Exploring SharePoint 2007 Object Model with F#

I have been busy with other things that detracted from continued efforts in working with F# and WPF. While I've been busy, I found out that F# 1.9.6 has been released. After quick perusal of F# 1.9.6 release notes, I realized my previously posted codes will break during compilation. Two immediate items that I noticed are:

• IEnumerable.* are deleted
• base is now a keyword

I haven't had time to scour my previously posted F# code and correct it to work with F# 1.9.6 so be forewarned if you're trying to compile my previously posted F# code with the new F# compiler. Hopefully, sometime in the future I'll be able to correct the posted code so it compiles and runs with the new F# compiler.

Lately, I have been exploring other pieces of Microsoft technologies such SharePoint 2007, InfoPath 2007, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Excel Services with the goal of crafting a strategy on how to best leverage these technologies in a corporate environment. I needed a way to get up to speed quickly in the SharePoint environment and wanted a way to interactively explore the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) object model.

I immediately thought of using F# interactive as way to explore WSS object model. I fired up the new F# 1.9.6 interactive shell and wanted to follow the example codes in the book Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by Ted Pattison and Daniel Larson.

Before I could try out the examples in the aforementioned book, I had to created a MOSS 2007 system in a Virtual PC environment based on the instructions by Tony Zink in his post How to Create a MOSS 2007 VPC Image: The Whole 9 Yards .

One problem that I ran into while trying out the examples from the book is that I'm unable to iterate through SPListCollection. SPListCollection does not implement IEnumerable and I do not know an equivalent foreach capability in F#. As a workaround, I implemented the SPListCollectionAdapter as described by Asfar Sadewa in his blog entry linq-ing splistcollection. After implementing this adapter, I can now iterate through SPListCollection as shown in the following example:

Exploring WSS Object Model with F#
#light
#I @"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI"
#r @"Microsoft.SharePoint.dll"
#r @"c:\dev\F#\SharePoint\SharePointUtility.dll"

open Microsoft.SharePoint
open SharePoint.Utility

let path="http://localhost/"
let collection = new SPSite(path)
let site = collection.RootWeb
let lists = SPListCollectionAdapter(site.Lists)
Seq.iter (fun (x:SPList) -> printf "%s\n" x.Title) lists

---

I was highly encouraged by this initial success. I next tried to implement a simple hello world SharePoint feature as shown in the following code:

Building Test Hello World Sharepoint Feature
#light
namespace HelloWorld

open System
open Microsoft.SharePoint

// From Chapter 1 of Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by Ted Pattison & Daniel Larson
type FeatureReceiver()  = 
    class
        inherit SPFeatureReceiver()
    
    
        override this.FeatureInstalled _ = ()
        override this.FeatureUninstalling _ = ()
    
        override this.FeatureActivated (properties:SPFeatureReceiverProperties) = 
            let site = properties.Feature.Parent :?> SPWeb
            site.Properties.["OriginalTitle"] <- site.Title
            site.Properties.Update()
            site.Title <- "Hello World"
            site.Update()
        
        override this.FeatureDeactivating (properties:SPFeatureReceiverProperties) =
            let site = properties.Feature.Parent :?> SPWeb
            site.Title <- site.Properties.["OriginalTitle"]
            site.Update()
    end    

I was delighted that this worked flawlessly in SharePoint 2007. It looks like I can go back to using some F# in exploring SharePoint 2007.