Some weird behaviour with SharePoint column types, and the data you get by looking at the SPListItem.properties hash.
So, I’ve got a document library, and I’ve added 3 extra columns to it. For simplicity, I shall call them ‘Text’, ‘Number’ and ‘CheckBox’. I filled in some data for them - a number in the Text field, the same number in the number field, and I check the checkbox for all of the items. I end up with a list looking like below…
So, for now, let’s ignore the fact that the value for some of the longer numbers has been rounded in one of the fields - and not ask why MOSS didn’t just complain that the numbers were too big. Instead, let’s ask what the column types being used are…
Consider the following code:
StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter("output.txt",false);
foreach (SPListItem i in myCollection)
{
sw.Write(i.Name);
foreach (DictionaryEntry h in i.Properties)
{
if (h.Key.ToString().StartsWith("Title") ||
h.Key.ToString().StartsWith("Tex") ||
h.Key.ToString().StartsWith("Yes") ||
h.Key.ToString().StartsWith("Num"))
{
sw.Write(" {0} = {1} ({2})",
h.Key.ToString(),
h.Value.ToString(),
h.Value.GetType().ToString());
}
}
sw.WriteLine();
}
sw.Close();
So, what did this produce? Well, I’ve changed the output to align into columns…
b2b2b2 01.xls Text = 65534 (System.Int32) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 65534.0000000000 (System.String) b2b2b2 03.xls Text = 65540 (System.Int32) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 65540.0000000000 (System.String) b2b2b2 05.doc Text = 131070 (System.Int32) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 131070.000000000 (System.String) b2b2b2 06.xls Text = 131080 (System.Int32) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 131080.000000000 (System.String) b2b2b2 07.xls Text = 9999999999999998 (System.String) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 9999999999999990 (System.String) b2b2b2 09.doc Text = 9999999999999999 (System.String) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 9999999999999990 (System.String) b2b2b2 12.TIF Text = 10000000000000000 (System.String) YesNo = true (System.String) Number = 10000000000000000 (System.String) b2b2b2 17.doc Text = 2342345245 (System.String) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 2342345245.00000 (System.String) b2b2b2 20.doc Text = 4353455656563 (System.String) YesNo = 1 (System.Int32) Number = 4353455656563.00 (System.String) c3c3c3 03.jpg Text = 2147483646 (System.String) YesNo = true (System.String) Number = 2147483646.00000 (System.String) c3c3c3 10.pdf Text = 2147483650 (System.String) YesNo = true (System.String) Number = 2147483650.00000 (System.String) c3c3c3 17.txt Text = 4294967294 (System.String) YesNo = true (System.String) Number = 4294967294.00000 (System.String) c3c3c3 18.txt Text = 4294967298 (System.String) YesNo = true (System.String) Number = 4294967298.00000 (System.String)
Hello? The checkbox is sometimes ‘true’, and 1? String or Int32? WTF? Or that the Text column stores 65534 as an Int32, and the Number field as a String? Okay, I can see why the last one might make sense, but why is the TEXT column a number? And what if I now want to assign a String to it? I tried…
i.properties['Text'] = “Hello World”;
Guess what - exception (SPInvalidPropertyException, to be precise). But maybe, just maybe, I knew I’d be putting text in there later and that was why I made it an effing text column. And why is the Boolean column an Int or a string? I mean, either is a fine choice, but not BOTH.
Don’t get this. Pissed off. Am going home.
