Recurrence events in sharepoint

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Recurrence Data

3. Create recurrence events using SOAP

4. Create recurrence events using REST

5. Fetching recurrence events using SOAP

6. Open issues

7. Hack way to find the schema of lists in SharePoint.

8. References

1. Introduction

From the name ‘recurrence’ events, one can guess that these are the events that are created repeatedly. Recurrence events are the events that gets created repeatedly based on a recurrence pattern provided.

2. Recurrence Data

Recurrence data is the server understandable format of accepting recurrence xml. Through recurrence xml we can create daily, weekly, monthly and yearly recurrence events and this recurrence xml supports many other properties.

Example:

Daily recurrence event up to 5 occurrences

For more information on this you can refer to http://thehightechheels.blogspot.in/2012/12/sharepoint-evenet-recurrencedata-xml.html

3. Create Recurrence events using SOAP

SOAP API: UpdateListItems

End point URL: https://<site_collection>/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx

Request Type: POST

Required headers:

Header	Value
Host	<site_collection>
SOAP Action	http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/UpdateListItems
Content-Type	text/xml; charset=utf-8
Cookie	<cookie_value>

Soap request:

Below xml request creates a recurrence event daily until 12/12/2014 9:30 (UTC time)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<soap:Body>

<listName>Schedules</listName>

</Method>

</Batch>

</updates>

</UpdateListItems>

</soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>

4. Create recurrence events using REST

Request type: POST

URL: https://<site_collection>/_api/web/lists/getbytitle(‘Schedules’)/items

Required headers:

Header	Value
Cookie	Cookie_value
Content-Type	application/json;odata=verbose
Accept	application/json;odata=verbose
X-RequestDigest	Form digest value(The value that you get after hitting <site_collection/_api/contextinfo)

Request body:

Below json request creates a recurrence event monthly last Thursday, for 5 occurances

{"Duration":3600,"EventType":1,"RecurrenceData":"\u003crecurrence\u003e\u003crule\u003e\u003cfirstDayOfWeek\u003esu\u003c/firstDayOfWeek\u003e\u003crepeat\u003e\u003cmonthlyByDay th\u003d\"TRUE\" weekdayOfMonth\u003d\"last\" monthFrequency\u003d\"1\" /\u003e\u003c/repeat\u003e\u003crepeatInstances\u003e5\u003c/repeatInstances\u003e\u003c/rule\u003e\u003c/recurrence\u003e","TimeZone":2,"UID":"{63c2e5b8-84dd-4f14-8eb2-7fee412d113c}","fRecurrence":true,"AssignedToId":{"results":[24]},"AssignedToTypeIsGroupOrPerson":"Group","Description":"","EndDate":"2015-04-09T07:21:00Z","EventDate":"2014-10-30T06:21:00Z","fAllDayEvent":false, "Location":"","__metadata":{"type":"SP.Data.ClassScheduleListItem"},"Categories":"Meeting","Title":"new event","Id":0}

5. Fetching recurrence events using SOAP

Soap API: GetListItems

End point URL: https://<site_collection>/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx

Request Type: POST

Required Headers:

Header	Value
Host	<site_collection>
SOAP Action	http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/GetListItems
Content-Type	text/xml; charset=utf-8
Cookie	<cookie_value>

Soap Request:

Below request fetches all the recurrences events for the month of October as mentioned in the “CalendarDate” tag of “QueryOptions”.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<soap:Body>

<listName>Schedules</listName>

<query>

<Query>

<Where>

</Value>

</DateRangesOverlap>

</Where>

</Query>

</query>

</ViewFields>

</viewFields>

</QueryOptions>

</queryOptions>

</GetListItems>

</soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>

Mandatory Fields in the soap request which helps in fetching all the (Child) recurrence events:

We can retrieve child recurrence events for the entire year, today, week, month and now

Today - Returns events for the current day (The current day can be mentioned in CalendarDate tag of queryOptions.)

Year – Returns events that occur in the year. (Now is similar to year)

Week – Returns events for the current week (Current week date can be mentioned in the CalendarDate tag of queryOptions.).

Example:

Assuming the week starts from Sunday

1. If the date in the “CalendarDate” tag mentioned is 30/10/2014, then the recurrence events returned are in the range starts from 26/10/2014 to 31/10/2014.

