Question

In SharePoint, I’d like to be able to check if a particular List or ListItem exists before performing operations on it, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this without simply catching an ArgumentException. Surely there’s a better way?

Answer 1

To find an instance of a SPList you could use a linq solution:

SPList instance = (from SPList list in web.Lists   
                   where list.RootFolder.Name.Equals(name) 
                   select list).FirstOrDefault();   

if (instance != null)   
{
...// process

A similar solution could be made for find an instance of a SPListItem

FirstOrDefault is the trick. Default is null (not an exception).

UPDATE:

as a comment, this line of code:

from SPList list in web.Lists

is the same as writing

from list in web.List.Cast<SPList>