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Defining SharePoint Content Types in Code

Dimitri Dhuyvetter - Thu, 12/03/2009 - 15:52

The sample code on Defining SharePoint Content Types in Code posted on "Wrox Article : Creating Content Type Metadata for SharePoint 2007 Document Management Solutions : Page 2 - Wrox" contains an error.

The sample code is:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://localhost")) {
	using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb()) {
		SPContentType baseType =  web.AvailableContentTypes["Document"];
		SPContentType proposal = new SPContentType(
			baseType, web.ContentTypes, "Project Proposal");
		web.ContentTypes.Add(proposal);
		proposal.FieldLinks.Add(new SPFieldLink(web.AvailableFields["Author"]));
	}
}

But this won't work. First of all, there is no proposal.Update() to commit the changes and if there was, ytou would get an error since SPWeb.AvailableContentTypes is a read-only collection, so you can't update the SPContentType you get that way.

The correct code should be

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://localhost")) {
	using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb()) {
		SPContentType baseType =  web.ContentTypes["Document"];
		SPContentType proposal = new SPContentType(
			baseType, web.ContentTypes, "Project Proposal");
		web.ContentTypes.Add(proposal);
		proposal.FieldLinks.Add(new SPFieldLink(web.AvailableFields["Author"]));
		proposal.Update();
	}
}

More info on SPContentType.FieldLinks on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spcontentty...