CSOM (Client Side Object Model) - What's new with SharePoint 2013

Posted by KunaalKapoor on Geeks with Blogs See other posts from Geeks with Blogs or by KunaalKapoor
Published on Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:48:07 GMT Indexed on 2012/11/27 5:07 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 209

Filed under:
SharePoint CSOM
The Client-Side Object Model or CSOM came out with SharePoint 2010. CSOM is accessible through client.svc but all client.svc calls must go through supported WFC entry points (supported entry points are .NET, Silverlight and JavaScript). So a developer would need to use client side proxy objects exposed by either a .NET assembly or a JavaScript library. 

Changes with SharePoint 2013
  • REST Capabilities - Direct access to client.svc
  • New APIs - App Model
REST Capabilities
One of the most important changes to the CSOM with SharePoint 2013 is that the web service entry point of client.svc has been extended to allow direct access  via REST-Based web service calls. This is a really critical change since its going to make the SharePoint platform accessible to any other platform, opening the horizons of integration and collaboration with other REST based platforms and devices. OData (a really popular standard data access API for HTTP-based clients) is supported similar to 2010 but will be a more important aspect of SharePoint 2013 development.

New API's
CSOM for SharePoint 2013 has been buffed up with several new APIs for not only SharePoint server functionality but also an API for Windows Phone applications. For a SharePoint 2010 farm most of the new APIs mentioned below are available only via server side APIs:
  1. Search
  2. Taxonomy
  3. Publishing
  4. Workflow
  5. User Profiles
  6. E-Discovery
  7. Analytics
  8. Business Data
  9. IRM
  10. Feeds
SharePoint 2013 remote APIs being accessible through both CSOM and REST is very important to the new app model where developers can no longer run code in a SharePoint environment nor can they access the server-side APIs. So CSOM plays the savior here.

Also, you can now substitute the alias '_api' in order to reference '_vti_bin/client.svc'.

© Geeks with Blogs or respective owner