sometimes _client.IsExistingObject(id) returns false for . and /

Question

_client.IsExistingObject(webdav URL of folder) returns false when i try to search folder with name "." and "/" which already exists in the folder where i am searching

Answer 1

Are you escaping your WebDAV URLs correctly? Try loading your folder by ID and checking it's locationInfo.WebDavUrl property to make sure you are.

e.g:

//created a test folder named "testfolderwith/slashesand.dots"
var folder = (FolderData)client.Read("tcm:233-49109-2", new ReadOptions {
    LoadFlags = LoadFlags.WebDavUrls
});
var webDavUrl = folder.LocationInfo.WebDavUrl;
// "/webdav/Test%20Publication/Building%20Blocks/testfolderwith%2Fslashesand%2Edots"

var unEscapedTest = client.IsExistingObject("/webdav/Test Publication/Building Blocks/testfolderwith/slashesand.dots");
// False
var escapedTest = client.IsExistingObject("/webdav/Test%20Publication/Building%20Blocks/testfolderwith%2Fslashesand%2Edots");
// True

Answer 2

We found out that actually this is a bug in system. We contacted SDL customer support and they verified that its indeed so. For example, if folder has dot in its name (.), IsExistingObject will return false even if folder exists.

They suggested to us to use encoding the period (.) . with %2E . We did so by creating overload method for HttpUtility.UrlEncode() where we additionally encode dot character.

Hope this helps :)