SharePoint Online - How to update query of an existing content search webpart?

Question

Context : SharePoint Online, using CSOM C# or Powershell

I have a content search webpart (CSWP) on the homepage of a website. I need to edit the query of my CSWP programmatically.

Why programmatically ? Because I have the same WebPart on more than 80 websites and I can't take three days going on each and everyone of them...

So, I "only" need to find a way to edit the query of an existing CSWP without recreating it. If you have some ideas, anything could help !

Thank you.

Answer 1

I think the easier approach would be to delete and reprovision the web part in this case. You don't have a strongly typed representation of CSWP in CSOM, so there's no straightforward way to just update the query.

Technically, it might be possible to update the query via a Properties dictionary, but it'd still be easier to delete/reprovision.

Answer 2

If you want to go the road with the props Derek is mentioning you could do something like this:

var clientContext = new SP.ClientContext(siteRelUrl);
var file = clientContext.get_web().getFileByServerRelativeUrl( siteRelUrl + "/SitePages/Home.aspx");

var limitedWebPartManager = file.getLimitedWebPartManager(SP.WebParts.PersonalizationScope.shared);
var collWebPart = limitedWebPartManager.get_webParts();

clientContext.load(collWebPart, 'Include(WebPart.Properties, WebPart.Title)');

clientContext.executeQueryAsync(() =>  {

    if (collWebPart.get_count()) {

        var webPartEnumerator = collWebPart.getEnumerator();
        while (webPartEnumerator.moveNext()) {
            var webPartDef = webPartEnumerator.get_current();
            var webPart = webPartDef.get_webPart();                 
            console.log(webPart.get_title())
            if(webPart.get_title() == "Todo") {

                var webPartProperties = webPart.get_properties();

                // Take a look the props here, QueryTemplate maybe
                console.log( JSON.parse(webPartProperties.get_item("DataProviderJSON"))  )

                //webPartProperties.set_item("DataProviderJSON", newDataProviderJSONval);
                //webPartDef.saveWebPartChanges();  
            }
        }

        clientContext.executeQueryAsync(function() {            
            // Success
        }, (s,a) => { console.log(a.get_message()) });  
    }

}, (s,a) => { console.log(a.get_message()) });

I'm not sure of the props you'll need to change, never done it, only for other web parts.