A CAML Query Quick Reference

Single Line of Text

Value Type	Text
Example	<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name="Title" /><Value Type="Text">Hello World!</Value></Eq></Where></Query>
Notes	This is one of the simplest queries. The example selects items with a title equal to “Hello World!”

Multiple Lines of Text

Value Type	Text
Example	<Query><Where><Contains><FieldRef Name="Body" /><Value Type="Text"><![CDATA[</a>]]></Value></Contains></Where></Query>
Notes	If this is a Rich Text field, you can use <![CDATA[]]> around the value to prevent parsing errors when passing HTML into the query. Alternatively, you can encode the HTML by replacing < with &lt;, > with &gt;, and " with &quot;. This query uses <Contains> to return any items that contain a hyperlink in the body field by looking for the closing </a> tag.

Person or Group (By Name)

Value Type	Text
Example	<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name="Author" /><Value Type="Text">Josh McCarty</Value></Eq></Where></Query>
Notes	This will look for items created by any user with “Josh McCarty” in the Name field of the User Information list. If more than one person has the same display name in the user list, it will select items created by all users with that name.

Person or Group (By ID)

Value Type	Integer
Example	<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name="Author" LookupId="TRUE" /><Value Type="Integer"><UserID /></Value></Eq></Where></Query>
Notes	By adding LookupId="TRUE" to the <FieldRef /> and using <UserID /> as the value, the query will filter based on the current user. You can also pass the ID of a specific user in place of <UserID /> (e.g. <Value Type="Integer">283</Value>) if you don’t want to filter by the current user. IDs are always unique, so this method ensures that only one user is a valid value.

Lookup (By Text)

Value Type	Lookup
Example	<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name="State" /><Value Type="Lookup">Arizona</Value></Eq></Where></Query>
Notes	This will look for items with “Arizona” in the State field. If more than one state has the same display name (not likely in this example, but for other lookups it could happen), it will return items from all states with that display name.

Lookup (By ID)

Value Type	Lookup
Example	<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name="State" LookupId="TRUE" /><Value Type="Lookup">4</Value></Eq></Where></Query>
Notes	By adding LookupId="TRUE" to the <FieldRef />, the query will filter based on the ID of the lookup rather than the text value. IDs are always unique, so this method ensures that only one state is a valid value.

Date (Day Only)

Value Type	Date
Example	<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name="Created" /><Value Type="DateTime">2012-01-10</Value></Eq></Where></Query>
Notes	This type of query seems to work whether the value type is set to DateTime or just Date as long as the value is formatted properly (yyyy-mm-dd). It also works if <Today /> is used as the value (you can offset the current date; e.g. use <Today OffsetDays="-7" /> for 7 days ago). <Today />.