Breaking Inheritence for all Items in sharepoint list

Question

I'm trying to build a for-loop in Visual Basic that will go over each item in a sharepoint database list and stop it from inheriting permissions from its parent. I'm getting a Null Exception because my query object is null. I've searched and all the code snippets i found didnt define a value for the query and wrote the code exactly like i did, why is this a problem.

Imports System
Imports Microsoft.SharePoint.Client
Imports SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client

Module Module1
    Sub Main()
        Dim siteUrl As String = "https://cws1.conti.de/content/00009504"
        Dim clientContext As New ClientContext(siteUrl)
        Dim oList As List = clientContext.Web.Lists.GetByTitle("TestBI")
        Dim query As CamlQuery
        query.ViewXml = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='Account' /><Value Type='Text'></Value></Eq></Where>"
        Dim oListItems As ListItemCollection = oList.GetItems(query)
        For numItems As Integer = 0 To 2
            oListItems(numItems).BreakRoleInheritance(True, False)
        Next

        clientContext.ExecuteQuery()
    End Sub
End Module

I've never programmed VB before and i'm not familiar with automating anything on Sharepoint so I would really appreciate any help.

Answer 1

you need to assign an instance of an object to the query variable before you can use it. Right now, you only declare a variable. Change the line:

Dim query AS CamlQuery

to

Dim query AS new CamlQuery

Also, CamlQuery expects a full <View> tag. So change your CAML to <View><Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='Account' /><Value Type='Text'></Value></Eq></Where></Query></View> and you should be good to go.

If you wish to retrieve all items from the list, use the CamlQuery.CreateAllItemsQuery() method.

Dim query AS CamlQuery = CamlQuery.CreateAllItemsQuery()