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LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the SharePoint Data Provider.
This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the SharePoint via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for SharePoint. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.
About SharePoint Data Integration
Accessing and integrating live data from SharePoint has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:
- Access data from a wide range of SharePoint versions, including Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and above, and SharePoint Online.
- Access all of SharePoint thanks to support for Hidden and Lookup columns.
- Recursively scan folders to create a relational model of all SharePoint data.
- Use SQL stored procedures to upload and download documents and attachments.
Most customers rely on CData solutions to integrate SharePoint data into their database or data warehouse, while others integrate their SharePoint data with preferred data tools, like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel.
For more information on how customers are solving problems with CData's SharePoint solutions, refer to our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.
Getting Started
See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.
- In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
- Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
- Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData SharePoint Data Source".
Enter your data source connection information.
Set the URL property to the base SharePoint site or to a sub-site. This allows you to query any lists and other SharePoint entities defined for the site or sub-site.
The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SharePoint user credentials when using SharePoint On-Premise.
If you are connecting to SharePoint Online, set the SharePointEdition to SHAREPOINTONLINE along with the User and Password connection string properties. For more details on connecting to SharePoint Online, see the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation
Below is a typical connection string:
User=myuseraccount;Password=mypassword;Auth Scheme=NTLM;URL=http://sharepointserver/mysite;SharePointEdition=SharePointOnPremise;
- If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting SharePointEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
- Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.
Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:
SharePointEntities context = new SharePointEntities();
var mycustomlistQuery = from mycustomlist in context.MyCustomList
select mycustomlist;
foreach (var result in mycustomlistQuery) {
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Name);
}
See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.