M365 – SharePoint Online – Resolving error – You can only promote home pages as site home page – error while calling ClientSidePage.PromoteAsHomePage() in CSOM

Hi All,

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 🙂 I hope we all are safe 🙂 STAY SAFE, STAY HEALTHY 🙂

Today new issue 🙂 and solution 🙂

It is very small issue but I was not aware, took time to solve so this article 🙂 Sharing is Caring 🙂

Background / Use Case / Scenario :

• We have .NET Core console application – basically we were writing job which provisions few client side pages in “Site Pages” library in modern Communication site
• Also, we need to promote one client side page as home page
• We were using following code – Code to provision new client side page through CSOM

List pagesLibrary = getSitePagesLibrary(siteUrl, cc);
cc.Load(pagesLibrary, pagesLibrary => pagesLibrary.RootFolder.Files);
cc.ExecuteQuery();

ListItem newPage = pagesLibrary.RootFolder.Files.AddTemplateFile
                  (cc.Web.ServerRelativeUrl + "/SitePages/Home1.aspx",  
                   TemplateFileType.ClientSidePage).ListItemAllFields;
                   
 newPage.Update();

newPage["Title"] = "Home";
newPage["ClientSideApplicationId"] = "<client side application GUID>";
newPage["PageLayoutType"] = "Article";
newPage["PromotedState"] = "0";
newPage.Update();
cc.Load(newPage);
cc.ExecuteQuery();

• Code for method – getSitePagesLibrary() – Getting Pages Library using CSOM

private static List getSitePagesLibrary(string siteUrl, ClientContext contentContext)
{
   List sitePagesLibrary = null;

   try
   {

       Web web = contentContext.Web;
       contentContext.Load(web, w => w.ServerRelativeUrl, w => w.Lists);
       contentContext.ExecuteQuery();
       string listURL = web.ServerRelativeUrl + "/SitePages/";
       sitePagesLibrary = web.GetList(listURL);
       contentContext.Load(sitePagesLibrary);
       contentContext.ExecuteQuery();

    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        //ToDo: Exception handling
    }
    return sitePagesLibrary;
  }//getSitePagesLibrary

• Then we are loading this page and promoting it as home page
• Following is the code

ClientSidePage clientSidePage = null;
 try
 {
     clientSidePage = ClientSidePage.Load(contentContext, "Home1.aspx");
     clientSidePage.PromoteAsHomePage();
 }
 catch (Exception ex)
 {
    //ToDo: Exception handling
 }

• On the code line – clientSidePage.PromoteAsHomePage(); we were getting an exception.

Error / Issue :

Message : You can only promote home pages as site home page

StackTrace: at PnP.Framework.Pages.ClientSidePage.PromoteAsHomePage()

Solution:

• Again Google my friend 🙂 after bit searching and looking various git code for ClientSidePage, I realized that page layout type set for this client side page is wrong.
• If you notice the code for creating client side page and property setting page layout type – newPage[“PageLayoutType”] = “Article”;
• So correct page layout type for promoting client side page is “Home“
• I updated the code and it worked like charm 🙂 – newPage[“PageLayoutType”] = “Home”;
• Following is the corrected code

List pagesLibrary = getSitePagesLibrary(siteUrl, cc);
cc.Load(pagesLibrary, pagesLibrary => pagesLibrary.RootFolder.Files);
cc.ExecuteQuery();

ListItem newPage = pagesLibrary.RootFolder.Files.AddTemplateFile
                  (cc.Web.ServerRelativeUrl + "/SitePages/Home1.aspx",  
                   TemplateFileType.ClientSidePage).ListItemAllFields;
                   
 newPage.Update();

newPage["Title"] = "Home";
newPage["ClientSideApplicationId"] = "<client side application GUID>";
newPage["PageLayoutType"] = "Home";
newPage["PromotedState"] = "0";
newPage.Update();
cc.Load(newPage);
cc.ExecuteQuery()

Conclusion / Takeaway : If we need promote any client side page as a home page, page layout type [“PageLayoutType”] must be “Home” while setting through the CSOM

Thanks for reading 🙂 Feel free to discuss / comments / questions 🙂 SHARING IS CARING 🙂

Enjoy the beautiful life 🙂 Have a FUN 🙂 HAVE A SAFE LIFE 🙂 TAKE CARE 🙂