Get list items from Sharepoint using lists.asmx web service

In one of my previous articles I showed how to get authentication cookies (FedAuth) from Sharepoint FBA using authentication.asmx web service (see Authenticate in Sharepoint on-prem FBA site via OTB /_vti_bin/Authentication.asmx web service). In this post I will show how to use these cookies and get list items from Sharepoint list using standard lists.asmx web service.

It can be done using the following code:

Cookie authCookies = ...;
string listTitle = ...;
string soapBody =
	"<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'>" +
	"  <soap:Body>" +
	"    <GetListItems xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/'>" +
	"      <listName>" + listTitle + "</listName>" +
	"    </GetListItems>" +
	"  </soap:Body>" +
	"</soap:Envelope>";
var cookies = new CookieContainer();
cookies.Add(authCookies);
var handler = new HttpClientHandler();
handler.CookieContainer = cookies;
using (var httpClient = new HttpClient(handler))
{
	var req = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Post, "http://example.com/_vti_bin/lists.asmx")
	{
		Content = new StringContent(soapBody, Encoding.UTF8, "text/xml")
	};
	var res = httpClient.SendAsync(req).GetAwaiter().GetResult();
	string result
	if (res.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
	{
		result = res.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
	}
}

Here we use auth cookies from previous article. We again create special SOAP body where pass list title. In this example we will get all list items but it is also possible to fetch list items which match CAML query - for that you will need to use quert, viewFieldsm rowLimit and queryOptions tags in SOAP body. For more information about these properties refer to documentation of lists.asmx web service. Id everything was done correctly it will return you list items from specified lists in SOAP format.