R – Getting the SPWeb for a SPAuditEntry

I would chase why you can't create the list via the interface in the first place, these two web service calls don't seem to include the important parameter when creating from custom templates, lets analyse the querystrings:

New Project Tasks (out of the box)

http://site/_layouts/new.aspx?FeatureId={00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119}&ListTemplate=150

New Project Tasks Custom (saved in the list template gallery)

http://site/_layouts/new.aspx?CustomTemplate=PT6.stp&FeatureId={00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119}&ListTemplate=150

New Project Tasks Custom (manifest.xml edited to 151)

http://site/_layouts/new.aspx?CustomTemplate=PT6.stp&FeatureId={00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119}&ListTemplate=151

They all work, so my take here is that the Web Service is a no no for custom templates, or it has some secret magic (common in list definitions) since specifying only the ListTemplate without being explicitly CUSTOM won't work even in the UI.

If you can't get around with this apparent limitation, my suggestions are:

1. .NET, note that this post has some voodoo in the first comment if you happen to get the same error
2. Make an IFRAME with http://site/_layouts/new.aspx?CustomTemplate=PT6.stp&FeatureId={00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119}&ListTemplate=150 as source and fill the fields using javascript, and then trigger the OK button click, make some full page loading transition and it will even look good.

Method 2 needs to be done from the same domain, if you are not running your PHP from the same domain (unlikely) you need to create a page inside the SharePoint site to contain this hack, it can be as simple as a Web Part Page with a Content Editor Web Part in it, you read some querystring parameters, place them on the fields, trigger the OK and wait for the page to change so you can redirect to a "success" page.

Edit: I got curious and looked at the source of New.aspx, it has this little snippet (bIsCustomTemplate = strCustomTemplate != null, strCustomTemplate = querystring "CustomTemplate"):

<% if (bIsCustomTemplate) { %>
<input id="onetidCustomTemplate" type="Hidden" name="CustomTemplate" value=<%SPHttpUtility.AddQuote(SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(strCustomTemplate),Response.Output);%> />
<% } %>

I looked at the disassembled code but I don't think we can post it here, but it only proves that the UI builds it from a post (Request.Form) and looks for the CustomTemplate parameter, and the Web Service has only those methods were you can't specify a custom template.

Not sure if this is needed, but there are more that one sharepoint sites hosted at "website.com" (The one I'm trying to access is "website.com/sites/mysite" ) Does that change things?

Absolutely it does! The web service URLs you have discovered are actually virtual, meaning that the URL pattern _vti_bin/Lists.asmx is available under EVERY SharePoint site. Whatever site your list lives in must be the starting point for your web service URL.

Thus, try: http://website.com/sites/mysite/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx

You might find MSDN's SharePoint Web Service Guidelines article helpful, too.

UPDATE #1:

CAML won't help you "break apart" your results. It's strictly a query/filter technology, and it looks like you're using it appropriately. It's up to you to tell us whether or not the result set you're getting back is what you expect. If you need help constructing more complicated CAML queries, I suggest downloading a copy of U2U's CAML Query Builder (but that's another topic).

So, on to the results. It's a little confusing to look at it, but there is some method to the madness. The columns you've set up on your list are all here (provided you're not constraining them in the CAML query, which is possible). You'll notice they use SharePoint's internal name for the column, prefixed with ows_. So, if you know the internal names, you can construct the XML attribute names and use XML classes, LINQ, or XSLT to dive into the results and get what you need. See my answer to another SO question for tips on divining SP's internal column names.

If it helps to know what I do in this situation, I simply build a POCO model class to represent one of my list items, and write a parser method to take SharePoint's XML results and return a collection of the model objects. I'm fond of LINQ to XML for this task.

Were you using SharePoint 2010, you could use the new Client Object Model classes and get better managed wrappers around working with SharePoint Sites, Lists, ListItems and such.

UPDATE #2:

Just for some color, I'm posting a sample of the code I use to parse SharePoint XML. Registrant in this example is a POCO model class I wrote to represent a SharePoint list item for a custom list. It's trivial and I won't bother posting it.

/// <summary>
/// Parses registrant XML returned from SharePoint's Lists web service into a collection 
/// of <see cref="Registrant"/> objects (root element = "listitems").
/// </summary>
/// <param name="xml">SharePoint XML</param>
/// <returns>Collection of Registrant objects, or null if no registrant data could be parsed.</returns>
public static List<Registrant> ParseSharePointXmlCollection( XElement xml ) {

  // Test: Not expected XML element or has no child elements
  if ( !xml.Name.LocalName.Equals( "listitems" ) || !xml.HasElements ) {
    return null;
  }

  List<Registrant> regList = null;

  XElement data = xml.Element( XName.Get( "data", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" ) );
  if ( (data != null) && (data.HasElements) ) {

    regList = new List<Registrant>();

    IEnumerable<XElement> regXmlNodes = data.Elements( XName.Get( "row", "#RowsetSchema" ) );
    foreach (XElement regXml in regXmlNodes) {
      Registrant reg = ParseSharePointXml( regXml );
      if ( reg != null ) {
        regList.Add( reg );
      }
    }
  }

  return regList;
}

/// <summary>
/// Parses registrant XML returned from SharePoint's Lists web service into a single 
/// <see cref="Registrant"/> object (root element = "row").
/// </summary>
/// <param name="xml">SharePoint XML</param>
/// <returns>A Registrant object, or null if no registrant data could be parsed.</returns>
public static Registrant ParseSharePointXml( XElement xml ) {

  // Test: Not expected XML element or has no attributes
  if ( !xml.Name.LocalName.Equals( "row" ) || !xml.HasAttributes ) {
    return null;
  }

  Registrant reg = null;

  // Parse ID (if this fails, fail the whole operation)
  if ( xml.Attribute( "ows_ID" ) != null ) {
    reg = new Registrant();
    reg.ID = xml.Attribute( "ows_ID" ).Value;
  }
  else {
    return null;
  }

  // Parse First Name
  if ( xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Registrant_x0020_First_x0020_N" ) != null ) {
    reg.FirstName = xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Registrant_x0020_First_x0020_N" ).Value;
  }

  // Parse Last Name
  if ( xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Registrant_x0020_Last_x0020_Na" ) != null ) {
    reg.LastName = xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Registrant_x0020_Last_x0020_Na" ).Value;
  }

  // Parse Email
  if ( xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Registrant_x0020_Email" ) != null ) {
    reg.Email = xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Registrant_x0020_Email" ).Value;
  }

  // Parse Assistant Name
  if ( xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Asst_x0020_First_x0020_Name" ) != null ) {
    reg.AssistantFirstName = xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Asst_x0020_First_x0020_Name" ).Value;
  }
  if ( xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Asst_x0020_Name" ) != null ) {
    reg.AssistantLastName = xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Asst_x0020_Name" ).Value;
  }

  // Parse Assistant Email
  if ( xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Asst_x0020_Email" ) != null ) {
    reg.AssistantEmail = xml.Attribute( "ows_Q_Asst_x0020_Email" ).Value;
  }

  return reg;
}

UPDATE #3:

Sample code to convert an XmlNode object to an XElement:

public static XElement GetXElement( this XmlNode node ) {
  XDocument xdoc = new XDocument();
  using ( XmlWriter xmlWriter = xdoc.CreateWriter() ) {
    node.WriteTo( xmlWriter );
  }
  return xdoc.Root;
}