I had an assignment to create some functionality to fetch information from various SharePoint Lists to perform some operations. Everything was working fine, until I have been asked to make it parameterized based on Content Types, which can be supplied by Admin/Content Author via Web Part Properties. Below is the Sample Code Snippet:
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.ID))
{
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
{
SPSiteDataQuery query = new SPSiteDataQuery();
query.ViewFields = @"
query.Webs = @"
DataTable dataTable = web.GetSiteData(query);
GridView1.DataSource = dataTable;
GridView1.DataBind();
}
}
So, I modified my code as follows:
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.ID))
{
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
{
SPSiteDataQuery query = new SPSiteDataQuery();
query.ViewFields = @"
query.Query = @"query.Query%20%3D%20%40%22%20%20%20%3CWhere%3E%0A%20%3CEq%3E%0A%20%20%20%3CFieldRef%20Name%3D%27ContentType%27%20%2F%3E%0A%20%20%20%3CValue%20Type%3D%27Text%27%3EContact%3C%2FValue%3E%0A%20%3C%2FEq%3E%0A%3C%2FWhere%3E%22%3B";
query.Webs = @"
DataTable dataTable = web.GetSiteData(query);
GridView1.DataSource = dataTable;
GridView1.DataBind();
}
}
This change was based on the new requirement but after that I started getting the following error:
------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException was unhandled by user code
HResult=-2146232832
Message=The property Query contains an invalid value.
Source=Microsoft.SharePoint
ErrorCode=-2146232832
StackTrace:
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSiteDataQuery.ReportInvalidProperty(Exception ex, String strProperty)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSiteDataQuery.ValidateXmlProperty(String strXml, String strPropertyName, String strTag, String strTag2, String strTag3)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSiteDataQuery.get_ViewXml()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.GetSiteData(SPSiteDataQuery query)...........
InnerException:
------------------------------------------------------------
This freaked me out since with CAML Query Builder, my query was working fine. I searched a lot and applied some fixes mentioned in some of the posts online, but none of them worked.
So, after spending several hours and trying various stuff with the Code, I managed to resolve it by deleting all extra non-readable characters as follows:
query.Query = @"
I am not sure why SPSiteDataQuery causes this issue whereas I have been writing queries with above mentioned readability and clarity with SPQuery Class.
Enjoy!!! :-)
