ';
      soap += '    <' + action + ' xmlns="' + ns + '">';
      soap += Soap.__parseParameters(parameters);
      soap += '    ';
      soap += '  ';
      soap += '';
      return soap;
   },

   __parseParameters: function(parameters) {
      var params = "";
      if (typeof parameters == 'object') {
         // check if we were provided an array or an object
         if (typeof parameters.push == 'function') {
            for (var i = 0, length = parameters.length; i < length; i += 2) {
               params += "<" + parameters[i] + ">" + parameters[i+1] + "";
            }
         }
         else {
            $H(parameters).each(function(pair) {
               params += "<" + pair.key + ">" + pair.value + "";
            });
         }
      }
      return params;
   }
}

This utility class handles a lot of the grunt work for creating the SOAP message. It makes it pretty easy to grab the input, build the message, and then send it to the server. Next, I need to give it the specifics it needs to build the actual message. This is all contained inside my Execute function:

function Execute() {
   $('result').innerHTML = "Executing..."

   var txtSiteUrl = $('txtSiteURL').getValue();
   var txtListName = $('txtListName').getValue();

   // build parameter object
   var parameters =
   {
      listName: txtListName
   }

   // create soap envelope
   // can find the action and namespace from the WSDL page
   // ex: http://servername/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx?op=GetList
   var soap = Soap.createEnvelope(
     "GetList", // action
     "http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/", // namespace
     parameters);

   if (!txtSiteUrl.endsWith('/')) {
      txtSiteUrl += '/';
   }
   txtSiteUrl += '_vti_bin/Lists.asmx';

   // call web service
   new Ajax.Request(
     txtSiteUrl,
     {
       method: "post",
       contentType: "text/xml",
       postBody: soap,
       onSuccess: ajaxSuccess,
       onFailure: ajaxError
     });
}

The Execute method is then bound to the “Get Columns” button on page load:

Event.observe(window,'load',function(){
   Event.observe('btnExecute','click',Execute);
});

Step 2: Parsing the Web Service’s XML response

At this point, we are ready to handle the response from the web service. Unfortunately, parsing XML using JavaScript was not exactly the easiest experience. I haven’t found an easy way to do it, so if you have any ideas, please let me know in the comments.

In any case, if an error occurs, I simply want to print the error message:

function ajaxError(result) {
   Element.insert($('result'), {bottom:'' + result.responseText + ''});
}

A success message is a lot more complicated since we want to extract information out of the returned XML. In fact, if you look at the entire response from the webservice after calling GetList, the returned result for a simple Images library is something like 1100 lines of XML. The majority of this is taken up by the full description of each column in the list. There is a LOT of junk that we are simply going to be skipping over. For sanity sake, I’m not going to post the entire response, but useful snippets of interest.

Overall, the response will look something like:


  
    
      
        ... all fields are listed here in  nodes
      
      
         ...
      
      
         ...

Notice, the List node contains a LOT of useful information. Once we have that node, we can display a lot of it using this function:

function addListInformation(nodeList) {
   var listTitle = nodeList.attributes.getNamedItem('Title').value;
   var listImg = nodeList.attributes.getNamedItem('ImageUrl').value;
   var listDesc = nodeList.attributes.getNamedItem('Description').value;
   var listCount = nodeList.attributes.getNamedItem('ItemCount').value;
   var listViewURL = nodeList.attributes.getNamedItem('DefaultViewUrl').value;

   var output = ''
   output += '';
   output += '';
   output += ' ' + listTitle + ' # of items = ' + listCount + ' ' + listDesc + '';
   Element.insert('result', {bottom:output});
}

Also, since we are interested in the internal column names, we want information about each of the fields. All of the columns are listed inside the Fields node (see above). A lot of them have attributes similar to below:

So, for each of the Field nodes, we are interested in the StaticName and DisplayName attributes:

function addFieldInformation(nodes) {
   if (nodes.length <= 0) {
      Element.insert(container, {bottom:"No results to display."});
      return;
   }

   var output = '';
   for (i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) {
      var attr = nodes[i].attributes;
      // there are a lot more attributes, but right now only care about the Display Name
      // and the internal name
      var displayName = attr.getNamedItem('DisplayName').value;
      var internalName = attr.getNamedItem('StaticName').value;
      output += '';
   }
   output += 'Display Name Internal Name
' + displayName + ' ' + internalName + '';

   Element.insert('result', {bottom:output});
}

Display Name	Internal Name
' + displayName + '	' + internalName + '

