PropertyOrFieldNotInitializedException when using .NET Client Object Model for SharePoint Server 2013

Sep, 02 2015

1 min/s

Recently when I was trying to do develop some business logic which involved reading data from SharePoint lists, I thought of writing a Console Application and use the .NET Client Side Object Model (CSOM) to perform the same. I started with a simple code to print the title of a web as shown below.

            ClientContext context = new ClientContext("http://my-sharepoint-site-url");
            context.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;
            Web web = context.Web;
            context.Load(web);
            context.ExecuteQuery();
            Console.WriteLine(web.Title);

But this returned an error

Unhandled Exception: System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (503) Server Unavailable. at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SPWebRequestExecutor.Execute() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext.GetFormDigestInfoPrivate() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext.EnsureFormDigest() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext.ExecuteQuery()

By looking at the error message, I thought the site is not accessible. But when I tried to browse the site through the browser, it was working fine. I was able to open the pages, lists, libraries and do every other operation.
And then I started debugging the code, and found that the context object is not getting instantiated. I could see the below error for the properties of the context object.

'context.ServerVersion' threw an exception of type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.PropertyOrFieldNotInitializedException'

Things to troubleshoot

Make sure you are using right .NET version in the project properties
The target CPU type should be set to 'Any CPU' or 'x64'
If your SharePoint site is having FBA or Custom Identity Provider configured, Pass the appropriate credentials in the code.
Verify if the client service (/_vti_bin/client.svc) is working fine and response is returned. Even though the site is browsable, the client.svc might not work and return 503 which was the issue in my case.

By verifying these things, I was able to read the details using Client Object model on a SharePoint Server 2013 on-premises site which is configured to have Integrated Windows Authentication. Hope this helps.