GetFileByServerRelativePath does not work and always returns file not found

Question

I was previously using the GetFileByServerRelativeUrl and it was working fine, but the characters # and % are not supported while they are supposed to be supported with GetFileByServerRelativePath, so I changed the code as per below but now it just doesn't work with any files???

public bool DownloadFile(string filepath, out string     Base64EncodedFile, out string errormessage)
        {
            Base64EncodedFile = string.Empty;
            errormessage = string.Empty;

            try
            {
                Uri filename = new Uri(filepath);                
                string serverrelative = filename.AbsolutePath;

                //This old method does not support # or % but works fine
                //Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.File file = context.Web.GetFileByServerRelativeUrl(serverrelative);

                // >> Replaced with this
                ResourcePath filePathDecoded = ResourcePath.FromDecodedUrl(serverrelative);
                Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.File file = context.Web.GetFileByServerRelativePath(filePathDecoded);
                // << Replaced with this

                context.Load(file);
                ClientResult<System.IO.Stream> streamResult = file.OpenBinaryStream();
                context.ExecuteQuery();

                Base64EncodedFile = ConvertToBase64(streamResult.Value);            
                return true;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                errormessage = ex.Message;
                return false;
            }
        }

SharepointClient.SharepointClient newupload = new SharepointClient.SharepointClient("https://xxxxxxx.sharepoint.com/sites/xxxxxxxxx/", usernametext.Text, textpassword.Text);

            newupload.DownloadFile(Url.Text, out EncodedAbs, out errormessage);

If I use the old GetFileByServerRelativeUrl it works just fine... I tried everything but I cannot seem to get to work the GetFileByServerRelativePath ... I can't understand what I'm doing wrong???

Please help!!!

Answer 1

Hi Toddeo,

It seems like decoding changed the URL and it doesn't match the path. Can you share the URL for which you are facing the issue.

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Best Regards,
Brij K
http://bloggerbrij.blogspot.co.uk/

Answer 2

Hi Bri, The URL is quite basic and I’ve checked the filepathdecoded and it seems fine… I really don’t understand what’s the problem??? URL is: https://workmadesimple.sharepoint.com/sites/WorkMadeSimple/Shared%20Documents/Test/Test.txt

Answer 3

Hi,

Could you try below code.

string targetSiteURL = @"https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/lee";

            var login = "[e-mail]";
            var password = "password";

            var securePassword = new SecureString();

            foreach (char c in password)
            {
                securePassword.AppendChar(c);
            }
            SharePointOnlineCredentials onlineCredentials = new SharePointOnlineCredentials(login, securePassword);

            using (ClientContext ctx = new ClientContext(targetSiteURL))
            {
                ctx.Credentials = onlineCredentials;

                string fileName = "FileWith#%.docx";
                var _File = ctx.Web.GetFileByServerRelativePath(ResourcePath.FromDecodedUrl($"/sites/lee/MyDoc/{fileName}"));
                ctx.Load(_File);
                ctx.ExecuteQuery();
                Console.Write(_File.ServerRelativeUrl);
                Console.WriteLine();
            }

Best Regards,

Lee

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Answer 4

That’s great! Thank you your example opened my eyes and I discovered that the only problem with my code was the URL that I was passing contained encoded HTML characters!!! I was passing the spaces as %20 and this caused the problem!!! Once I remove %20 and replaced with the space all was good! It makes sense as the FromDecodedUrl was actually encoding again the %20 resulting in an invalid URL!