CRUD Operations in SharePoint using REST API – Part I

Applicable to: SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, SharePoint Online

REST API is a powerful CSOM concept that can be leveraged in SharePoint for converting sophisticated business designs into working and efficient SharePoint Artifacts (Add-Ins, CSOM solutions, etc.). REST does not require any separate references for its working unlike other frameworks (SPservices)

This series of blogs will demonstrate how to work with SharePoint lists and REST API for basic and common operations. Please have a look at MSDN articles if you wish to gain a more in-depth understanding of REST in SharePoint.

 REST Operations in SharePoint – CREATE

Step1: Create a custom list “Employee” as per the schema below. Capture the generated internal names of the columns – you will need it later on.

List Name: Employee

This is how the list looks like in my case

Step2: Create a webpart page, and insert the list “Employee” in any of the webpart zones.

Step 3: Next step is the addition of the code. The code can be downloaded from – here and the page will look like our case, we will be creating a single page HTML file (i.e. the style, scripts and the body elements will be in a single page, with internal reference to jQuery.min.js file). The HTML can be added to our page in either of the below ways. For this add a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) in any of the webpart zones and then –

• Insert the code directly in the CEWP.
• Upload the HTML and JS file to any document library, and then insert the link to the HTML file in the Content Link as shown below –

This concludes the steps and the page will be now functional with the “Create” Operation.

Explanatory Step: Although this is not a step, but gives a very brief description of the REST API code used in this scenario. The code used is –

var listName = "Employee";
var itemType = GetItemTypeForListName(listName);
function CreateListItem( ) {
     var name = $("#txtName").val();             
     var employeeID = $("#txtEmployeeID").val();
     var department = $("#slctDepartment").val();
     var city = $("#txtCity").val();
     var contactNumber = $("#txtContactNumber").val();                  
     var item = {
           "__metadata": { "type": itemType },
           "Title": name,
           "Employee_x0020_ID": employeeID,
           "Department": department,                   
           "City": city,
           "Contact_x0020_Number": contactNumber
       };      
     $.ajax({
          url:  _spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl  + "/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('" + listName + "')/items",
          type: "POST",
          contentType: "application/json;odata=verbose",
          data: JSON.stringify(item),
          headers: {
               "Accept": "application/json;odata=verbose",
               "X-RequestDigest": $("#__REQUESTDIGEST").val()
           },
          success: function (data) {
               alert("success");
           },
          error: function (data) {
               alert("success");
           }
      });
}
function GetItemTypeForListName (name)
      {
           return "SP.Data." + name.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + name.split(" ").join("").slice(1) + "ListItem";
      }

The function GetItemTypeForListName() returns a string, which is used in the metadata of the list item type that is to be added. The returned string in this case is “SP.DataEmployeeListItem”, which is then in turn used as –

__metadata: {‘type’ : ‘SP.DataEmployeeListItem’ }

As our task here is to create/add data in SharePoint entity (list in this case), the operation is of type/method – “POST”

type: "POST",

And finally, all the data is passed as JSON,

data: JSON.stringify(item),

The next blog outlines the “Read” operation of REST API in SharePoint.

Download the source code.

Happy reading!

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