SharePoint - Posting and Retrieving files Automatically via VBScript

Question

Hello All,

I'm going to need to push and pull files from a SharePoint site that is not hosted by my company (it is external). I'm only going to get a few days (if that) to get this working so I don't have much time to experiment.

To add to my requirements/headaches, I'm going to have to implement this with VBScript. .Net would be preferred for me but for reasons beyond my control I have to use VBScript. I don't have direct access to my VBScript web server, so I won't be able to implement this in .NET and use that object from VBScript.

I'm looking for anything that would help me accomplish this goal quickly and effectively. I found this post and am wondering if the PUT/GET method used here would work for me?

http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2004/06/06/149673.aspx (I got this link from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279429/sharepoint-api-how-to-upload-files-to-sharepoint-doc-library-from-asp-net-web-a)

To top all of this off, I've never done any programming or administration of a SharePoint site. My knowledge of SharePoint is that of a user. I'm aware that there is an API from the few Google searches I did. However, my readings make me believe that my code would need to run on or in proximity to the SharePoint server. I don't believe I have the proximity I need to use the API.

Sincere thank yous!

Regards,
Frank

Progress Update: I'm still researching this. Tom pointed out that the example I had posted is probably from an old SharePoint version. His recommendation to use .Net to develop a prototype on Web Services is good but I'm hoping for more detailed answers.

I'm now wondering if I can accomplish what I need to accomplish using HTTP PUT and GETs. At my company, for a specific project we do use HTTP PUT and GETs to do something like this. We have files that are stored on an HTTP server and this is how we post and retrieve them.

Would this work over SharePoint or would SharePoint require special handling? Basically, do I have to use Web Services?

Progress Update 2: This link is helpful... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31868/upload-a-file-to-sharepoint-through-the-built-in-web-services

But I am still looking for more information on this topic... Thanks all...

Answer 1

You'll need to use the sharepoint lists web service for metadata and get/put for uploads. That link looks to be for SharePoint 2001, so hopefully you can use the newer/simpler version.

I recommend building something in .net first to get the web service calls worked out - some of the parameters can be quite tricky to debug, and I wouldn't want to be doing that on a remote vbscript page.

Assuming there is no metadata required and the SharePoint library is being used like a file server you can do most of what you want with PUT/GET, but you will probably need a call to GetListItems to find the urls to download.

There's an example on my blog of a lower level call to that web service - it's javascript, but probably close enough.

http://www.tqcblog.com/archive/2007/09/24/sharepoint-blog-content-rating-with-javascript-and-web-services.aspx

What setting up the .net version gets you is very quick set up of a connection to the server (just add a web service reference in visual studio) so you can get the query and queryoptions strings working to retrieve the items you want. Once that works you just have to put it all together as a string including the soap stuff for use without all the nice tools.

Answer 2

I'm a little unclear on the context of the implementation and the prerequisite of having to use VBScript. Are the files being moved from one server to another server or from a user's desktop to this SP server? or are they being accessed via software like Excel?

The first thing that sprang to my mind (this may sound crazy) was using the Office application to make the connection. Your script would call up Excel (just as an example) and pass it the vba needed to initiate the Open File, and then provide the full path to the file that needs to be retrieved. Then have it do a Save As to the location that needs the file. Do the same thing but in reverse for putting files on the SharePoint server.

The tricky part, obviously, is getting the script to interface with the Office app. I know this can be done with the Windows version of PHP, but I don't want to get into anything specific without knowing your situation.

Answer 3

I seriously wonder if you are going to be able to use VBScript to call the SharePoint web services. I haven't looked at the SharePoint web services for a while so I don't remember exactly how they are defined. I thought the web services were SOAP calls though which makes it trickier than

I'm not sure I tried to use Excel to call some web services with the MSSOAP.SoapClient and it seemed this component was unable to handle any WSDL types beyond the very simple strings. Anything with nested data would not work. Instead, you would need to create a COM object to process the conversion which is a major hassle. If you are able to use XMLHTTP component then it might be possible with VBScript, but I'm not sure if it will work with SharePoint web services.

I'm not sure what you mean, "I don't have direct access to my VBScript web server." Is your web server in VBScript (ASP)? Or did you mean SharePoint server?

You might consider C# Script (cs-script) as a scripted solution that uses .NET. I have had good success with it, although it does need to be installed on the computer that runs the script.

Answer 4

I'm integrating between two companies. According to this book, we should use AD FS to accomplish what I'm looking for.

I still don't actually have this working though so if someone has more information I will change the answer to this question.

http://books.google.com/books?id=-6Dw74If4N0C&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=sharing+sharepoint+sites+external+adfs&source=bl&ots=ojOlMP13tE&sig=FjsMmOHymCOMGo7il7vjWF_lagQ&hl=en&ei=ytqfStClO5mMtgejsfH0Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=&f=false