And finally, to bring it all together, we are calling these functions inside our success function:

function ajaxSuccess(result) {
   // we're going to be adding HTML so reset this to be empty
   $('result').innerHTML = "";

   // put it in xmlDoc to make it shorter
   var xmlDoc = result.responseXML;

   // get the List node and show some of the attributes that are interesting
   addListInformation(xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("List")[0]);
   // then select the Fields node and get all of its children (Field nodes)
   addFieldInformation(xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("Fields")[0].childNodes);
}

All together now:







List Information - Kit's Utilities

















   
      
         List Information
         Site URL:

         Example: http://server/sites/SiteCollection/SubSite
         List Name:

         Example: Images
         
      
   

   
      (results)

Autopopulate a SharePoint Form from URL

Kit — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:28:02 +0000

August 20, 2010 Update: The code below has moved to be part of a bigger library… check out SPUtility.js on CodePlex!

Original Post:
This post builds off of my previous post about making fields read only. In this case, I needed to autopopulate the NewForm.aspx with a value that gets passed to the form via URL parameters.

In this case, the URL that gets passed in is something like:

/Lists/ProjectTasks/NewForm.aspx?projectID=523

I wanted to take the ‘projectID’ URL parameter and autopopulate my Project ID field with this value.

Additionally, we will make this field Read Only so that they can’t change the value. Lastly, do this all without SharePoint designer or C# code.

Stick the following code in a Content Editor on your NewForm.aspx or EditForm.aspx. (Remember you can get to edit mode by appending ToolPaneView=2 on the end, like NewForm.aspx?ToolPaneView=2)

Depends on Prototype.js.

Editing in SharePoint’s SPGridView

Kit — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:36:28 +0000

The goal of this post is to provide an easy to understand example of how to enable editing in an SPGridView. In this case, my datasource of choice is a SharePoint list.

The way that I chose to implement editing in an SPGridView involved two classes:

SimpleLogic – handles query and update operations
SimpleSPGrid – handles all of the setup for the ObjectDataSource and the SPGridView

The main advantage for splitting the two classes is to separate all of the business logic into one class. Ideally, you should be able to completely change how the SimpleLogic class retrieves/updates data without changing the SimpleSPGrid code.

The Setup

In this example, our logic class is retrieving and updating data in a SharePoint list. My SharePoint list had three main columns: Title (text), Region (choice), and Total Sales (currency).

Now that I had some data to read from and write to, I was ready to create my logic class.

The SimpleLogic Class

The goal for the logic class was to expose all of the operations the gridview would need in order to read or update data:

public DataTable Select()
How do I get the data?
public List GetColumns()
How do I display the data?
public void Update(Dictionary data)
How do I update the data?

public class SimpleLogic
{
const string LIST_NAME = "Example Sales Data";
readonly string[] LIST_COLUMNS = null;
readonly string VIEW_FIELDS = string.Empty;
readonly string[] DATA_KEY_NAMES = null;
private SPWeb _currentWeb;

public SimpleLogic(SPWeb currentWeb)
{
_currentWeb = currentWeb;

DATA_KEY_NAMES = new string[1];
DATA_KEY_NAMES[0] = "ID";
LIST_COLUMNS = new string[4];
LIST_COLUMNS[0] = "ID";
LIST_COLUMNS[1] = "Title";
LIST_COLUMNS[2] = "Region";
LIST_COLUMNS[3] = "Total_x0020_Sales";
VIEW_FIELDS = GetViewFields(LIST_COLUMNS);
}

public string[] GetDataKeyNames()
{
return DATA_KEY_NAMES;
}

public List<BoundField> GetColumns()
{
List<BoundField> fields = new List<BoundField>();
fields.Add(GetBoundField("ID"));
// we don't want the ID field to be editable so we make it readonly
// readonly will mean a textbox to edit it will not be shown
fields[0].ReadOnly = true;
fields.Add(GetBoundField("Title"));
fields.Add(GetBoundField("Region"));
fields.Add(GetBoundField("Total_x0020_Sales"));
return fields;
}

private BoundField GetBoundField(string name)
{
// do not use SPBoundField (will not work with editing)
BoundField bf = new BoundField();
bf.HeaderText = name;
bf.DataField = name;
return bf;
}

public DataTable Select()
{
SPQuery q = new SPQuery();
q.ViewFields = VIEW_FIELDS;
q.Query = "";
SPList list = _currentWeb.Lists[LIST_NAME];
SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(q);
return items.GetDataTable();
}

private string GetViewFields(string[] columns)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (string field in columns)
{
sb.AppendFormat("", field);
}
return sb.ToString();
}

public void Update(Dictionary<string, string> data)
{
SPList list = _currentWeb.Lists[LIST_NAME];
int id = Int32.Parse(data["ID"]);
SPListItem item = list.GetItemById(id);
item["Title"] = data["Title"];
item["Region"] = data["Region"];
item["Total_x0020_Sales"] = data["Total_x0020_Sales"];
item.Update();
}
}

