PowerShell and SharePoint API

PowerShell and SharePoint API is really powerfull combination which can help us to automatize administration and development tasks. SharePoint exposes .NET API which can be typically called from some .NET programming language such as C#. Using this approach we have to write code, compile it and than run. SharePoint API can be also used from PowerShell, this approach removes the step of compilation. Only write a script and run it.

Following PowerShell script demonstrates using of SharePoint API from PowerShell. Script is intended to collectively set the force checkout property of document libraries (Shared Documents) in all webs of the site collection on true.

   1:  #################################################################################

   2:  #

   3:  #  Set-RequireCheckOut

   4:  #  Sets ForceCheckout on document libraries Shared Documents on site collection

   5:  #

   6:  #################################################################################

   7:   

   8:  param

   9:  (

  10:      [string] $siteUrl

  11:  )

  12:   

  13:  [void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

  14:   

  15:  $site = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite $siteUrl

  16:   

  17:  foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs)

  18:  {

  19:      foreach ($list in $web.Lists)

  20:      {

  21:          if ($list.Title -eq "Shared Documents")

  22:          {

  23:              $list.ForceCheckout = $True

  24:              $list.Update()

  25:          } 

  26:      }

  27:  }