Add a column in Document Library on the fly when the Document Library is created

Question

I want to create a column created/added when I create a document library or splist within my site collection. Will the approach of :

• ListCreated event receiver work in this situation?
• Should I creat a timer job which checks for list creation in every 1 minute interval in my site collection?
Am using SP 2013 on-premises with VS 2013 IDE

Answer 1

Out of the two options, event receiver is the best approach. Deploy your event receiver with a web-scoped feature and handle ListAdded event:

Event Receiver:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
      <Receivers >
          <Receiver>
            <Name>EventReceiverListAdded</Name>
            <Type>ListAdded</Type>
            <Assembly>$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$</Assembly>
            <Class>Class.EventReceiverListAdded</Class>
            <SequenceNumber>10000</SequenceNumber>
          </Receiver>
      </Receivers>
    </Elements>

List Added:

public override void ListAdded(SPListEventProperties properties)
{
    base.ListAdded(properties);

    SPWeb propertiesWeb = properties.Web as SPWeb;
    SPSite propertiesSite = propertiesWeb.Site;

    using (SPSite site = new SPSite(propertiesSite.ID))
    {
        using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb(propertiesWeb.ID))
        {
            var list = propertiesWeb.Lists[properties.List.ID];
            list.Fields.Add("Your Column", SPFieldType.Text, true)
            list.Update();
        }
    }
}

Just a note: I always tend to open a new web or site objects and get lists/items as they might be changed by other event receivers. This way the solution is more scalable if you don't use properties.List/Web/Site/ListItem.