Download Document from SharePoint Library using WebService

In this post, I am going to explain about downloading a document from sharepoint library using webservice, For that we need following things,

• Read the contents from Document, located in SharePoint Library
• Create and store the contents on a new document in Local Machine

To get the contents from Document under Sharepoint library,we shall use the GetItem method of Copy WebService. This method will generate a Byte array of the document, and then pass it as a parameter on FileStream Contrutor to create a new document.

The Syntax for the GetItem method as follows,

public uint GetItem ( string SourceUrl, out FieldInformation[] Fields, out byte[] Stream )

Parameters,

SourceUrl:
A String that contains the absolute source (on the server to which the SOAP request is sent) of the document that is to be retrieved.

Fields:
An array of FieldInformation objects, passed as an out parameter, that represent the fields and the corresponding field values that can be copied from the retrieved document.

Stream:
An array of Bytes, passed as an out parameter, that is a base-64 representation of the retrieved document’s binary data.

Return Value:
A UInt32 that returns 0 to indicate that the operation has completed. (There are also two out parameters containing an array of CopyResult objects and an array of FieldInformation objects.)

Below i’m providing a code for downloading a document from SharePoint Library,

//Copy WebService Settings
string webUrl = “http://localhost:1000″;
WSCopy.Copy copyService = new WSCopy.Copy();
copyService.Url = webUrl+”/_vti_bin/copy.asmx”;
copyService.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

//Source and Destination Document URLs
string sourceUrl = “http://localhost:1000/Shared Documents/Sample.doc”;
string destinationUrl = “C:\\Documents\Sample.doc”;

//Variables for Reading metadata’s of a document
WSCopy.FieldInformation fieldInfo = new WSCopy.FieldInformation();
WSCopy.FieldInformation[] fieldInfoArray = { fieldInfo };
WSCopy.CopyResult cResult1 = new WSCopy.CopyResult();
WSCopy.CopyResult cResult2 = new WSCopy.CopyResult();
WSCopy.CopyResult[] cResultArray = { cResult1, cResult2 };

//Receive a Document Contents  into Byte array (filecontents)
byte[] fileContents = new Byte[4096];
copyService.GetItem(sourceUrl, out fieldInfoArray, out fileContents);

//Create a new file and write contents to that document
FileStream fStream = new FileStream(destinationUrl, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite);
fStream.Write(fileContents, 0, fileContents.Length);
fStream.Close();

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