SharePoint Web Properties

I like to make use of web properties to make my solutions more flexible and configurable. For instance, a client of mine likes to request automated emails from SharePoint. But experience has taught me that these emails can get overwhelming and it’s not uncommon for a customer to come back later and request that I stop the emails or reduce their frequency. If the sending and frequency of emails is hard coded into a deployed solution, then the process to change the emails involves a code change and a redeployment which takes time and always has an element of risk to it. Therefore, in cases like these I will code my solution to read web properties to drive these behaviors.

For example, I might create a web property named “Customer_SendEmails_OnOff” which can have a value of “On” or “Off”, and another one named “Customer_Email_FrequencyHours” which would have a value of the number of hours between emails, like “6”. My deployed solution reads in these property values and behaves accordingly.  If it reads the “Customer_SendEmail_OnOff” property and the value is “Off” then it sends no emails, if it is “On” then it reads the “Customer_Email_FrequencyHours” property value to determine the minimum number of hours between emails.  This way, I can use a few PowerShell commands to alter these property values and correspondingly change the behavior of my deployed solution immediately.

Here are some useful code samples related to this process:

PowerShell (add or update a web property)

# Make sure the SharePoint namespace is loaded Add-pssnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell –erroraction silentlycontinue; # Set some sample variables $yourservername = "contoso.local"; $yoursitepath = "sites/Accounting/Audits"; $yourpropname = "Customer_Email_OnOff"; $yourpropvalue = "On"; # Get an SPWeb object $web = get-spweb ("http://{0}/{1}" –f $yourservername, $yoursitepath); # Get a hashtable of all the properties on the SPWeb $props = $web.AllProperties; # Add or update the property # NOTE: Add "" to ensure PowerShell interprets value as a string if ($props.ContainsKey($yourpropname) {     $props[$yourpropname] = "" + $yourpropvalue; } else {     $props.Add($yourpropname, "" + $yourpropvalue); } # Commit updates to the SPWeb $web.update(); # Release SPWeb from memory $web.dispose();

PowerShell (iterate all existing properties)

# Make sure the SharePoint namespace is loaded Add-pssnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell –erroraction silentlycontinue; # Set some sample variables $yourservername = "contoso.local"; $yoursitepath = "sites/Accounting/Audits"; # Get an SPWeb object $web = get-spweb ("http://{0}/{1}" –f $yourservername, $yoursitepath); # Get a hashtable of all the properties on the SPWeb $props = $web.AllProperties; # Iterate the property names and values foreach ($p in $props.Keys) {     write-host –f green "PropertyName: " -nonewline;     write-host –f yellow $p;     write-host –f green "       Value: " -nonewline;     write-host –f yellow $props[$p];     write-host; } # Release SPWeb from memory $web.dispose();

PowerShell (cleanup/delete selected existing properties, full script)

param(     [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage='Target subweb for properties (e.g. http://contoso.local/sites/accounting/audits)')][System.String]$weburl) # Get our web object $web = get-spweb $weburl; # Create an empty array to hold the keys to be deleted $deleteKeys = @(); # Iterate through each property $props = [System.Collections.HashTable]$web.allproperties; foreach ($p in $props.keys) {     write-host -f green " PropertyName: " -nonewline;     write-host -f yellow $p -nonewline;     write-host -f red " <- Delete? " -nonewline;         # Read key input until "Y" or "N" pressed     do {         $key = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown");     }     until (($key.Character -eq "Y") -or ($key.Character -eq "N"))             # Echo the key pressed     write-host -f White $key.Character;             # Since we cannot update a collection we are iterating through,     # add the keys to delete into our array     if ($key.Character -eq "Y")     {         $deleteKeys += $p;     } } # Delete the property keys that were marked for deletion write-host; foreach ($propkey in $deleteKeys) {     $web.allproperties.remove($propkey);     write-host -f red "      Deleted: " -nonewline;     write-host -f yellow $propkey; } write-host; # Commit our changes $web.update(); # Release the SPWeb object from memory $web.dispose();

C# (read a property value)

// Set some sample variables string yourservername = "contoso.local"; string yoursitepath = "sites/Accounting/Audits"; string yourpropname = "Customer_Email_OnOff"; string yourpropvalue = string.Empty(); object property = null; // Access the site object using (SPSite site = new SPSite(string.Format("http://{0}/{1}", yourservername, yoursitepath))) {     // Access the web object     using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())     {         // Attempt to get the property         property = web.AllProperties[yourpropname];         // Check for null         if (property != null)         {             // Populate your variable with the value that was read             yourpropvalue = property.ToString();         }         else         {             // Handle error             throw new ArgumentNullException(yourpropname, "Property returned null.");         }    } // end using web } // end using site