SharePoint 2010 c# programatically find if site exists from non-sharepoint machine

Question

.NET web application is hosted on machine A were no SharePoint bits are installed. SharePoint is installed in machine B. I can access the SharePoint sites hosted on machine B from machine A through browser.

Is there a way that I can write some code to the web application on A that quires machine B, and checks if a site collection exists (I am allowed to pass the complete URL of the site on machine B to the web application on A).

Any ideas\references\examples will help.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use the WebClient class to check if the specified URL exists. Example:

using(var client = new WebClient()) {       
    try{
        string check = client.DownloadString("http://siteroot/subsite");
    }
    catch(Exception ex){    
       //if you get here the site doesn't exist
    }
}

Or you can use following code to check if site exists with X title, for using this you will need to add reference to SharePoint Client dll's in your web project:

using (ClientContext context = new ClientContext(spUri))
{
   context.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;
   Web web = context.Web;
   context.Load(web, w => w.Title, w => w.Webs);
   context.ExecuteQuery();

    var subWeb = (from w in web.Webs where w.Title == "Website Title" select w).SingleOrDefault();
    if (subWeb != null)
    {
      // if found true
      return true;
    }
}