2. If the date in the “CalendarDate” tag mentioned is 23/10/2014, then the recurrence events returned are in the range starts from 19/10/2014 to 25/10/2014.

Month - Returns events for the current month (Current month date should be mentioned in the “CalendarDate” tag of queryOptions).

Example:

1. If the date in the “CalendarDate” tag mentioned is 01/02/2015, then the recurrence events returned are in the range starts from 25/12/2014 to 07/02/2015.

2. If the date in the “CalendarDate” tag mentioned is 01/11/2014, then the recurrence events returned are in the range starts from 24/10/2014 to 07/12/2014

For each month, it returns all the events starting from 24^th of previous month (in case current month has 30 days) or 25^th of previous month (in case current month has 31 days) to 7^th of the next month.

6. Open issues

1. While creating recurrence events, if the time zone of the server and client are different then there would be definitely Daylight-saving time issues.

Example:

Consider the SharePoint server is in (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US and Canada) and the client device/setup is in (GMT+05:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi locations. Now try to create events which overlaps the day light saving time of the SharePoint server region you can observe the magic.

Let’s observe the below table where you can see recurrence events created on different dates. The time slot for all the event’s start date is taken as 3PM and end date is taken as 4PM. First row denotes the events start date and end date sent from client side and remaining all the rows shows the start date and end date fetched from the server and converted to client’s/device’s time zone.

Event Date:01/10/2014 – End Date: 24/12/2014		Event Date: 01/10/2014 – End Date:24/04/2015		Event Date:10/11/2014 – End Date:25/02/2015		Event Date:16/11/2014 – End Date:24/04/2015
01/10/2014 - 25/10/2014	Time at which event gets created 3PM - 3PM	01/10/2014 -25/10/2014	Time at which event gets created 3PM - 4PM	10/11/2014 - 25/02/2015	Time at which event gets created 3PM - 4PM	16/11/2014 - 28/03/2015	Time at which event gets created 3PM - 5PM
26/10/2014 - 24/12/2014	Time at which event gets created 4PM - 4PM	26/10/2014 - 28/03/2015	Time at which event gets created 4PM - 5PM			29/03/2015 - 24/04/2015	Time at which event gets created 2PM - 5PM
		29/03/2015 - 24/04/2015	Time at which event gets created 3PM - 4PM

This problem will not arise if the TimeZone of the server and client are same.

2. Not able to fetch the child recurrence events using REST web service. We are able to get only the master event, but not able to fetch the child recurrence events from server.

7. Hack way to find the schema of lists in SharePoint

Steps

1. Open the SharePoint URL in the browser and do login.

Ex: https://spsite.sharepoint.com/sites/subsite

2. Go to Settings -> site settings (right top corner).

3. Select “site libraries and lists”.

4. Select the list, for which the schema you want to check.

5. Right click on the “List name, description and navigation” and open in another tab.

6. Now in other tab see the URL , it looks something like

Ex: https:// spsite.sharepoint.com/sites/subsite /_layouts/15/ListGeneralSettings.aspx?List=%7B6AD69395-02D8-4E19-8257-73422F85872F%7D%7B6AD69395-02D8-4E19-8257-73422F85872F%7D -> this is the encoded form of the list GUID.

8. Generate this below URL by copying the GUID in the above step (6).

Ex: https:// spsite.sharepoint.com/sites/subsite /_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=ExportList&List=%7B32E4C557-009D-407A-BE37-F6D98BB1CA84%7D.

9. Copy and paste the above generated URL in the browser and press enter. This leads to downloading the owssvr.xml file owssvr.xml is our target xml schema file for a particular list. This schema files tells what are the different columns supported by the list, what is the type of the each column (i.e. text, Boolean, int16 etc.), static name and display name of the column.

NOTE: This may not work for older versions of SharePoint.

8. References

http://thehightechheels.blogspot.in/2012/12/sharepoint-evenet-recurrencedata-xml.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms912391(v=winembedded.11).aspx
http://blog.provokesolutions.com/daterangesoverlap-caml-query-element
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ms436080(v=office.15).aspx
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/7c779d99-cf58-42cd-a86e-44e88c40fcd7/recurrence-display-render-failed-when-using-listsasmx-updatelistitems-method?forum=sharepointdevelopmentlegacy
Helpful client tools to access the SharePoint server SoapUI(for windows) and REST Client extension for chrome browser.

Recurrence events in sharepoint

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Create and get recurrence events in sharepoint