Creating  SharePoint Custom List and Content Types based on the class POCO using VS 2010

Do you want to customize a list with various column fields and various options? It is so simple by create a custom list and Content types based on the class POCO (Plain Old CLR Objects). Think about this scenario, Customer need lists for storing Project data and every list having various columns and various options. Also customer asking a simple GUI to create customizes lists. The GUI web part showed below. 

In these types of requirements, you need to create lists based on class POCO. The following steps are explaining solution.

Step 1: Create a "Project" class in VS 2010

In this class, List fields are added as Properties of Project Class. Another important thing we need to consider while defining a properties which is, these properties are going to be converted as list fields in SharePoint server. So there are some associate attributes with list fields. Ex- Field Value Required, Each field has different display name, etc.

How to associate these attributes with properties? There is an absolute way in .Net which is Reflections and Attributes

Refer -  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z919e8tw(v=vs.80).aspx

Here, I’m going to consider two associate attributes for a property, one is Boolean value of Required Field and other one is String value of Display Name. Then define a new attribute class named as SPFieldAttribute.cs

Project.cs

Step 2: Using Visual WebPart to bind the “Project”.cs

Create a visual WebPart to design GUI. Here we need to bind the class properties in field column.

To bind properties in check-box-list as fields.

Step 3: Convert Property type into SPFieldType

Before Creating a list and content type you need to convert the property type into SPFieldType. Here I use the conversion only for Text, Number and DateTime Fields. 

         String - SPFieldType.Text

         Decimal - SPFieldType.Number

         Integer - SPFieldType.Integer

         Boolean - SPFieldType.Boolean

         DateTime - SPFieldType.Boolean

         Uri -SPFieldType.URL

         Id - SPFieldType.Guid

         Xml -SPFieldType.File

Step 4: Creating a List and Content type when 'Create' button click

Now you can create the list and content type mentioned above.

creating custom list in SharePoint Server with selected properties. Before checking this you need to go down and check how to create content type by using VS 2010.

public void createList (string contentName, string listName, Type entityType,

                        List<string> selectedProperties, bool Navigation)             

  {

            // choose your site

  using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))

  {

    using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())

     {

       SPListCollection list = web.Lists;

       if (!ListExists(web, listName))

        {

         list.Add(listName, "Project List", SPListTemplateType.GenericList);

         SPList newlist = web.Lists[listName];

         newlist .ContentTypesEnabled = true;

         newlist.ContentTypes.Add(web.ContentTypes[contentName]);

         newlist.Update();

         newlist.ContentTypes.Delete(newlist.ContentTypes["Item"].Id);

         SPView view = newlist.Views["All Items"];

         SPField titleField = newlist.Fields.GetField("Title");

         SPViewFieldCollection collection = view.ViewFields;

         foreach (string property in selectedProperties)

          {

           if (newlist.Fields.ContainsField(property))

            {

             SPField Field = newlist.Fields.GetField(property);

             collection.Add(Field);

            }

            else

            {

            PropertyInfo[] properties = entityType.GetProperties();

            foreach (PropertyInfo prop in properties)

            {

            object[] attributes = prop.GetCustomAttributes(true);

            if (((SPFieldAttribute)attributes[0]).DisplayName == property)

                 {
                  SPFieldType type = ConvertToSPType(prop.PropertyType);
                  newlist.Fields.Add(((SPFieldAttribute)attributes[0]).DisplayName, type
                  ((SPFieldAttribute)attributes[0]).Required);
                  SPField Field = 
                  newlist.Fields.GetField(((SPFieldAttribute)attributes[0]).DisplayName);
                  view.ViewFields.Add(Field);

                 }

            }

            }

        }

      //Enable Navigation

       if (Navigation)

       {

        newlist.OnQuickLaunch = true;

       }

       newlist.Update();

       view.Update();

   }

  }

 }
}

creating Content Type... Here we are adding a field links to the content type.

So Creating Custom list and Content type based on the class POCO using VS 2010 is simple and having more customized way. Have a fun..:)