DISCLAIMER: When actually implementing the class above, you will probably need to add some sort of error handling. In order to provide a simpler example, the error handling has been omitted.

Once our logic class is functioning correctly, we can work on hooking it up to an SPGridView.

The SimpleSPGrid Class

The SimpleSPGrid class contains most of the guts that will probably be different to you. The first thing to notice is that it takes our SimpleLogic class as a parameter. This allows us to instantiate our logic class beforehand with any parameters that are needed, and then pass it into SimpleSPGrid to use.

public class SimpleSPGrid : CompositeControl
{
private SimpleLogic _logic;
private ObjectDataSource _gridDS;
private SPGridView _grid;

public SimpleSPGrid(SimpleLogic logic)
{
_logic = logic;
}

protected sealed override void CreateChildControls()
{
const string GRIDID = "grid";
const string DATASOURCEID = "gridDS";

_gridDS = new ObjectDataSource();
_gridDS.ID = DATASOURCEID;
_gridDS.TypeName = typeof(SimpleLogic).AssemblyQualifiedName;
_gridDS.ObjectCreating += new ObjectDataSourceObjectEventHandler(gridDS_ObjectCreating);
_gridDS.SelectMethod = "Select";

// to handle updates from the grid
_gridDS.UpdateMethod = "Update";
_gridDS.Updating += new ObjectDataSourceMethodEventHandler(gridDS_Updating);

this.Controls.Add(_gridDS);

// create our grid
_grid = new SPGridView();
_grid.ID = GRIDID;
_grid.DataSourceID = _gridDS.ID; // link the grid to the ObjectDataSource
_grid.AutoGenerateColumns = false; // must be false

// generally the primary key field(s)
// these will be passed as an input parameter
_grid.DataKeyNames = _logic.GetDataKeyNames();

// add the column that will allow editing
CommandField command = new CommandField();
command.ShowEditButton = true;
_grid.Columns.Add(command);

// add all of the columns in the datatable to the grid
// any column that is not readonly will be passed as an input parameter
foreach (BoundField column in _logic.GetColumns())
{
_grid.Columns.Add(column);
}

this.Controls.Add(_grid);
}

///

/// Consolidates all of the InputParameters (values from the grid)
/// into one dictionary of values to send to the update method
///

void gridDS_Updating(object sender, ObjectDataSourceMethodEventArgs e)
{
Dictionary<string, string> data = new Dictionary<string, string>();

foreach (DictionaryEntry entry in e.InputParameters)
{
string value = entry.Value == null ? null : entry.Value.ToString();
data.Add(entry.Key.ToString(), value);
}

e.InputParameters.Clear();
e.InputParameters.Add("data", data);
}

///

/// When the ObjectDataSource is created, hook it up to the Logic class
/// (so that it uses the Logic class to make the Select, Update... calls)
///

private void gridDS_ObjectCreating(object sender, ObjectDataSourceEventArgs e)
{
e.ObjectInstance = _logic;
}
}

Wrap up

Now that all the hard work is done, we are ready to use the classes inside our web part. Inside the CreateChildControls of your webpart you would have the following code ( even though we have an SPWeb here, it should NOT be disposed):

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
SimpleLogic logic = new SimpleLogic(SPControl.GetContextWeb(Context));
SimpleSPGrid grid = new SimpleSPGrid(logic);
this.Controls.Add(grid);
}

This will produce the following grid!

And clicking edit…

Relative Dates in JavaScript

Kit — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 03:37:41 +0000

I was developing an input form for a search when I came across the need to allow the user to filter items using a date range. I had two input boxes where the user could enter a start and an end date. For some of the most common date ranges, I decided to create links that could be clicked to auto-populate the start/end date textboxes. For example, searching for items that were created last week or last month. Using JavaScript’s Date object, I was able to put together some nice examples.

