Pre-Populating SharePoint List Item Values Using Query String Variables

A client of ours was having trouble getting this idea to work based on a post he found on the Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog.  I took a look and got it to work nicely in a test situation.  This is a nice trick, as it can help to pre-populate metadata that your users might otherwise need to provide.

Here’s how I got it to work:

• I created a Custom List on a MOSS site with no customizations
• I added the script below into the page, just below the line:       <asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId=”PlaceHolderMain” runat=”server”>
• Now, when I hit the New button on the list, I get alerts that the JavaScript is parsing out the Query String variables, as expected
• I altered the default URL to look something like: http://<<servername>>/Lists/<<List Name>>/NewForm.aspx?Title=XXX
• The Title is pre-populated with the Query String value that I provide, like ‘XXX’ above

The original post above shows how to make this work for a lookup column, and the code can be extended to work with any column type.  (It would be a nice exercise to make the code work regardless of the column type, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)

I’ve left in the alerts that I used to test things so that you can see how it flows.

<script type="text/javascript">

_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push("fillDefaultValues");

function fillDefaultValues() {
  var qs = location.search.substring(1, location.search.length);
  var args = qs.split("&");
  var vals = new Object();

  for (var i=0; i < args.length; i++) {
    var nameVal = args[i].split("=");
    var temp = unescape(nameVal[1]).split('+');

    nameVal[1] = temp.join(' ');
    vals[nameVal[0]] = nameVal[1];
    alert('fillDefaultValues: vals[nameVal[0]]=' + vals[nameVal[0]] + ' nameVal[0]=' + nameVal[0] );
  } 
  setValueFromQueryString(nameVal[0], vals[nameVal[0]]);
}

function setValueFromQueryString(fieldName, value) {
  alert('setValueFromQueryString: fieldName=' + fieldName + ' value=' + value);
  if (value == undefined) return;
  var theField = getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle("input","TextField",fieldName);
  if (theField != null) theField.value = value;
}

function getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle(tagName, identifier, title) {
  alert('getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle: tagName=' + tagName + ' identifier=' + identifier + ' title=' + title);
  var len = identifier.length;
  var tags = document.getElementsByTagName(tagName);

  for (var i=0; i < tags.length; i++) {
    var tempString = tags[i].id;
    if (tags[i].title == title && (identifier == "" || tempString.indexOf(identifier) == tempString.length - len)) {
                alert('getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle: tags[i].id=' + tags[i].id + ' tags[i].title=' + tags[i].title + ' tags[i]=' + tags[i]);
      return tags[i];
    }
  }
  return null;
}
</script>

NOTE: This approach will NOT work in SharePoint 2003 because the column input fields on the page are generated differently.  Rather than just using the basic <INPUT> tag to construct the input fields (as MOSS does), each column is displayed by using JavaScript, like the example below (do a View Source on your page to see this in your environment):

<TR>
  <TH nowrap valign=top class="ms-formlabel"><nobr>Year</nobr></TH>
  <TD class="ms-formbody" style="padding-left:5px">
    <SCRIPT>
      fld = new TextField(frm,"Year","Year","2008");
      fld.cchMaxLength = "255";
      fld.cchDisplaySize = "";
      fld.IMEMode="";
      fld.BuildUI();
    </SCRIPT>
    &nbsp;
<SPAN class="ms-formdescription"></SPAN>
  </TD>
</TR>

This is done internally in the ListFormWebPart, so short of writing a custom Web Part with a new BuildUI function, I just don’t see a way to make this approach work.  Too bad, as, while it isn’t very elegant, it works well!

Yet another good argument to move to MOSS.