Get approval status in edit form

Question

Is there an easy way to retrieve item approval status (moderationStatus) inside the edit form? During display of edit form I need to know wheather the currently edited item was approved or not. I see that the information is not reflected in a hidden column
or else. I have the following ideas:
Custom flag column that indicates if the item was approved.
Get the current item via js rest call and check OData__ModerationStatus.
I just want to know if there is an easier way to get the moderationStatus of the item I am editing.
Thank you!

Answer 1

Hi Eng,
As we all know, the approval status column is a hidden column in SharePoint and it cannot be edited manually, so there is no OOB way to display the column value in item edit form.
The easiest way is to use code to get the current item and then display the _ModerationStatus value in your Edit Item form.
Here is the code example:
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded(runCode, 'sp.js');
function runCode() {
var value1=window.location.href.indexOf("?")+4;
var value2=window.location.href.indexOf("&");
var url=window.location.href;
var itemId=url.substring(value1,value2);
var clientContext = new SP.ClientContext();
var targetList = clientContext.get_web().get_lists().getByTitle('Case Date');
targetListItem = targetList.getItemById(itemId);
clientContext.load(targetListItem, '_ModerationStatus');
clientContext.executeQueryAsync(Function.createDelegate(this, this.onQuerySucceeded), Function.createDelegate(this, this.onQueryFailed));
function onQuerySucceeded() {
var status=targetListItem.get_item('_ModerationStatus');
switch(status) {
case 0:
alert("Approved");
break;
case 1:
alert("Rejected");
break;
case 2:
alert("Pending");
break;
case 3:
alert("Draft");
break;
function onQueryFailed(sender, args) {
alert('Request failed. \nError: ' + args.get_message() + '\nStackTrace: ' + args.get_stackTrace());
</script>
You can also take a look at the link below about changing the Approval Status column in Edit item form:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/718575/Change-of-Approval-Status-in-SharePoint-Edit-Form
Best regards.
Thanks
Victoria Xia
TechNet Community Support