First, the setup. I needed two text boxes to hold the start/end dates and then wanted the user to click links to auto-populate them with some relative dates:

Today

Start Date:
End Date:

Then to figure out how to calculate the dates using JavaScript. Here are the examples.. starting out easy with Today‘s date. When creating a new Date object, it is automatically initialized to the current day and time:

var today = new Date();
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(today);
txtEndDate.value = txtStartDate.value;

Yesterday is Today -1:

var yesterday = new Date();
yesterday.setDate(yesterday.getDate()-1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(yesterday);
txtEndDate.value = txtStartDate.value;

This Week is a little more complicated. getDate() returns the day of the month (1-31) and getDay() returns the day of the week (0-6).

var thisWeek = new Date();
// set the date to most recent Sunday
thisWeek.setDate(thisWeek.getDate() - thisWeek.getDay());
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(thisWeek);
// set the date to last week's Saturday
thisWeek.setDate(thisWeek.getDate() + 6);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(thisWeek);

Last Week is pretty similar to this week. I think the hardest part for me is the function names getDate and getDay. I always was getting them confused and thought that they should have been more specific… like getWeekDay and getMonthDay or something.

var lastWeek = new Date();
// set the date to last week's Sunday
lastWeek.setDate(lastWeek.getDate() - lastWeek.getDay() - 7);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastWeek);
// set the date to last week's Saturday
lastWeek.setDate(lastWeek.getDate() + 6);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastWeek);

The main difficulty I had with This Month was how to figure out the last day of the month. Luckily, if you can figure it out by selecting the first of next month and then subtracting a day.

var lastDayOfThisMonth = new Date();
// go to the next month
var nextMonth = lastDayOfThisMonth.getMonth() + 1;
lastDayOfThisMonth.setMonth(nextMonth);
// go to the last day of the previous month (this month)
lastDayOfThisMonth.setDate(0);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisMonth);
lastDayOfThisMonth.setDate(1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisMonth);

Notice how Last Month is actually easier because you can simply move backwards a month.

var lastDayOfLastMonth = new Date(); // now
lastDayOfLastMonth.setDate(0); // last day of last month            
// set the end date first
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastMonth);
lastDayOfLastMonth.setDate(1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastMonth);

The only issue I had with This Year was I didn’t realize that setMonth(int) took a zero based month: 0 = January … 11 = December.

var lastDayOfThisYear = new Date();
lastDayOfThisYear.setMonth(11); // December
lastDayOfThisYear.setDate(31);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisYear);
lastDayOfThisYear.setMonth(0); // January
lastDayOfThisYear.setDate(1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisYear);

Finally, to figure out Last Year I took advantage of the setFullYear(year,month,day) function to subtract one year.

var lastDayOfLastYear = new Date();
// -1 means last year
// 11 means December and there always is a 31st of december
var thisYear = lastDayOfLastYear.getFullYear();
lastDayOfLastYear.setFullYear(thisYear - 1, 11, 31);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastYear);
lastDayOfLastYear.setMonth(0); // January
lastDayOfLastYear.setDate(1); // 1st
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastYear);

See all of it together in the complete demo.

References:

Turning SharePoint SPAuditEntry Update into Create

Kit — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:42:47 +0000

If you’ve done any work with SharePoint and SPAuditEntry, you may have noticed the distinct lack of Create event. Instead, two Update events are created which means some extra processing is required.

For example, after uploading “NewTxtFile.txt” into a document library inside one of my sites, the following Audit Entries showed up.

>
    >9a70a244-1baa-4229-84ac-3f06bccecc7f>
    >f332a82b-17d1-4c31-9726-5259769f2695>
    >List>
    >2>
    >sites/MySiteCollection/MySubsite/Documents>
    >Url>
    >1/22/2010 9:17:06 PM>
    >Update>
    >SharePoint>
    >NewTxtFile.txt>
>

>
    >9a70a244-1baa-4229-84ac-3f06bccecc7f>
    >19ce9254-93bc-41ff-9da1-ba5e994bf1c1>
    >Document>
    >2>
    >sites/MySiteCollection/MySubsite/Documents/NewTxtFile.txt>
    >Url>
    >1/22/2010 9:17:06 PM>
    >Update>
    >SharePoint>
>

Notice the “Occurred” DateTime properties are the same as well the Event. Also, one is an Update for the List and one is an Update for the Document. Using this information, you can then simplify the duplicate Update events into one Create event!

