Content Types
A content type is a reusable collection of metadata, information policies, form URLs, document templates, event receivers, and workflows that is applied to a particular category of information. All content that uses a particular content type contains the same metadata fields and behaviors. For example, the Training Management application has a content type that applies to all training courses. The training course content type includes information such as the start date of the course, the course code, and its cost.
Metadata is literally "data about data" or, in the case of a content type, information about the document or item that is being described. A content type's metadata can include the columns in a list. If you look at the Training Management application's Web pages, the list of training courses includes columns that represent the data that is contained in the content type. For example, there is a Cost column and a Code column.
Content types help you to organize SharePoint content in meaningful ways and enable you to centralize the metadata and behaviors that apply to different types of SharePoint content. By using content types, you can also store different types of information in a single list or document library, while keeping the functionality specific to each type of information. The following is some of the information that can be stored in a content type:
- Metadata or properties of the information that is being captured.
- Custom New, Edit, and Display forms to be used with this content type.
- Workflows that are associated with items of this content type.
- Document templates for document-related content types.
- Any information that is required for custom solutions that are associated with this content type. An example is a list item event receiver. You can store this information in the content type as XML documents.
They can be used in multiple instances of lists or libraries in the same site. Content types are centrally available from the site collection because the SharePoint features that deploy them are site-collection scoped. For more information, see Content Types on MSDN.