What’s New in SharePoint 2016 Remote API Part 1

Technorati Tags: ECM,SP2016,REST

With the release of SharePoint 2016 Beta 2 last month I decided to start digging into what are some of the new features in the remote API. This will be the first in a series of posts about the new capabilities in the SharePoint 2016 remote API. Many of the new features have already shown up in earlier releases of SharePoint Online but now are available in SharePoint On-Premises. However, there are some very cool things showing up in the REST for On-Premises. Here is a short list:

• File Management
• REST Batching
• Document Sets
• Compliance
• Search Analytics
• Work Management
• Project Server
• Web Sharing

In this post I will give you examples of how to use the new SP.MoveCopyUtil class with REST and a refresher on using REST batching.

Remember having to use SPFile and SPFolder to move and copy files?

To move or copy files and folders the SharePoint object model provided the MoveTo and the CopyTo methods to shuffle files around in the same web. These methods were never exposed in the remote API in SharePoint 2013. These are now exposed in the remote API in SharePoint 2016. This is great news but when it came to copying or moving files easily it is still cumbersome having to get the file or folder and call the method. If you are working with URLs like in search results it would be nice to just tell the server to take the source URL and move or copy it to another URL.

Enter the SP.MoveCopyUtil class

The new Microsoft.SharePoint.MoveCopyUtil class can be used with CSOM, JSOM or REST. It has four methods CopyFile, MoveFile, CopyFolder and MoveFolder. Each method takes two arguments the source URL and the destination URL. All the methods are limited to moving and copying in the same site. The class and method are static so the method is called with dot notation rather than with a forward slash. Very easy. Below is an example of a REST call to copy a file from a SharePoint hosted Add-In.

function copyFile() {

    var hostweburl = decodeURIComponent(getQueryStringParameter('SPHostUrl'));
    var appweburl = decodeURIComponent(getQueryStringParameter('SPAppWebUrl'));
    var restSource = appweburl + "/_api/SP.MoveCopyUtil.CopyFile";

    $.ajax(
    {
        'url': restSource,
        'method': 'POST',
        'data': JSON.stringify({
            'srcUrl': 'http://win2012r2dev/sites/SecondDev/Shared%20Documents/wp8_protocol.pdf',
            'destUrl': 'http://win2012r2dev/sites/SecondDev/testdups/wp8_protocol.pdf'
        }),
        'headers': {
            'accept': 'application/json;odata=verbose',
            'content-type': 'application/json;odata=verbose',
            'X-RequestDigest': $('#__REQUESTDIGEST').val()
        },
        'success': function (data) {
            var d = data;
        },
        'error': function (err) {
            alert(JSON.stringify(err));
        }
    }
     );

}

Make Batch Rest Requests in SharePoint 2016

Office 365 has had the ability to to batch multiple REST commands into one request for a while. I have a post about this here SharePoint REST Batching Made Easy.This feature is now available in SharePoint 2016. With the new ability to move and copy files and folders with the new SP.MoveCopyUtil class I thought it would be a good candidate to use to demonstrate the new batch request feature. The code below uses the RestBatchExecutor code available on GitHub to batch together multiple requests to copy a file using SP.MoveCopyUtil.CopyFile. Basically if builds an array of javascript objects like:

{'srcUrl': 'http://win2012r2dev/sites/SecondDev/Shared%20Documents/file.pdf', 'destUrl': 'http://win2012r2dev/sites/SecondDev/testdups/file.pdf' }

Then we loop through the array setting the payload property and load the request into the batch. I tried this with 50 different URLs and it executed one REST request and copied all 50. Very nice.

function batchCopy() {
    appweburl = decodeURIComponent(getQueryStringParameter('SPAppWebUrl'));
    hostweburl = decodeURIComponent(getQueryStringParameter('SPHostUrl'));

    var commands = [];
    var batchExecutor = new RestBatchExecutor(appweburl, { 'X-RequestDigest': $('#__REQUESTDIGEST').val() });

    batchRequest = new BatchRequest();
    batchRequest.endpoint = appweburl + "/_api/SP.MoveCopyUtil.CopyFile";
    batchRequest.verb = "POST";

    var mappings = buildUrlMappings();

    $.each(mappings, function(k, v){
        batchRequest.payload = v;
        commands.push({ id: batchExecutor.loadChangeRequest(batchRequest), title: 'Rest batch copy file' });
    });

   
    batchExecutor.executeAsync().done(function (result) {
        var d = result;
        var msg = [];
        $.each(result, function (k, v) {
            var command = $.grep(commands, function (command) {
                return v.id === command.id;
            });
            if (command.length) {
                msg.push("Command--" + command[0].title + "--" + v.result.status);
            }
        });

        alert(msg.join('\r\n'));

    }).fail(function (err) {
        alert(JSON.stringify(err));
    });

}

More SharePoint 2016 Remote API Features

The new SP.MoveCopyUtil class is very handy if you are dealing with URLs and don’t want to create a new SP.File every time you want to move or copy it. The same goes for folders. The class is very easy to use and works great with the new REST batching that is available. This is just the tip of the iceberg on the new remote API features. My next post will be about the new exposed methods on DocumentSets.