The SharePoint Swiss Army Knife

Off to a new project and today I’m exploring the SharePoint Managed Metadata and Taxonomy APIs. I had created a simple Windows Form application to test with and as I was trying to read some of terms out of the Managed Metadata Service Application, I came across a weird error that took me a while to figure out.

Code Snippet:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteURL))             
{                 
   TaxonomySession session = new TaxonomySession(site);
   TermStore termStore = session.TermStores["Managed Metadata Service"];
   TermCollection terms = termStore.GetTerms(InputTerm.Text, true);
   foreach (Term term in terms)                 
   {                     
      Results.Text += term.Name + "\n";                     
      if (term.Terms.Count > 0)                     
      {                         
         foreach(Term childTerm in term.Terms)                         
         {                             
            Results.Text += childTerm.Name;                         
         }
      }
   }
}

Error Message:

ArgumentOutOfrangeException was unhandled. Specified argument was out of the range of valid values. Parameter name: index.

Cause:

Digging through the properties of the session object showed that it was null so for some reason I wasn’t even able to get a handle on a TaxonomySession object, which is the entry point to getting access to any of the information inside of your Managed Metadata Service. When cross-referenced with the Event Viewer, I see this message:

Event ID: 8089
Source: SharePoint Server
Task Category: Taxonomy
Level: Warning
The Managed Metadata Service 'Managed Metadata Service' 
is inaccessible. The web application does not have 
sufficient permissions.

Solution:

Since I was running Visual Studio and my test Windows Form application as myself (a user), I went to Central Administration to find out whether or not I had access to the service.

Lo and behold, it looks like only service accounts had access to the Managed Metadata Service. After I added my account to have at least Read Access to the Term Store, all was well and I was on my merry way again. 🙂