Update 08/18/2010:

Looks like Thomas found an easier method for determing Create events! I did some more research after seeing his comment and found the following:

Creates:
- Document Audit Entry: EventData is null
- List Audit Entry: EventData contains document filename
Edits:
- Document Audit Entry: EventData contains version information

Here are the two events generated during a Create:

>
    >9a70a244-1baa-4229-84ac-3f06bccecc7f>
    >ca98cdba-c44f-4318-bb44-a46bd674d80f>
    >Document>
    >19>
    >sites/MySiteCollection/MySubsite/Documents/Test Document.doc>
    >Url>
    >8/18/2010 2:21:43 PM>
    >Update>
    >SharePoint>
>

>
    >9a70a244-1baa-4229-84ac-3f06bccecc7f>
    >28efdcba-4639-445f-80b6-31964a9f95f1>
    >List>
    >19>
    >sites/MySiteCollection/MySubsite/Documents>
    >Url>
    >8/18/2010 2:21:43 PM>
    >Update>
    >SharePoint>
    >Test Document.doc>
>

Here is the event that was generated after an Edit:

Thanks Thomas!

AllowUnsafeUpdates and ValidateFormDigest

Kit — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:34:41 +0000

Add this to the list of things every SharePoint developer should know (up there with disposing SPWebs and SPSites).

In general…

Don’t update SharePoint objects on a GET request
Call SPUtility.ValidateFormDigest() before anything on a POST request

Here are the two links to read:

Internal column names: Site Columns vs List Columns

Kit — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:02:32 +0000

Two identical custom lists with the same columns. The only difference is that one list has columns added using Site Columns and the other list had columns added directly to the list. The same? Not so much…

Steps to repro this issue:

Create a site column named “A,B-C/D” (single line of text or any other type)
Create a list named “Special Characters (Site)”
Add the Site Column “A,B-C/D” to your “Special Characters (Site)” list.
Create another list named “Special Characters (List)”
Create a column in “Special Characters (List)” named the same as your site column (“A,B-C/D”)

Results:

	Column Added Using Site Column	Column Created Directly in the List
Column Name	A,B-C/D	A,B-C/D
Internal Column Name	A_x002C_B_x002d_C_x002F_D	A_x002c_B_x002d_C_x002f_D

The internal column names are DIFFERENT.

… but only for some of the characters. Looks like the comma and the slash are different but not the dash.

Updating choice fields via SharePoint Web Services

Kit — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:06:40 +0000

May 20, 2010 Update
This post is about using a C# console app to update choice fields via SharePoint web services. If you are looking for more information on how SharePoint web services can be called via JavaScript, check out my post on building a simple SharePoint AJAX app.

My problem started with a simple change to a site column. I had originally created a Country field with the following values:

US
Canada

After a change in requirements, the new values for the field were:

Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Ireland
United States

After updating the site column, I then needed to update the hundreds of items in the list to use “United States” instead of “US”. Instead of updating hundreds of items manually, I decided to write a small web services console app. (I was also not able to update it in datasheet… due to content approval maybe???)

However, I quickly ran into problems when attempting to update the multi-select choice field.

The Setup:

My site column was defined with each choice for Country in alphabetical order:

Symptoms:

The symptoms of my problem were very strange. After running my app successfully, it seemed as if my updates were simply ignored by the server.

The item is successfully updated using the Lists.asmx (it even creates a new version!)
The item does not show the updated value for your multi-select choice field in the UI.

The Code:

Here is the very simple code that is creating the update message:

private static void AddCountryUpdate(ref StringBuilder sb, int count, string id, string newCountry)
{
    sb.AppendFormat("", count);
    sb.AppendFormat("{0}", id);
    sb.AppendFormat("{0}", newCountry);
    sb.Append("");
}

Calling the following code to update:

XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
System.Xml.XmlElement elBatch = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Batch");
elBatch.InnerXml = sb.ToString();
XmlNode ndReturn = list.ListWebSvc.UpdateListItems(listName, elBatch);

The Results:

Attempting to update Country to be “;#United States;#Canada;#” resulted in a ”success” response (error code of 0×00000000) even when the update was NOT successful:

 
  0x00000000

Viewing this in the UI still shows the old value:

However, only after the values are in order, “;#Canada;#United States;#”, will the update actually happen.


  0x00000000

Viewing this in the UI shows the updated value:

Notice it still created a version 6.0 and 7.0:

Conclusion:

When updating a multi-select choice field using SharePoint’s Lists.asmx web service, the order of the choices in the update message are important. If they are out of order, it will not update.