In this walkthrough we will demonstrate how to integrate Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and OData and display the data on SharePoint 2013 page. In order to do that we will describe how to create a new external content type for OData by means of Meta Man.
- Prerequisites:
- SharePoint Server 2013
- Meta Man (it doesn’t necessarily need to be installed on the SharePoint server but it requires .net Framework 4.5 installed on the machine where you are going to run Meta Man from)
- A published OData service (some of Live Services are listed here Live Services).
- Open Meta Man and choose to connect to OData source. Enter the OData service URL you want to connect to (I will use this one http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc/ in this walkthrough)
- Upon successfully connecting to OData source you’ll see another window. In order to get a list of entities click “Tables” item in the list on the left pane. Now we can see listed all the entities for this particular OData source.
- We create an external content type by dragging and dropping an entity onto our design surface which is the large area on the right side. We will be working with the “Product” entity, to add it to the model , just drag it onto the “Diagram”.
- When you drop the entity you will be shown the following dialog, which allows to configure the external content type before creation. You may modify the external content type name, change identifier and add the methods to the external content type. In this example we’ll accept all default values and click “Create” button.
- You can see created external content type on the design surface with the listed methods and identifier.
- Now all we need to do is to deploy our BDC model. First we need to set URL of where you want to deploy your model. We set this URL by going “Settings” from the title bar.
- In the model deployment URL textbox you should manually type URL of SharePoint 2013 Central Administration . Click “Save” button.
- Once you have saved the URL to deploy your BDC model file to simply click “Deploy” button and your BDC model file will get deployed.
- SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success dialog.
- Browse to the site where you want to add the External List. Click “Site Contents”->”add an app”.
- Select “External List”
- Enter a name for External list and click on the icon to show the available External Content Types
- Select our generated OData_svc_MetaMan.Product External Content Type, click “OK”
- Click “Create”
- Your external data from OData source is now displayed in the SharePoint External List
We hope this walkthrough will be useful for you. If you have any questions feel free to email them to
<Dmitry Kaloshin/>
