Unable to set ColumnWidth via ListViewXml for List View

[jpalo]

Category

• Bug

Describe the bug

When setting column width of a List View, setting ListViewXml of a view doesn't seem to persist, but instead the list view is reset to default. By "reset" I mean that if I have added field to the view earlier, it is also removed, so the View resets to default fields too. This works when doing via PnP JS, but not when using PnP Core.

Steps to reproduce

// create list
var list = await destinationSiteContext.Web.Lists.AddAsync(listName, ListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary);

var defaultView = list.Views.First();

// get existing ListViewXml, add ColumnWidth definition for one field
var defaultViewXml = defaultView.ListViewXml
    .Replace(
        "</View>",                                        
        "<ColumnWidth><FieldRef Name=\"Modified\" width=\"370\" /></ColumnWidth></View>"
    );

// save changes to view
defaultView.ListViewXml = defaultViewXml;
await defaultView.UpdateAsync();

Expected behavior

ListViewXml would contain the ColumnWidth definition and view in UI would also have wide Modified column.

Environment details (development & target environment)

• SDK version: 1.14.0
• SDK used in: Azure Function
• Framework: .NET 8
• Tooling: Visual Studio 2022

Additional context

Using PnPJs in SPFx web part it works:

let lv: any = await list.defaultView.select('ListViewXml')();
let lvXml: string = lv.ListViewXml.replace(
            '</View>',
            `<ColumnWidth><FieldRef Name="Modified" width="370" /></ColumnWidth></View>`);

await list.defaultView.setViewXml(lvXml);

[jansenbe]

@jpalo : In PnPJS the SetViewXml methodf is used to set the view whereas PnP Core SDK sets the ListViewXml property. Check the internal code it seems that SetViewXml is setting some internal property next to setting the ListViewXml property, so most likely this can be fixed by adding a method to PnP Core SDK for this in https://github.com/pnp/pnpcore/blob/dev/src/sdk/PnP.Core/Model/SharePoint/Core/Internal/View.cs and https://github.com/pnp/pnpcore/blob/dev/src/sdk/PnP.Core/Model/SharePoint/Core/Public/IView.cs.

Would be great if you can do that, alternatively you can unblock yourselves by making the API call using our built in custom API calling feature: https://pnp.github.io/pnpcore/using-the-sdk/basics-customapirequests.html#making-a-custom-spo-rest-request