SharePoint List.getListItems WebService to return sub folder contents, recursively

Question

I am calling the lists.asmx webservice from CXF. The following soap call does not return files from list sub folders. It returns folder1,folder2 and file1.pdf

Shared Documents
  folder1
     file2.docx
     file3.pdf
  folder2
     sub-folder1
        file5.pdf
     file4.pdf
  file1.pdf

SOAP call

POST /_vti_bin/lists.asmx HTTP/1.1 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:soap1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
   <soap:Header/>
   <soap:Body>
      <soap1:GetListItems>
         <soap1:listName>Shared Documents</soap1:listName>
       <queryOptions> 
        <QueryOptions> 
           <IncludeMandatoryColumns>TRUE</IncludeMandatoryColumns>
           <ViewAttributes Scope="RecursiveAll"/>
           <DateInUtc>TRUE</DateInUtc>               
        </QueryOptions>
      </queryOptions> 
      </soap1:GetListItems>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Any clues on how to get files from folder1, folder3 and sub-folder1 included in the result?. If Lists web service cannot do it, is there an alternative service/method?

Additional Information: There is another webservice, SiteData (_vti_bin/sitedata.asmx). It has a similar method ( getListItems) and returns all files with just the list name and no additional parameters.The issue is I could not figure out how/where to specify the Paging parameter, as there is NO queryOptions input element like in the Lists webservice.

 <soap1:strListName>?</soap1:strListName>
 <soap1:strQuery>?</soap1:strQuery>
 <soap1:strViewFields>?</soap1:strViewFields>
 <soap1:uRowLimit>?</soap1:uRowLimit>

Answer 1

It is possible to get the list contents recursively, using <ViewAttributes Scope="RecursiveAll"/> elment. There is a silly mistake in my soap envelope. The queryOptions element has no namespace. I fixed in the following text.

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:soap1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">
   <soap:Header/>
   <soap:Body>
      <soap1:GetListItems>
         <soap1:listName>Shared Documents</soap1:listName>
       <**soap1:**queryOptions> 
        <QueryOptions> 
           <IncludeMandatoryColumns>TRUE</IncludeMandatoryColumns>
           <ViewAttributes Scope="RecursiveAll"/>
           <DateInUtc>TRUE</DateInUtc>               
        </QueryOptions>
      </**soap1:**queryOptions> 
      </soap1:GetListItems>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Btw, there is a great tool, U2U CAML Builder to build SharePoint CAML. I wish I found that a few weeks ago.

Answer 2

You have to recursively call the service to get all the items within the subfolders. I don't there is an option to do it OOTB. Instead, you can always write your custom SharePoint web service to accomplish this.

1. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/16a2d993-2f5e-4242-8e5a-451a78c064a3
2. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/karthick/archive/2006/03/27/562245.aspx