Unable to display list items in custom View after adding items to list through code

Question

I have created a custom list in MOSS 2010 that has a column type of Person/Group. I am storing AD username in that column. Also, I have created a view for the list that is filtering data based on the Person/Group column. All is good if I add/edit items in the list via MOSS.

However, I have created a web part that inserts the items in this list. After inserting the items in the list, the view does not display the items inserted to the list via webpart . However, if I edit the inserted record and save it again, it displays the record in the custom view.

Can you please help in this as I have wasted almost a day in fixing this and tried and tested all the obvious errors that I could like, checking of spaces/special charcters etc.

Answer 1

I can't say exactly (because you didn't provide any code), but it looks like that you're putting some loose values into your Person/Group column. When you re-save item, SharePoint resolves the issue, probably by re-parsing the value.

The point is, that actually SharePoint validation is occasionally not very good and sometimes you're able to set some incorrect (bad-formatted) values through SharePoint Object Model.

Please, review your code intently, paying particular attention to the fragment where the Person/Group column is getting filled.

The right scenario for setting up a Person/Group field value will be:

1. First of all, you need to retrieve ID of the user if you have his login name, the best option will be to use SPWeb.EnsureUser method (it searches for the user, and if user with specified login was not found, it adds him to site).
2. Having user ID, and having SPListItem object instance, you should set the field value. The most prudent way to retrieve the right field is to use the field's guid.

The code will look something like this:

var loginName = // pass user login name here
var fieldGuid = // pass your field Guid here

var userId = SPWeb.EnsureUser(loginName).ID;
listItem[fieldGuid] = userId;
// ... set other columns
listItem.Update();