How to locate Sharepoint document library source page on the server?

Question

I am working with a Sharepoint document library and I'm trying to locate the source of the document library page. I'm working on the Sharepoint server. I just can't find it, where should it be stored?

Thank you!

Answer 1

SharePoint does not store the pages directly in the filesystem. The mechanism is a little less straightforward.

To understand this mechanism, You have to understand the concepts of Ghosting/Unghosting, and the ASP.NET Virtual Path Provider. The SharePoint stores the pages in the Database as BLOBS, and serves them up using the ASP.NET Virtual path provider.

The ASP.NET Virtual Path Provider provides an abstraction between ASP.NET and FileSystem. Instead of getting a System.IO.FileStream object directly from the filesystem, the provider uses MapPathBasedVirtualPathProvider and the MapPathBasedVirtualFile classes to get the FileStream object.

This abstraction allows ASP.NET to serve up pages from anywhere, without having to store the pages in an actual file system. This concept is used to implement Ghosting/Unghosting which basically means having a single copy of the page, and serving them up as different pages.

SharePoint leverages this new feature in ASP.NET 2.0, along with the improved BLOB storage functionality in SQL Server 2005 to serve up pages.