Property bags in SharePoint

Property bag in SharePoint exist in MOSS version and even continued to be a part of 2010 version. Property bag is nothing but a key value pair stored as hash table that we can retrieve in object model.

We can add, edit or remove properties from property bag from SharePoint Designer or through object model.

So let’s go ahead and check that out in Designer. Connect with the site.

Check out site options and click on it.

Here you can see parameters; these are the properties for this site. Here we can add, edit and remove. Let’s go ahead and add three properties and values.

Click on Add give name and value.

In the same way create two more properties.

Before we dive into coding part, I would like to bring in some more details.

We can define properties for several levels in SharePoint. At highest level we can have it for SPFarm, then SPWebApplication, then for SPSite, for SPWeb and for SPList.

Let’s us start by adding and retrieving properties that we just defined at web level.

  protected void btnPropertyBag_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)

        {

            SPWeb objWeb = SPContext.Current.Web;

            objWeb.Properties.Add("CustomKey4AddedFromCode", "CustomValue4AddedFromCode");  

            objWeb.Properties.Update();  

            string strProp =  objWeb.AllProperties["CustomKey1"].ToString();

            strProp = objWeb.AllProperties["CustomKey2"].ToString();

            strProp = objWeb.AllProperties["CustomKey3"].ToString();

           

        }  

Sometime you can have Properties and not AllProperties like for SPlist, , SP web application and SP farm.

You can also remove property that we’ve added.

  objWeb.Properties.Remove("CustomKey4AddedFromCode");

If you want to check if the key exist, use containskey

if(objWeb.Properties.ContainsKey(""))

If you want to add it to the list or library, then you won’t find properties collection directly. You need to take rootfolder object and store it there. Like shown below.

SPWeb objWeb = SPContext.Current.Web;

SPList lstCalendar = objWeb.Lists.TryGetList("Calendar");

lstCalendar.RootFolder.Properties.Add("CustomCalendarKey", "CustomCalendarValue");

For SPSite there is no as such property bag available, but if you want to store, then use rootweb for SPSite and then assign properties. Like shown below.

SPWeb objWeb = SPContext.Current.Web;

SPSite objSite = objWeb.Site;

objSite.RootWeb.Properties.Add("SiteLevelKey", "SiteLevelValue");

For Web Application you can use this

SPWeb objWeb = SPContext.Current.Web;

             Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication objWebApp = objWeb.Site.WebApplication;

             objWebApp.Properties.Add("WebAppLevelKey", "WebAppLevelValue");

 Hope this will help to understand property bag.