How to Serve SharePoint Documents via Your Website – Without Exposing SharePoint

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As a developer, you may have heard this from your stakeholders:“Can we make these documents in SharePoint available through the website?”

On the surface, that request sounds simple. But once you look under the hood, the technical complexity quickly ramps up: SharePoint APIs, permission models, auth tokens, sync logic – and a looming question of how to do it without compromising your internal systems.

That’s where SQList comes in.

SQList allows you to serve documents stored in SharePoint through your website, customer portal, or mobile app – without exposing SharePoint at all.

Why Exposing SharePoint Directly Isn’t Ideal

SharePoint is excellent for internal document management: version control, metadata, workflows, security policies. But it wasn’t built to serve documents externally.

If you’ve ever tried to:

  • Set up secure external access to SharePoint,
  • Use its REST API to pull documents in real time,
  • Or manually sync files from SharePoint to your public site,

…you already know how painful and fragile that can be. And worse, it creates a potential security risk.

What you really want is to keep SharePoint where it belongs – inside the firewall – while still leveraging its content across external-facing systems.

The SQList Approach: Simple, Secure, and Scalable

With SQList, you can synchronise entire SharePoint document libraries into SQL Server, including thebinary content of each file. Documents are stored in SQL Server tables as VARBINARY(MAX) or BLOB fields, alongside all their metadata.

That means you can:

  • Query documents like any other SQL data
  • Serve them directly through your application
  • Reuse them freely across different platforms
  • Keep SharePoint hidden from public access

Security stays intact – SharePoint remains locked down
Workflows stay in place – You continue managing approvals and updates in SharePoint
Documents stay up to date – SQList automatically syncs changes in near real time

All of this is handled using skills your in-house team already have – SQL and standard web development.

A Developer-Friendly Workflow

Here’s how it works:

  1. Configure SQList to point at your SharePoint document library.
  2. It exports the documents and metadata to SQL Server.
  3. Your app queries SQL as usual – no SharePoint calls needed.
  4. You serve the documents to end users, just like any other file store.

SQL Example:

SELECT DocumentName, FileExtension, DocumentContent

FROM SharePointDocuments

WHERE ProductType = ‘Transformer’ ;

Web Backend Example:

return File(documentBytes, “application/pdf”, “Transformer-Spec.pdf”);

This gives you total control over how documents are delivered – whether it’s via an API, direct download link, or embedded viewer.

No APIs. No Custom Middleware. No Learning Curve.

SQList works entirely in the background. There’s no custom code, no middleware, and no new tooling to learn. If you can write a SQL query and build a website, you’re already good to go.

And because the sync runs behind the scenes, you can:

  • Deliver fast, reliable document access to users
  • Avoid the performance hit of live SharePoint queries
  • Eliminate the risks of managing SharePoint access externally

Key Benefits of SQList Recap

Using SQList to serve SharePoint documents via your website gives you:

✅ Secure, indirect access – no external SharePoint exposure

✅ Automatic sync of document libraries into SQL Server (including binary files)

✅ Centralised control – SharePoint remains the source of truth for documents

✅ Seamless re-use – Use the same documents across your website, apps, and portals

✅ Zero ramp-up time – use your existing SQL + web skills to deliver the solution

You don’t need to rebuild your infrastructure. Just connect SQList and go.

So, if you or your team need to deliver SharePoint-hosted documents to customers, partners, or mobile users – and you want a way to do it securely, quickly, and without complexity – SQList is built for exactly that.

Book a personalised demo today and see how you can:

  • Avoid exposing SharePoint directly
  • Stop wasting time on custom APIs
  • Start delivering the solution your stakeholders are asking for – now

Let SQList handle the integration, so you can focus on what matters.

Book a demo

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