Thursday, April 13, 2017

Sample SOAP payload for a SharePoint Remote Event Receiver

This post is mostly about showing what an actual Remote Event Receiver message looks like but there are some of my musings too because if there's something I love more than coding it is ranting about minor annoyances with the tools we use for doing it. If you can't wait to see the actual sample - go straight ahead, it's waiting for you at the end. For the most patient ones - let the rant begin!

First, a bit of context - I've joined new team working on a super complex project and as a result they are not letting me anywhere near the actual code for a second month now. What do they have me do, then? What could be the most inconsequential thing for a noob to do that would still have them learn about the solution? You guessed right - unit tests! So I want to test a Remote Event Receiver (RER for short) and I though, well, surely there must be a sample SOAP message sent by a RER somewhere around teh interwebz. Disappointingly, if there is such a thing it is very well hidden as I couldn't find it and had to generate my own. It wasn't as simple as one might think so I'm sharing the fruit of this labour with the world.

Now is the time to rant a bit about the frustrations regarding SharePoint development. I've ranted before about how hard it is to find anything meaningful online because of the ubiquity of posts explaining trivial stuff. Seriously, who needs a million how-tos about adding a RER to an app? You just right-click on the project in Visual Studio and follow the wizard. One thing I haven't moaned about before though is the inept way Microsoft is presenting SharePoint app development. And no, I'm not even referring to the ham-fisted rebranding from "apps" to "add-ins", which left the community calling them "apps" while MS insist that they are "add-ins", in the same way that MS insisted for years that JavaScript is actually called EcmaScript.


What is SharePoint app development anyway?

If you try to teach yourself SharePoint 2013/2016 through online resources, or even if you attend a course or read a book they'll have you believe that before you even write a hello world app you need to understand about SharePoint-hosted vs Provider hosted, you need to know what's the app web and host web, the remote web app, etc. and before you even start coding you need to configure your farm for apps, which is decidedly non-trivial.

I'd say screw all this and don't confuse people with the complexities of deployed apps from day one - it's needlessly obscure and fails to drive home the main point of the SP 2013/2016 app architecture: from now on, you won't be writing applications that get deployed into SharePoint, you'll be building ASP.NET apps that talk to SharePoint through the client library.
That's what Microsoft doesn't want you to know and maybe even fail to admit it to themselves but seriously, does anyone actually build apps to be deployed through an app catalog? Almost all projects I've worked on lately involve writing code in an ASP.NET application that talks to SharePoint through the CSOM. Yeah, I get it, MS built all this app catalog infrastructure and now want to shove it down our throats so they keep talking about provider hosted and app web and whatnot when you just want to connect to SharePoint and update some files.

So, if there is a beginner SharePoint developer reading this - fear not, it's not as complicated as MS make it sound. Nowhere is this more obvious than when we bring Remote Event Receivers (RER) into the picture. If you go by MS sources alone you'll start pulling your hair in despair, expecting weeks of work just to get the damn thing to work - now you don't just have the usual moving parts and security config, you also have a service that needs yet another way to obtain a SharePoint context! Well, guess what - you don't need any of that - you just create your service that implements the correct contract, call a few lines of CSOM code to register your services as a RER and you're good to go; no apps, no app-only policy configuration, no nothing. Now is the time to give a big shout out to Dan Budimir, who went against the grain at MS and wrote a guide about this very thing:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/boodablog/2015/01/12/i-thought-i-needed-a-sharepoint-provider-hosted-app-for-that-part-1/


How do we capture the SOAP message?

When I came to be in need of a recorded SOAP payload from a RER my first thought was - hey, we already have this functionality in IIS through Failed Request Tracing, which can be used to record all traffic, including requests that didn't actually fail. However, it has a size limit and for most RER request bodies it actually cuts the ending. Therefore, Fiddler had to come to the rescue - here is the whole process if you want to capture some requests yourself:
If all this sounds too complicated (which it is) - just make use of the few that I prepared, you should be able to adapt them if they don't cover the event you need.
Below you'll find the full text dumps for ItemDeleted (the smallest one) and ItemUpdated and here are links for two more events:
ItemAdded
ItemFileMoved (that's the event that gets fired when you rename a file)


ItemDeleted

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <s:Body>
      <ProcessOneWayEvent xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/remoteapp/">
         <properties xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <AppEventProperties i:nil="true" />
            <ContextToken />
            <CorrelationId>5bccd79d-32db-e06a-0000-077828386b67</CorrelationId>
            <CultureLCID>1033</CultureLCID>
            <EntityInstanceEventProperties i:nil="true" />
            <ErrorCode />
            <ErrorMessage />
            <EventType>ItemDeleted</EventType>
            <ItemEventProperties>
               <AfterProperties xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" />
               <AfterUrl i:nil="true" />
               <BeforeProperties xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" />
               <BeforeUrl>Docs/test11.txt</BeforeUrl>
               <CurrentUserId>22</CurrentUserId>
               <ExternalNotificationMessage i:nil="true" />
               <IsBackgroundSave>false</IsBackgroundSave>
               <ListId>6980e5dd-d847-4667-8792-1e2741d6cf18</ListId>
               <ListItemId>7</ListItemId>
               <ListTitle>Docs</ListTitle>
               <UserDisplayName>Kiryazov, S. (Stefan)</UserDisplayName>
               <UserLoginName>i:0#.w|europe\d-hy32co</UserLoginName>
               <Versionless>false</Versionless>
               <WebUrl>http://sharepoint.server/sites/sitecolurl</WebUrl>
            </ItemEventProperties>
            <ListEventProperties i:nil="true" />
            <SecurityEventProperties i:nil="true" />
            <UICultureLCID>1033</UICultureLCID>
            <WebEventProperties i:nil="true" />
         </properties>
      </ProcessOneWayEvent>
   </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

