Export SharePoint List Data To Xml through PowerShell

Anatoly Mironov

Today my colleague Johannes Milling wrote an awesome post: Export SharePoint List Data To XML Directly from the GUI He uses the old and forgotten RPC-based web service owssvr.dll (that has existed since SharePoint 2003). This url pattern is used to get the xml-formatted list data for a specific ListView:

http://<site_url>/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List=<list guid>&View=<view guid>&Query=*&XMLDATA=TRUE

To automate this I have written a PowerShell function. All the details are in the comments:

function Export-OIPSPListDataAsXml {
  <#
  .Synopsis Exports list items as xml
  .DESCRIPTION This function uses a built-in hidden service owssvr.dll in
  SharePoint
  .PARAMETER Web SPWeb or a url for the SPWeb object where the list resides
  .PARAMETER ListName List Name (List Title)
  .PARAMETER ViewName Name of the List View to export the data
  .EXAMPLE Export-OIPSPListView -Web http://myawesomesite -ListName "Teddy
  Bears" -ViewName "All Items"
  .EXAMPLE Export-OIPSPListView -Web $webInstance -ListName "Top Links"
  -ViewName "All Items"
  .Notes
  Name: Export-OIPSPListDataAsXml
  Author: Anatoly Mironov
  Last Edit: 2014-09-11
  Keywords: SPList, SPWeb, SPListView, Xml
  .Link http://chuvash.eu
  #>
  [CmdLetBinding()]
  param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPWebPipeBind]$Web,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$ListName,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$ViewName)
  $spWeb = $Web.Read()
  $list = $spWeb.Lists[$ListName]
  if (!$list) {
    throw "List $ListName on web $($spWeb.Url) could not be found"
  }
  $view = $list.Views[$ViewName]
  if (!$view) {
    throw "View $ViewName on web $ListName could not be found"
  }
  $url = "{0}/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={1}&View={2}&Query=*&XMLDATA=TRUE" `
  -f $spWeb.Url, $list.ID, $view.ID
  $wc = New-Object Net.WebClient
  $wc.UseDefaultCredentials = $true
  $wc.DownloadString($url)
}