SharePoint REST API: Get List Data To DataTable

Aug 10, 2025 by ADMIN 48 views

How to Retrieve Data from SharePoint Custom List View Using REST and Display in DataTable

Hey guys! Ever found yourself needing to grab data from a SharePoint custom list view and display it neatly in a DataTable? It's a pretty common scenario when building web applications that interact with SharePoint. In this article, we'll dive deep into how you can achieve this using REST calls. We'll break down the process step by step, making it super easy to follow along. So, grab your coding hats, and let's get started!

Understanding the Basics

Before we jump into the code, let's quickly cover some fundamental concepts. We're talking about REST APIs, SharePoint Lists, and DataTables. Knowing these basics will make the whole process much smoother.

REST APIs

REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs are like messengers that allow different software systems to communicate with each other over the internet. Think of it as ordering food at a restaurant. You (the client) send a request (your order) to the waiter (the API), and the kitchen (the server) prepares your food (the data) and sends it back to you. In our case, we'll be using REST APIs to ask SharePoint for data. SharePoint will then send us the data in a format we can use, typically JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).

SharePoint Lists

SharePoint Lists are essentially tables in SharePoint where you can store data. They're like spreadsheets but with more features. You can customize them with different columns (fields) to store various types of information, such as text, numbers, dates, and more. In this article, we're focusing on retrieving data from a custom list view, which is a specific way of looking at the data in a list, often filtered and sorted to show only what you need.

DataTables

DataTables is a fantastic jQuery plugin that enhances HTML tables with interactive features like pagination, sorting, filtering, and more. It's a great way to display data in a user-friendly format on your web page. We'll be using DataTables to present the data we retrieve from SharePoint in a clean and organized manner.

Step-by-Step Guide to Retrieving Data and Populating DataTable

Alright, let's get our hands dirty with some code! We'll break this down into manageable steps, so you can follow along easily.

Step 1: Setting Up the Stage

First things first, we need to set up our development environment. This involves including the necessary libraries and scripts in your HTML page. We'll need jQuery for making AJAX calls and DataTables for displaying our data. Make sure you have these included in your project:

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://cdn.datatables.net/1.11.5/css/jquery.dataTables.min.css">
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf8" src="https://cdn.datatables.net/1.11.5/js/jquery.dataTables.min.js"></script>

These lines of code include jQuery, the DataTables CSS for styling, and the DataTables JavaScript file. With these in place, we're ready to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Crafting the REST Call

The heart of our operation is the REST call. We need to construct a URL that tells SharePoint exactly what data we want. Let's break down the URL structure:

_spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl + "/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('YourListName')/Items?$filter=YourFilterCriteria"

_spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl: This gives us the base URL of our SharePoint site.
/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('YourListName'): This part tells SharePoint we want to access a list with a specific title. Replace YourListName with the actual name of your list.
/Items: This indicates that we want to retrieve items from the list.
?$filter=YourFilterCriteria: This is where we specify our filter criteria. It allows us to narrow down the results based on certain conditions. For example, we might want to retrieve items where a specific field matches a certain value.

Now, let's look at the specific example provided in the user's question:

var vUrl = _spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl;
var agentInfo = "SomeAgentName"; // Replace with the actual agent information

$.ajax({
 url: vUrl + "/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('TrainingTrackers')/Items?$filter=AVP eq '" + agentInfo + "' or MANAGER eq '" + agentInfo + "'",
 ...
});

In this snippet, vUrl stores the base URL of the SharePoint site, and agentInfo holds the value we're using to filter the results. The $filter part of the URL is crucial. It specifies that we want items where the AVP field or the MANAGER field is equal to the value in agentInfo. This is a powerful way to retrieve only the data we need.

Step 3: Making the AJAX Call

With our URL in hand, we can now make the AJAX call to SharePoint. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) allows us to make HTTP requests without reloading the page. Here's the code snippet:

$.ajax({
 url: vUrl + "/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('TrainingTrackers')/Items?$filter=AVP eq '" + agentInfo + "' or MANAGER eq '" + agentInfo + "'",
 method: "GET",
 headers: {
 "Accept": "application/json; odata=verbose"
 },
 success: function (data) {
 console.log("Data retrieved successfully:", data);
 // Call a function to process the data and populate the DataTable
 processSharePointData(data.d.results);
 },
 error: function (error) {
 console.error("Error retrieving data:", error);
 }
});

Let's break down this code:

$.ajax({...}): This is the jQuery function for making AJAX calls.
url: We've already discussed this. It's the URL we crafted in the previous step.
**`method: