Displaying the Most Recent Documents from All Document Libraries in a SharePoint Site

Data View Web Parts (DVWPs) are still my favorite tool in my SharePoint toolbox. Whenever I can use them to get the server to do the heavy lifting before the page is rendered, I do. jQuery and all of the fancy template libraries out there are grand, but in most cases it introduces a lag for the user between the time the page shows up in the browser and the time they can see all of the content.

In this case, I wanted to show the most recently modified documents in each of the Document Libraries in one site on that site’s home page. A DVWP using DataSourceMode=”CrossList” is a great way to do this. By using this method, any new Document Libraries will simply show up in the DVWP as soon as they are added. There’s no need to change any code at all.

I don’t usually like to just give the full code to something because I think it’s more beneficial to show the pieces so that you, gentle reader, must adapt things to your own environment and particular business needs. Given the neutered state of SharePoint Designer 2013, though, I think I’ll probably post full DVWPs where I can going forward. It’s simply too darn hard to edit DVWPs in SPD2013. Here I was working in SharePoint 2010, but the DVWP will work the same, whether you are in SharePoint 2007, 2010, or 2013.

This DVWP will display the Document Library name in a header row and then the three most recently modified documents, whether or not they are in folders. I’m display the name of the document as a link, the Modified By user as a link to their info or User Profile (depending on license version), and the Modified date/time columns. If you’d like to show other columns you can add them into the ViewFields in the DataSource section and then into the XSL. (In a CrossList DVWP, you must explicitly request each column you’d like to use.) To adjust the number of documents displayed per Document Library, just change the value of the TopN param near the top of the XSL section.

<WebPartPages:DataFormWebPart runat="server" Description="" ListDisplayName="" PartOrder="1" HelpLink="" AllowRemove="True" IsVisible="True" AllowHide="True" UseSQLDataSourcePaging="True" ExportControlledProperties="True" IsIncludedFilter="" DataSourceID="" Title="Most Recent Documents" ViewFlag="8" NoDefaultStyle="TRUE" AllowConnect="True" FrameState="Normal" PageSize="-1" PartImageLarge="" AsyncRefresh="False" ExportMode="All" Dir="Default" DetailLink="" ShowWithSampleData="False" FrameType="Default" PartImageSmall="" IsIncluded="True" SuppressWebPartChrome="False" AllowEdit="True" EnableOriginalValue="False" AutoRefresh="False" AutoRefreshInterval="60" AllowMinimize="True" ViewContentTypeId="" InitialAsyncDataFetch="False" MissingAssembly="Cannot import this Web Part." HelpMode="Modeless" ListUrl="" ID="g_2b53a84e_bf26_4583_af64_ac20e428b458" ConnectionID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" AllowZoneChange="True" ManualRefresh="False" __MarkupType="vsattributemarkup" __WebPartId="{D2B80E07-81CE-48C5-83A1-D124096DC364}" __AllowXSLTEditing="true" WebPart="true" Height="" Width="">
<ParameterBindings>
  <ParameterBinding Name="URL" Location="ServerVariable(URL)" DefaultValue=""/>
</ParameterBindings>
<Xsl>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" version="1.0" exclude-result-prefixes="xsl msxsl ddwrt" xmlns:ddwrt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/runtime" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" xmlns:ddwrt2="urn:frontpage:internal">
  <xsl:output method="html" indent="no"/>
  <xsl:param name="URL"/>
  <xsl:param name="TopN">3</xsl:param>

  <xsl:template match="/" xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls">
    <xsl:call-template name="dvt_1"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="dvt_1">
    <xsl:variable name="Rows" select="/dsQueryResponse/Rows/Row"/>
    <table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
      <tr valign="top">
        <th class="ms-vh" nowrap="nowrap">Name</th>
        <th class="ms-vh" nowrap="nowrap">Modified By</th>
        <th class="ms-vh" nowrap="nowrap">Modified</th>
      </tr>
      <xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.body">
        <xsl:with-param name="Rows" select="$Rows"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
    </table>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="dvt_1.body">
    <xsl:param name="Rows"/>
    <xsl:for-each select="$Rows">
      <xsl:variable name="NewList" select="ddwrt:NameChanged(string(@ListProperty.Title), 0)"/>
      <xsl:if test="string-length($NewList) &gt; 0">
        <tr>
          <td class="ms-vb" style="background-color:#cfcfcf;" colspan="99">
            <a style="color:#990202;" href="/{substring-after(@FileDirRef, ';#')}"><xsl:value-of select="@ListProperty.Title" /></a>
          </td>
        </tr>
        <xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.body2">
          <xsl:with-param name="Rows" select="$Rows[@ListProperty.Title = current()/@ListProperty.Title]"/>
        </xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:if>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="dvt_1.body2">
    <xsl:param name="Rows"/>
    <xsl:for-each select="$Rows">
      <xsl:sort select="ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Modified), 1033, 'yyyyMMdd HHmmss')" order="descending"/>
      <xsl:if test="position() &lt;= $TopN">
        <xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.rowview" />
      </xsl:if>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template name="dvt_1.rowview">
    <tr>
      <xsl:if test="position() mod 2 = 1">
        <xsl:attribute name="class">ms-alternating</xsl:attribute>
      </xsl:if>
      <td class="ms-vb">
        <a href="/{substring-after(@FileDirRef, ';#')}/Forms/DispForm.aspx?ID={@ID}&amp;Source={$URL}"><xsl:value-of select="substring-after(@FileLeafRef, ';#')" /></a>
      </td>
      <td class="ms-vb">
        <a href="/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?ID={substring-before(@Editor, ';#')}"><xsl:value-of select="substring-after(@Editor, ';#')"/></a>
      </td>
      <td class="ms-vb">
        <xsl:value-of select="ddwrt:FormatDate(string(@Modified), 1033, 5)"/>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet></Xsl>
<DataSources>
  <SharePoint:SPDataSource runat="server" DataSourceMode="CrossList" SelectCommand="&lt;View&gt;&lt;Lists ServerTemplate='101'&gt;&lt;/Lists&gt;<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='FSObjType' /><Value Type='int'>0</Value></Eq></Where><OrderBy><ListProperty Name='Title'/></OrderBy></Query>&lt;ViewFields&gt;&lt;ListProperty Name=&quot;Title&quot; /&gt;<FieldRef Name='FSObjType' />&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;ID&quot;/&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;Title&quot;/&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;FileRef&quot;/&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;FileDirRef&quot;/&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;FileLeafRef&quot;/&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;Editor&quot;/&gt;&lt;FieldRef Name=&quot;Modified&quot;/&gt;&lt;/ViewFields&gt;&lt;/ViewFields&gt;&lt;/View&gt;" UpdateCommand="" InsertCommand="" DeleteCommand="" UseInternalName="True" UseServerDataFormat="True" ID="dataformwebpart1">
  </SharePoint:SPDataSource>
</DataSources>
</WebPartPages:DataFormWebPart>