View the raw XML returned from a REST call using Internet Explorer

If you are seeing the "user-friendly", feed reading view when calling a REST service via Inter Explorer and would prefer to view the raw XML for development purposes, here are the steps you can take to make that happen:

1. Open Internet Explorer and enter your REST service call in the address bar
2. Confirm that you're returned a view similar to the following:
   
   
   
   
   
3. Click on Tools and select Internet Options
4. Click on the Content tab
5. Under the Feeds and Web Slices section, click on Settings
6. Uncheck the checkbox for the item that reads "Turn on feed reading view"
   
   
   
   
   
7. Click OK
8. Click OK
9. Refresh the browser and you will now see the raw XML returned from the REST service call
   
   
   
   
   

Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131904

Over the years, I've periodically encountered an issue in which SharePoint will give you the following error message whenever you attempt to perform some simple write, update, or delete operations on a site (i.e. like adding a new list item to a SharePoint list):

Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131904

In my experience, this error message is indicating that SharePoint is not able to write information to the content database and the most common cause that I've encountered is that the location where SQL logs are stored has run out of drive space (i.e. this being the SQL server that hosts the SharePoint content database).  Typically, we've either deleted the older SQL transaction logs stored here or simply moved them to another location with more drive space (i.e. archive) in order to free up space on that drive location.  Once that delete/move operation of the log files is complete and more drive space is available, the SharePoint environment will return to normal operation immediately.

Convert web addresses contained in a string to hyperlinks using a regular expression

In the event you ever need to convert web addresses contained within a string to hyperlinks, I stumbled across some code on StackOverflow that will allow you to do this via a regular expression.  The code for this solution is presented as follows:

private string ConvertUrlsToLinks(string msg) 
{
    string regex = @"((www\.|(http|https|ftp|news|file)+\:\/\/)[_.a-z0-9-]+\.[a-z0-9\/_:@=.+?,##%&~-]*[^.|\'|\# |!|\(|?|,| |>|<|;|\)])";
    Regex r = new Regex(regex, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
    return r.Replace(msg, "$1").Replace("href=\"www", "href=\"http://www");
}

Special thanks goes to a user by the name of "Rob" on StackOverflow for providing this solution to the problem!

Using C# to read data from a SharePoint list using the SharePoint REST API

If you're working with a C# application that is required to read information contained in a SharePoint list located on an external SharePoint farm, the SharePoint REST API can provide just the solution that you're looking for.  Here is some sample code that you can use for accessing the information contained in that SharePoint list:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

namespace Sample
{
    public class SharePointListReader
    {
        ...

        public List<SharePointListItem> GetAllSPListItems()

        {
            List<SharePointListItem> posts = new List<SharePointListItem>();

            HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("https://webapp/site/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('listName')/items?$select=id,Title");
            request.Method = "GET";
            request.Accept = "application/json;odata=verbose";
            request.ContentType = "application/json;odata=verbose";
            request.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
            WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
            Data data = null;

            // Read the returned posts into an object that can be consumed by the calling application
            using (response)
            {
                using (var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
                {
                    JavaScriptSerializer serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
                    try
                    {
                        string jSON = reader.ReadToEnd();
                        data = serializer.Deserialize(jSON);
                    }
                    catch (Exception ex)
                    {
                        throw new Exception(string.Format("An error occurred when reading the list items from SharePoint: {0}; {1}", ex.Message, ex.StackTrace));
                    }
                }
            }
            foreach (SharePointListItem post in data.d.results)
            {
                posts.Add(post);
            }
            return posts;
        }
    }

    public class Data
    {
        public Results d { get; set; }
    }

    public class Results
    {
        public SharePointListItem[] results { get; set; }
    }

    public class SharePointListItem
    {
        public string id { get; set; }
        public string Title { get; set; }
    }
}

Visual Studio hotkey for formatting XML: Ctrl+k+f

There will inevitably come a time when you're going to obtain some XML output that you need to review that would, in all honesty, be impossible to read without proper formatting.  A good example would be this response from the the YouTube API that provides a list of videos that a specified user has uploaded (i.e. which would appear as follows in Notepad):

In many cases, simply copying and pasting the XML it into Visual Studio might work, but, in the off chance it doesn't, you might get something like this.

If that happens, simply hit Ctrl+k+f and the XML will be displayed in an easy-to-read format:

Calculating the number of days since an event took place using Javascript

If you're looking for a way to determine how many days have passed since a given event took place using Javascript, here is a function that will provide you with the basic functionality that you're looking for:

function calculateDaysSinceEvent(eventDateTime) {
    // Obtain the current date and time
    var todaysDateTime = new Date();
    // Calculate the difference in time between today and when the event took place
    var diff = todaysDateTime - eventDateTime;
    // Convert the difference to a value that represents a day and round the value up

    return Math.round(diff/(1000*60*60*24));
}

Javascript function for converting a datetime object to a specific format

Chances are very good that at some point during your journey with SharePoint 2013 you're going to need a javascript function that you can use for converting a datetime object into a nice, user-friendly output string for display purposes.  In the code sample I'm about to provide, the javascript function will return an output string that matches the following format:

Wednesday, 7/13/2013

Here's the basic function that will give you the output presented above:

function getDateString(dateTime) {
 var weekday=new Array();
 weekday[0]="Sunday";
 weekday[1]="Monday";
 weekday[2]="Tuesday";
 weekday[3]="Wednesday";
 weekday[4]="Thursday";
 weekday[5]="Friday";
 weekday[6]="Saturday";

 var dayOfWeek = weekday[dateTime.getDay()];
 var month = dateTime.getMonth() + 1;
 var day = dateTime.getDate();
 var year = dateTime.getFullYear();

 return dayOfWeek + ', ' + month + '/' + day + '/' + year;
}