Comments on: A better way to obtain fields values of an SPListItem

By: Waldek Mastykarz

Waldek Mastykarz — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:50:31 +0000

@nancy: Unfortunately CAML doesn't provide any mechanism for selecting distinct values. What you could is to take care that you're retrieving items in a best possible way (I covered some samples here: http://blog.mastykarz.nl/performance-of-content-aggregation-queries-on-multiple-lists-revisited/) and then do the distinct selection. If the query is being run frequently it might be a good idea to cache the results as it will probably be a resource-expensive operation (depending on the total number of items of course).

By: nancy

nancy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:19:28 +0000

Great, Thanks. question though! I have to look at all the SPListItems that are in the same list and show only those items that are not repeatetive. (I might have 3 splistitem within the same list that have the same specific field). What I want to do is to show only 1 of those splistitem instead of 3!
Any idea????
I REALLY appriciate any help. Thank you

By: Colby Africa

Colby Africa — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:15:14 +0000

Thank you!

By: Waldek Mastykarz

Waldek Mastykarz — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:11:33 +0000

@Jim: It's a wrapper class generated using Imtech Fields Generator v1.5 (http://blog.mastykarz.nl/imtech-fields-explorer-v1410-inconvenient-site-columns-update/).

By: Jim Blanchard

Jim Blanchard — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:39:16 +0000

Quick question on your sample caller code:

MyContentType.MyDateField

Do you have custom classes in your code that inherit from SPContentType to do this or is there something else at play?

By: Waldek Mastykarz

Waldek Mastykarz — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:33:14 +0000

Thanks TJ

By: TJ

TJ — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:23:21 +0000

The only problem in using the ContainsField method is it only accepts a string that contains either the display name or the internal name of the field. The wrapper classes use IDs.
By the way Love It

By: Waldek Mastykarz

Waldek Mastykarz — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:23:54 +0000

Thanks for the tip Erik, I've definitely missed that one. Adding the extra check you mentioned would keep you off from getting an extra Exception but I still like the idea of having it all wrapped in a try..catch clause 'just in case'.

By: Erik Burger

Erik Burger — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:07:56 +0000

Excellent code. I am sure it will save a lot of people a lot of hassle, including me

One question/remark.

You say at one point "Because it might just happen that you’re passing an invalid id, the whole process of retrieving and processing the value is wrapped in a try catch clause."

Is there a specific reason why you would not use the following:

if (listItem.Fields.ContainsField("MyDateField"))
{
// Enter retrieval code here
}

This seems to me a typical situation in which you can save yourself (and the CLR) the trouble of using Exceptions. But I might be missing something.

Regards,
Erik