Sharepoint Item Level Permissions via List Settings in C#

A forum post made me aware of the possibility to set item level permissions for a sharepoint list in a configurative way, without the need of writing an event receiver. Just jump to your list and navigate to

[Ribbon Region] List Tools -> [Tab] List -> [Group] Settings -> [Button] List Settings

On the list settings page select

[Region] General Settings -> [Link] Advanced settings -> [Region] Item-Level Permissions

You should see something like this:

This is great because it enables me to do a lot of the stuff I have done with event revievers before, so it saves me a lot of code.

But of course I want to set these in code, for being able to deploy my development by menas of an wsp-file. Say I want to configure the list in a way that a user can only see and edit the items he created. I was browsing thorugh the properties of the SPList-object and found something that seems a little bit like a hack to me, but here is the way it goes:

SPList myList = GetMyList();
myList.ReadSecurity = 2;
myList.WriteSecurity = 2;
myList.Update();


Yeah, belive it or not, those two are integer fields. According to MSDN we can set the following values for ReadSecurity:

• 1 - All users have Read access to all items. 
• 2 - Users have Read access only to items that they create. 

For WriteSecurity the following values are allowed:

• 1 — All users can modify all items.
• 2 — Users can modify only items that they create.
• 4 — Users cannot modify any list item.

The programming model for this is really ugly, but it serves the need. This applies to Sharepoint 2010 where I tested it, and according to MSDN it is the same for shapreoint 2013.

Enjoy!

A better world with a better switch statement

It is known that using switch statements should, in most cases, be replaced by polymorphism when using object oriented languages (refer to Clean Code by Robert Martin, Code Smell G23).

But you must stay pragmatic as well, and sometimes the switch statement is an option. But: why must it's C# syntax look like this? Why is it so inconsistant with the rest of the language? Why do we have to write break?

I imagine a switch-statement like this:

switch (selector)
{
  case (value)
  { ... }

  case (other value || still other value)
  { ... }

  case (new List<>() { a, b, c })
  { ... }

  default 
  { ... }
}

So no ':' that reminds me of lables. No break after each case - use the well known block delimiter instead. Write the argument to the case keyword in braces as like with if, while, for and others. Do not stack control structures but use known logical operators / lists to combine cases.

Would this not be nice?