Creating Lists using Sharepoint Object Model

In my previous post I wrote about creating sites using sharepoint object model. I strongly recommend to read that post before proceeding with this. It discusses about Sharepoint Site Architectures in detail.

Listed below are the Sharepoint site components and their corresponding object in the sharepoint object model.

Sharepoint Site Architecture Component	Object in Sharepoint Object Model
Site Collection	SPSite
Site	SPWeb
List Collection	SPListCollection
List	SPList
List Field Collection	SPFieldCollection
List Field	SPField
List Item Collection	SPListItemCollection
List Item	SPListItem

Steps to create a new Sharepoint List:

1. Open Visual Studio. Create a new Windows Forms project.
2. Add a textboxes, one to accept the name of the site collection and another to accept the name of the new site to be created under the site collection.
3. Add a button that creates the new site.
4. Add reference to Microsoft.Sharepoint dll. This dll is represented by the name Windows Sharepoint Services in the Add Reference dialog box.
5. Add the namespace of Microsoft.Sharepoint dll like this.
   • using Microsoft.Sharepoint;
6. In the button click event, open the site collection.
   • SPSite siteCollection = new SPSite(txtSiteCollectionUrl.Text);
7. Now open the top level site of the site collection.
   • SPWeb site = siteCollection.OpenWeb();
   • If you want to open a different site under the site collection other than the top level site, you can use the overloaded methods of the OpenWeb() method that accepts the name of the site as argument.
8. The Lists property present in the SPWeb object will return all the lists that are present in that site as an SPListCollection object
   • SPListCollection listCollection = site.Lists;
9. In order to add a new list, use the add method of the SPListCollection object.
   • listCollection.Add(“listname”, “list description”, SPListTemplateType.GenericList);
   • Note that the third argument accepts the template in which the list should be created. GenericTemplate represents the custom list. We can choose the template we need from the SPListTemplateType enum.
10. Close and dispose and the site and site collection
    • site.dispose();
    • siteCollection.close();

The complete code can be found below..

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

SPSite siteCollection;
SPWeb site;

private void btnCreateSite_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

try
{
siteCollection = new SPSite(txtSiteCollection.Text);
site = siteCollection.OpenWeb();
SPListCollection listCollection = site.Lists;

listCollection.Add(txtListName.Text, “list description”, SPListTemplateType.GenericList);
}
catch (Exception)
{ }
finally
{
site.Dispose();
siteCollection.Close();
}
}

}
}

Hope this is useful.