Client-side SharePoint PowerShell CSOM Read list

SharePoint PowerShell API provides the capability to connect to SharePoint 2010, 2013 and Online. The major advantage is that these can be run from a remote machine. The API is available in CodePlex.

I will focus on how to use the API and read a SharePoint list in this article.

First we need to download the source from CodePlex and extract it to a directory with necessary permissions. I am using 'C:\SPPS\Source' as the location for extraction.

Next we need to get a client context as in a normal CSOM.

Function Get-SPOContext([string]$Url,[string]$UserName,[string]$Password){

$secpasswd = ConvertTo-SecureString $Password -AsPlainText -Force

$userCredentials=New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ($UserName, $secpasswd)

Initialize-SPPS -siteURL http://www.sitename.com/ -UserCredential $userCredentials

$context = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext](New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($Url))

$context.Credentials = $userCredentials

    return $context

}

Then we can use the following function to read the list.

Function Get-ListItems([Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext]$Context, [String]$ListTitle) {

    $list = $Context.Web.Lists.GetByTitle($listTitle)

$camlQuery = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.CamlQuery

$camlQuery.ViewXml = ''

    $items = $list.GetItems($camlQuery)

    $Context.Load($items)

    $Context.ExecuteQuery()

    return $items 

}

At last, somewhere from the necessary place, these few commands can be used to read the lists.

Import-Module 'C:\SPPS\Source\spps.psm1'

$context = Get-SPOContext -Url '<Site Url>' -UserName '<Username>' -Password '<Password>'

$listItems = Get-ListItems -Context $context -ListTitle '<List Title>'

You can even schedule a Windows Scheduler and make this a schedule job which is very handy as it can be used even with SharePoint Online.