So far I’ve discussed how to get information about getting the types of taxonomy field, working with those fields, and how to get term sets. What about setting values on list items?

It isn’t immediately obvious how to do that. For a start, we wouldn’t actually be using the TaxonomyClientService. To set values on items, you use the Lists web service, using the UpdateListItems() method. This accepts XML describing the field and values.

But what fields do we submit, and what values? After all, as mentioned in part 1, there are two fields – one for the displayed value, and a hidden ‘notes’ field that contains the actual data!

There was no documentation about how to set these values, and limited and contradictory information in blog posts, so I investigated…

Continue reading →

In Part 2 of this series I described how to retrieve a TermSet, and interpret the results. I suggested using code:

string clientTimestamps = string.Format("<timeStamp>{0}</timeStamp>", lastClientCacheTime );
string clientVersion = "<version>1</version>";
string termStoreIds = string.Format("<termStoreId>{0}</termStoreId>", termStoreId.ToString("D"));
string termSetIds = string.Format("<termSetId>{0}</termSetId>", termSetId.ToString("D"));
string serverTermSetTimestampXml;
string result = _wssTax.GetTermSets(termStoreIds, termSetIds, 1033, clientTimestamps, clientVersion, out serverTermSetTimestampXml);

Fine, but what are these properties we’re passing into GetTermSets()? Continue reading →

In Part 1 I looked at the structure of our Taxonomy field – which is in fact two fields. We also saw how the TaxonomyField definition has an array of properties related to it too. As a reminder, here’s a screenshot of the XML for it:

These properties are quite important, as they tell us what we need to know to get the correct TermSet for our field. Continue reading →

I have been working on an integration that needs to read terms from SharePoint’s Managed Metadata service, for a particular field, and then populate that field with those values. All this has to be done via SharePoint’s web services – so the relevant ones here are the TaxonomyClientService, and Lists web service.

This has proved particularly bloody hard. Continue reading →