How to programmatically get content approval information on a list item

Today, as I was working on a custom list form for SharePoint, I needed to get some information on versioning and content approval for the items in the list. It turned out to be quite straight-forward. Here is what I did.

Getting the publishing permission levels

SharePoint has a small number of built-in permission levels, or role definitions as they are called code-wise. Several of these are easy to access through the SPRoleType enum.

However, the publishing features create new permission levels that are not found in SPRoleType. Although they can be accessed using code such as web.RoleDefinitions["Approve"], this requires hardcoded strings, and is not practical in a localized setting. Luckily, there is a way to access the localization of these permission levels. I got the solution from Alexey Sadomov, and present it here in a slightly modified form.

Working with custom permission levels in SharePoint

Creating custom permission levels in SharePoint is not hard. You can do it through the GUI, by navigating to the_layouts/addrole.aspx page on any site.
But you might want to do it through code instead, deploying the new permission level with a feature and assigning it to groups and users. This also includes more options for defining the permission level than the GUI does. Below I show how to define your own permission levels.

Should you want to see what permissions are used for the standard permission levels, then this link is a good place to look.

How to add images to picture library with thumbnails using CAML

Adding images to a SharePoint picture library is done basically like adding any other type of file to a library in SharePoint: You create a module, point it towards the library, and includes the files. Well, there is a catch...

How to create lookup fields in CAML that works

For my first post on this blog I will demonstrate how to avoid the most common problem with deploying SharePoint lookup fields.

Basically, a lookup field is defined using CAML just like any other SharePoint field. However, there is a problem: You need to add a reference to the lookup list. There are several ways to achieve this. Below, I have outlined three standard ways to do this, and a fourth way, my preferred, that handles the problems inherent in each of the other three solutions.