How to check-out a file from sharepoint document library using curl?

Question

It is possible to checkin a file to sharepoint document library using curl with the following command as mentioned in this question:

curl --ntlm --user username:password --upload-file file.txt https://mysharepointserver.com/sites/mysite/myfile.txt -k

But how to checkout the file first(using curl) from the document library?

I tried one method by passing SOAPAction checkoutfile headers and data as follows, but it had no effect eventhough the server returned response: '200 OK'

curl --ntlm --user username:password -d @soapdata.xml -H "SOAPAction: http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/CheckOutFile"  -H "Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8" https://mysharepointserver.com/sites/mysite/myfile.txt -k

soapdata.xml contains the SOAP data needed for checkout as described by WSDL. Is there something wrong in above command or is there a simpler way to do this with CURL like the checkin case?

Answer 1

Thank you very much for this post. It was exactly what I was looking for. I imagine you left the CheckIn as an exercise for your readers? Here is my proposal (Bourne shell type, avoiding the intermediate file):

cat <<EoSOAP |
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <soap:Body>
    <CheckInFile xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
      <pageUrl>tttps://myserver/sites/mysite/myfile.txt</pageUrl>
      <comment>Automagic update from bot</comment>
      <checkinType>0</checkinType>
    </CheckInFile>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
EoSOAP
curl -b $cookies -d @- \
  -H "SOAPAction: http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/CheckInFile" \
  -H "Content-Type: text/xml" \
  https://myserver/sites/mysite/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx

(I replaced the authentication with NTLM by cookies, as used with Form authentication.)

It may be useful to specifiy that the /sites/mysite part of the URL contains the complete path down to the library, e.g. https://myserver/sites/topsite/subsite/mysite/Pages/ for a Page library.

The arguments for the SOAP operation, in particular CheckInFile, can be found on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/lists.lists.checkinfile%28v=office.12%29.aspx

And you can get a quick reference of all SOAP operations implemented on your server with https://myserver/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx

Answer 2

Found from an example that, with SOAP approach, the URL in CURL command should be the path of the sharepoint site Lists.asmx and not the URL of file to be checked out. The file URL need to be only in the pageUrl field in soapdata xml as follows:

curl --ntlm --user username:password -d @soapdata.xml -H "SOAPAction: http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/CheckOutFile" -H "Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8" -k -v https://mysharepointserver.com/sites/mysite/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx

where contents of soapdata.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <soap:Body>
    <CheckOutFile xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
      <pageUrl>https://mysharepointserver.com/sites/mysite/myfile.txt</pageUrl>
      <checkoutToLocal>true</checkoutToLocal>
      <lastmodified/>
    </CheckOutFile>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>