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Using Month element in DateRangesOverlap can return items not in the specified month

One can logically think that if you set the CalendarDate property of the SPQuery and apply Month as the Value in the DateRangesOverlap element then the query returns items from the month specified in the CalendarDate property.

For example, using the following code .

SPQuery query = new SPQuery();

query.CalendarDate = new DateTime(2008, 3, 1);

. and applying the following CAML query .

<Where>

  <DateRangesOverlap>

    <FieldRef Name='StartDate' />

    <FieldRef Name='EndDate' />

    <Value Type='DateTime'>

      <Month />

    </Value>

  </DateRangesOverlap>

</Where>

 . one can expect that items having overlap with March 2008 will be only returned.

I've found that it is not exactly so, as elements from the end of February and beginning of April may be also returned. The reason for that I think is the simple fact that these items have overlap with the calendar range of the month view of March 2008 (e.g. 24/02/2008-05/04/2008), as the month calendar view includes the full weeks at the beginning and the end of the month, not only the days between 01/03/2008-31/03/2008.

Since DateRangesOverlap is (another) under-documented element of SharePoint and CAML I can't decide if it is a bug or a feature. Since it is used primarily in the calendar views it seems to be logical that it should return all items that need to be displayed in the month view. So it is probably by design, sad that this fact is not documented.

This fact caused a misbehavior (or let's call it bug) in one of our custom application, so we should return to our original complex CAML query assembled from Lt, Gt, Leq, Geq, composite And and Or elements.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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