SharePoint Web Services Wrapper

By Hristo Yankov

Recently I noticed that a common reason for developers to seek help on the MSDN forum is related to difficulties understanding and/or utilizing the SharePoint Web Services. You can't blame the developers. It's much more convenient to work with an Object Oriented API, rather than exchanging XML messages with a Web Service. For example, take a look at the Lists.asmx -> GetListItems. Of course it's no rocket science, but it will sure save time if you could avoid dealing with the XML directly.


I spent some time researching if there is some kind of a library out there which provides 'managed' access to those Web Services. I.e. - work with .NET objects, rather than construct and parse XML elements. The closest thing I have found is this and it's totally outdated and incomplete. At least it's some reassurance to me that I am not missing the big picture and indeed, there might be people who would appreciate such framework.

So, I decided to start a project which will try to implement such .NET Object Oriented API around the SharePoint Web Services. Of course, for those corner weird cases (as well for the advanced developers), the underlying XML will still be accessible. Here is a good description of all the SharePoint services. My goal is to cover them all, eventually. I will start with the most commonly used ones.

It is hosted on CodePlex - http://spwebserviceswrapper.codeplex.com/
The project is not published yet, as there is no single line of code written yet. I will be doing this in my spare time. Once I shape it to my liking, it will become open source and everyone is welcome to contribute.

Got comments? Suggestions/Objections? There is a similar library already implemented? Please do let me know.

Hristo