Overview
Populating a SharePoint List with data is required for different purposes quite often. In this article I am going to demonstrate how to populate Contacts list with a fake data using CSOM.
Provision column to a List via SharePoint CSOM
We will utilize Contacts List for demonstration purposes. But before we proceed, let’s add a Geolocation field to a list.
Since the Geolocation column is not available by default in SharePoint lists, it’s common practice to provision this field to a list programmatically. The code below demonstrates how to add the Geolocation field by using the SharePoint client object model:
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| function ProvisionField(fieldSchema, listTitle,OnSuccess,OnError) | |
| { | |
| var context = SP.ClientContext.get_current(); | |
| var list = context.get_web().get_lists().getByTitle(listTitle); | |
| var fields = list.get_fields(); | |
| var fieldToAdd = fields.addFieldAsXml(fieldSchema, true, SP.AddFieldOptions.AddToDefaultContentType); | |
| fieldToAdd.update(); | |
| context.load(fieldToAdd); | |
| context.executeQueryAsync(OnSuccess(fieldToAdd),OnError); | |
| } | |
| function AddGeolocationFieldToContactsList() | |
| { | |
| ProvisionField("<Field Type='Geolocation' DisplayName='Location'/>","Contacts", | |
| function(field){ | |
| console.log('Geolocation field has been added'); | |
| }, | |
| function(sender,args){ | |
| console.log('Error occured while adding Geolocation field:' + args.get_message()); | |
| }) | |
| } |
Generate list data
For populating Contacts list we will utilize Faker.js JavaScript library that is intended for generating massive amounts of fake data, below is provided the complete code:
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| function AddListItem(listTitle,itemProps,OnItemAdded,OnItemError) | |
| { | |
| var context = new SP.ClientContext.get_current(); | |
| var web = context.get_web(); | |
| var list = web.get_lists().getByTitle(listTitle); | |
| var itemCreateInfo = new SP.ListItemCreationInformation(); | |
| var listItem = list.addItem(itemCreateInfo); | |
| for(var propName in itemProps) { | |
| listItem.set_item(propName, itemProps[propName]) | |
| } | |
| listItem.update(); | |
| context.load(listItem); | |
| context.executeQueryAsync( | |
| function() { | |
| OnItemAdded(listItem); | |
| }, | |
| OnItemError | |
| ); | |
| } | |
| function GenerateContacts() | |
| { | |
| var contactsCount = 108; | |
| for(var i = 0; i < contactsCount; i++){ | |
| var contactEntry = CreateContactEntry(); | |
| AddListItem('Contacts',contactEntry, | |
| function(contactItem){ | |
| console.log('Contact ' + contactItem.get_item('Title') + ' has been created successfully'); | |
| }, | |
| function(sender,args){ | |
| console.log('Error occured while creating contact:' + args.get_message()); | |
| }); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| function CreateContactEntry() | |
| { | |
| var contactCard = Faker.Helpers.createCard(); | |
| return {'Title': contactCard.username, | |
| 'FullName': contactCard.name, | |
| 'Email': contactCard.email, | |
| 'Company': contactCard.company.name, | |
| 'WorkPhone': contactCard.phone, | |
| 'WorkAddress': contactCard.address.streetA, | |
| 'WorkCity': contactCard.address.city, | |
| 'WorkZip': contactCard.address.zipcode, | |
| 'WorkCountry': contactCard.address.ukCountry, | |
| 'WebPage': 'http://' + contactCard.website, | |
| 'Location': 'Point(' + contactCard.address.geo.lng + ' ' + contactCard.address.geo.lat + ')'}; | |
| } | |
| var scriptbase = _spPageContextInfo.siteAbsoluteUrl + '/_layouts/15/'; | |
| $.getScript(scriptbase + 'SP.js', | |
| function () { | |
| $.getScript(_spPageContextInfo.siteAbsoluteUrl + '/SiteAssets/Faker.js', GenerateContacts); | |
| } | |
| ); |
Results
After running the script the Contacts list will be populated with a fake data as demonstrated below.
Contacts default view
Contacts map view
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