ItemUpdated

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <s:Body>
    <ProcessOneWayEvent xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/remoteapp/">
      <properties xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
        <AppEventProperties i:nil="true" />
        <ContextToken />
        <CorrelationId>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</CorrelationId>
        <CultureLCID>1033</CultureLCID>
        <EntityInstanceEventProperties i:nil="true" />
        <ErrorCode />
        <ErrorMessage />
        <EventType>ItemUpdated</EventType>
        <ItemEventProperties>
          <AfterProperties xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays">
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_folderitemcount</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_nexttolasttimemodified</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:dateTime">2017-02-01T08:30:41</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_candeleteversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">true</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_foldersubfolderitemcount</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_canmaybeedit</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">true</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>ContentTypeId</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">0x010100AE33CE7DE32F484490EEC317F89BE311</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_sourcecontrolcookie</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">fp_internal</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_filesize</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">1376</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_modifiedby</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">i:0#.w|domain\username</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_setuppathversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">15</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_level</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">1</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_timecreated</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:dateTime">2017-02-01T08:30:41</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_charset</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">utf-8</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_parserversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">15.0.0.4867</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_sourcecontrolversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">V1.0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_author</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">i:0#.w|domain\username</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
          </AfterProperties>
          <AfterUrl>Docs/soap-list1.xml</AfterUrl>
          <BeforeProperties xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays">
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_metadatanextbsn</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">100</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_backgroundsave</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_replid</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">rid:{2824DA8B-7E05-4687-A6D3-E5293D4439FC}</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_level</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">1</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>ContentTypeId</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">0x010100AE33CE7DE32F484490EEC317F89BE311</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_setuppathversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">15</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_rtag</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">rt:2824DA8B-7E05-4687-A6D3-E5293D4439FC@00000000002</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_sourcecontrolversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">V1.0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_sourcecontrolcookie</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">fp_internal</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_filesize</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">1376</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_modifiedby</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">i:0#.w|domain\username</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_metainfoversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">2</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_internalversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">513</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_nextbsn</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">162</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_parserversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">15.0.0.4867</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_docstoreversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">2</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_author</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">i:0#.w|domain\username</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_foldersubfolderitemcount</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_contentversionisdirty</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">false</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_timecreated</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:dateTime">2017-02-01T08:30:41</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_contenttag</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">{2824DA8B-7E05-4687-A6D3-E5293D4439FC},2,2</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_docstoretype</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_canmaybeedit</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">true</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_charset</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">utf-8</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_folderitemcount</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">0</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_timelastmodified</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:dateTime">2017-02-01T08:55:24</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_parentid</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">{733E0BCD-E0B4-45DA-8492-FDE35C98DD22}</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_candeleteversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">true</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_nexttolasttimemodified</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:dateTime">2017-02-01T08:30:41</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_contentversion</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">2</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_etag</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:string">"{2824DA8B-7E05-4687-A6D3-E5293D4439FC},2"</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_timelastwritten</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:dateTime">2017-02-01T08:55:24</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
            <a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
              <a:Key>vti_streamschema</a:Key>
              <a:Value xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" i:type="b:int">66</a:Value>
            </a:KeyValueOfstringanyType>
          </BeforeProperties>
          <BeforeUrl>Docs/soap-list1.xml</BeforeUrl>
          <CurrentUserId>22</CurrentUserId>
          <ExternalNotificationMessage i:nil="true" />
          <IsBackgroundSave>false</IsBackgroundSave>
          <ListId>6980e5dd-d847-4667-8792-1e2741d6cf18</ListId>
          <ListItemId>2</ListItemId>
          <ListTitle>Docs</ListTitle>
          <UserDisplayName>Kiryazov, S. (Stefan)</UserDisplayName>
          <UserLoginName>i:0#.w|europe\d-hy32co</UserLoginName>
          <Versionless>false</Versionless>
          <WebUrl>http://sharepoint.server/sites/ipp-content-stef</WebUrl>
        </ItemEventProperties>
        <ListEventProperties i:nil="true" />
        <SecurityEventProperties i:nil="true" />
        <UICultureLCID>1033</UICultureLCID>
        <WebEventProperties i:nil="true" />
      </properties>
    </ProcessOneWayEvent>
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>


1 comment:

ALM said...

Thanks for this!