CAML index of option?

Question

I got a question regarding CAML and retrieving data. I need to determine the proper people based upon the places user submits.

So I created the lists People-Place where I have column Place and column User.

Now I would like to retrieve people from SP List based on the user Places choice. I was able to do it for each item separately - place A -> person A. This is easy with Eq operator in CAML.

Now I want to go a little bit further- user uses many places (place A, place B, place C). I pass the values into my retrieving function. I don't want to split my input string and iterate over asynchronous function. Is there any way how to check if the field with name People is a substring of Query value? In JS the indexOf function could do the job. Is sth similar in CAML or do I really need to use a loop?

Thanks in advance for you help !

Answer 1

Absolutely Yes, you can do this in CAML query also. You have to use tag name while querying. See example

<Where><And><Eq><FieldRef Name='UserName' /><Value Type='User'>User_A</Value></Eq><Contains><FieldRef Name='Place' /><Value Type='Text'>Place_A</Value></Contains></And></Where>

Assume you have places like Place_A, Place_AA, Place_AAA, Place_B, Place_C, A_Place_A, ...etc. Now when you query this using above code, it will include all the places where "Place_A" is the sub-string of places name.

Enjoy!

Answer 2

You can use Contains filter in CAML query to get results.

<View>
 <Query>
<Where>
<Or>
<Contains>
    <FieldRef Name='Field1' />
    <Value Type='Text'>test4</Value>
  </Contains>
<Or>
<Contains>
    <FieldRef Name='Field1' />
    <Value Type='Text'>test3</Value>
  </Contains>
<Or>
  <Contains>
    <FieldRef Name='Field1' />
    <Value Type='Text'>test1</Value>
  </Contains>
  <Contains>
    <FieldRef Name='Field1' />
    <Value Type='Text'>test2</Value>
  </Contains>
</Or>
</Or>
</Or>
</Where>

You can build dynamic query based on your fields. Hope this helps you :)