<reposted from May 18, 2004> 

A technique we used extensively in STS still applies to WSS: How to get data from your SharePoint lists in XML format. It's actually quite simple, and you don't need to use web services to get it.

WSS supports a number of protocols to interact with the data. SOAP and WEBDAV immediately come to mind for most of you, but you may be forgetting the elusive URL Protocol (GET). Luckily for you, it's simple to use, and returns data in the MS-standard rowset stream format.

Rather than go into a bunch of detail, let's put ourselves to work, shall we? Follow along with these steps, and you'll be pleased with the results, I'm certain.

1. Determine the GUID of a list whose data you need in XML.
• Navigate to the allitems.aspx view of the list in question
• Click the "Modify Settings and Columns" link on the left side
• Copy the List's GUID (including curly braces) from the address bar
2. Construct the URL to retrieve the list's data in XML format (it's case sensitive, be careful!)
   • The requested object is http://servername/sitename/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll
   • The object will expect three parameters: Cmd, List and XMLDATA (case sensitive)
   • Since we're displaying items (in XML format), the value of the Cmd parameter should be Display
   • We want to grab the list whose GUID we determined in step one; the value of the List parameter is this GUID (including curly braces)
   • Of course, we want XML data to be returned; the value of the XMLDATA parameter will be TRUE
   • Putting this together, we get a URL that looks like this:
   • http://server/site/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={E1D9FED5-2531-413F-8C0F-CAA5C6280E51}&XMLDATA=TRUE
3. Sit back and marvel at how easy it is to get a rowset out of SharePoint without using the Object Model or the Web Services. You can point a Data View web part to this URL and grab data from another SharePoint site without adding the whole site to your DV catalog listing.

You may find that it doesn't return EVERY field. That's right: It returns fields that are defined in the default "allitems" view of that particular list. If you want more fields, you have two choices:

1. Modify the allitems.aspx view to show more fields (easy)
2. Pass an additional URL parameter, View, with the GUID value of the view whose fields you want to return (a little more involved/tedious)

Did you like this tip? Comment!