SharePoint 2013: Develop Remote Event Receivers for List And List Items

Select Event Source as “Products” List
Choose what all events you want to let handle by this Remote Event Receiver. For now we're choosing “Item Added”, “Item Updated” and “Item Deleted” events

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/131.png?w=450&h=329

As soon as the List is added to the Project a Feature scoped to the App Web gets also added.

Once we are done with the configuration steps as shown above, we can see following artifacts added to the Project as highlighted below:

Products List
List Instance of the Products List
Remote Event Receiver

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/141.png?w=450&h=335

If we notice Remote Web Project which is nothing but an ASP.NET Application, we can see the following artifacts added already to it:

Service Class [Product-Remote-Event-Receiver]: That represent the Remote Event Handler Code Base
TokenHelper.cs & SharePointContext.cs: These helper classes are added to VS2013 to execute all the heavy lifting related to Authorization and Authentication algorithms easily between Remote Web Server(SPWeb Host) & SharePoint Server(Front-end Server).

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/151.png?w=450&h=374

We will revisit the Service Class Code in a short while to understand its internal plumbing.

But for now, let’s build the Solution and Run it.

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/161.png?w=450&h=156

Trust the App with all needed permissions when prompted.

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/171.png?w=450&h=255

As soon as we Grant the App with all of the required permissions, the App Launcher redirects the User to the Start Page for the App, which is residing in the Remote Web for this case as highlighted below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/181.png?w=450&h=156

We can see the App Launcher added to the Site Contents of the Host Web as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/191.png?w=450&h=228

We can ensure the presence of App Web by using SharePoint Manager and inspects Products List that has been provisioned to the App Web during the App Deployment

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/201.png?w=450&h=209

We can browse the App Web from Browser also as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/211.png?w=450&h=182

Now in order to test the Event Receiver, let’s create a test item in Products List as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/221.png?w=450&h=144

Specify Product Name and Price. Click Save button

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/231.png?w=450&h=224

As soon as Item gets added, it triggers “ItemAdded” event which is delegated to Remote Event Receiver by SharePoint.

In Remote Event Receiver, we have two methods “ProcessEvent” and “ProcessOneWayEvent”.

For more details on these methods, you can revisit the earlier post SharePoint 2013: Remote Event Receivers

On Item added we can see Breakpoint hit in “ProcessEvent” Method as shown below

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/24.png?w=450&h=296

Similarly, we can see Break Point hit every time the Item gets updated as highlighted in below steps

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/25.png?w=450&h=377

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/26.png?w=450&h=167

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/27.png?w=450&h=290

Likewise, we can see Break Point hit when Item gets deleted as highlighted in below steps

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/28.png?w=450&h=323

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/29.png?w=450&h=294

Since we registered the Event Receivers to handle “ItemAdded”, “ItemUpdated”, “ItemDeleted” only so none of the other Events would be delegated to Remote Event Receiver by SharePoint.

In case if any more Events need to be handled we need to add <Receiver> Elements in the Element.xml file associated with Remote Event Receiver as and when needed.

SPRemoteEventProperties Object is your real friend:

“ProcessEvent” method of Remote Event Receiver provides an object called as “properties” that exposes a lot of useful properties that can help us to perform any desired operation on the Web or List or List Item.

Following are the important properties that are exposed by “properties” object:

Event Type: Returns the type of Event-Triggered by SharePoint Source Object
Item Event Properties: If the Event Type is of “List Item Type”, then “ItemEventProperties” collection is returned with data entered by user in each field of the List Item
List Properties: Returns the List specific properties like List Name, List ID and so on
Login User Properties: Return User specific properties like User ID, Login Name and so on
Source Web Properties: Return Web-specific properties like Web Url

https://howtodowithsharepoint.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/30.png?w=450&h=191

This post is more focused on the mechanics offered by SharePoint around Remote Event Receivers for List/List Item Events.

We will meet in another post where it will be more focused on to the implementation details on Event Receivers dancing around some valid Business Use Cases.

Hope you find this post helpful.

Share via

SharePoint 2013: Develop Remote Event Receivers for List And List Items

Introduction

Development approach

Additional resources