Code, Articles, Discussion on Microsoft Technologies

I have moved to http://blogs.msdn.com/mahuja

2008-03-29T17:50:00.002+05:30

From now on, all new posts will be posted on my "new" MSDN blog http://blogs.msdn.com/mahuja.

Please update your feeds.

Switch the sharepoint webpart page Display Mode into Edit Mode and Vice Versa

2008-03-01T19:43:00.004+05:30

Introduction

Recently one of my clients had a requirement to go into Edit mode of a sharepoint page using a manual link displayed in quick launch. He was lazy of going to Site Actions -> Edit Page and then again going somewhere else for Exit Edit Mode :)

To give some background for beginners, whenever we click Edit Page on Site Actions menu,
the pages switches into a different display mode called Design Mode. Its not a feature of
Sharepoint, but ASP.NET 2.0 Webparts Framework.

Background

According to the framework, the page can have 4 different modes:

BrowseDisplayMode : Represents the default display mode.
CatalogDisplayMode : Used for adding controls from a catalog of controls to a Web page
ConnectDisplayMode : Displays a special UI for users to manage connections between Web Part controls.
DesignDisplayMode : Used for changing the layout of Web pages containing Web Part controls.
EditDisplayMode : Displays a UI from which end users can edit and modify server controls

The WebPartManager control provides a programmatic interface, making it possible to switch the Web Part Page between browse, design, and edit display modes.

For example, to programmatically switch the current page into design mode, you can simply add a link control with an event handler that sets the DisplayMode property to DesignDisplayMode.


WebPartManager1.DisplayMode = WebPartManager.DesignDisplayMode;

Although this would work technically, but it would not give up the visible changes to page, like visibilty of Page Editing toolbar, webpart zones etc.

This visual magic is done by lot of Javascript which is executed when we click Edit Page on Site Actions menu.

To build this link control, we need to figure out the javascript code which causes this behaviour.

This would be present in default.master. If we open Site Actions menu and do the View Source on IE.
Here is the code of our interest :

<td class="ms-siteactionsmenu" id="siteactiontd">
<span><a href="javascript:MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode();">Edit Page</a></span>

As you must have figured out, its the MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode() function which does all the magic of turning the current page into Edit page. This javascript also calls the server side code which executes this statement

WebPartManager1.DisplayMode = WebPartManager.DesignDisplayMode;
//(This can also be demonstrated, but its beyond scope)

Building the Webcontrol

Armed with this knowledge, we can build a simple webcontrol which we will switch the page into Edit mode and vice versa.
Below is the code for the same. Its the simplest webcontrol you will see ever.


using System;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI;
namespace SPUtil
{
public class SPEditMode:System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl
{
  HtmlAnchor btnLink;

  protected override void CreateChildControls()
  {
      WebPartManager wp = WebPartManager.GetCurrentWebPartManager(Page);

      const string url="javascript:MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode();";

      btnLink = new HtmlAnchor();

      if (wp.DisplayMode == WebPartManager.BrowseDisplayMode)

          btnLink.InnerText = "Edit Page";
      else if (wp.DisplayMode == WebPartManager.DesignDisplayMode)
          btnLink.InnerText = "Exit Edit Mode";
      else
          btnLink.Visible = false;

      btnLink.HRef = url;

      Controls.Add(btnLink);
      base.CreateChildControls();
  }

}
}

I have used HtmlAnchor rather than LinkButton or SPLinkButton since its lightweight on the server and We are not performing any special processing which is present in server controls.

One point to be worth noting: This link would be visible to all including visitors. For used in practical scenarious, the control should be hidden for other than members and Administrators.

I was using this link in user's MySite and hence I did not have that case :)

Passing multiple filter values to EWA pivot table filter cell

2008-02-23T10:18:00.002+05:30

Filter webparts in WSS are a great way to provide filtering in many different webparts like List View, Business Data Catalog, Excel Web Access etc.

They are also great way to provide data view personalization when used with Excel services coupled with Analysis Services of SQL server.

This is described in detail on Excel Team blog here

In this post, we will see how to create a simple filter webart which provides values to pivot table filter cell.

I am mentioning pivot table filter cell exclusively because the filter webpart examples on MSDN has to be slightly modified to provide values
to filter cell.

Basically, we are building a filter provider which

Implements the ITransformableFilterValues interface.
The interface required few properties to be overridden, the most important of them is public virtual ReadOnlyCollection<string> ParameterValues.
This parameter contains read only collection of strings which are passed to the consumer webpart.
The webpart returns the instance of itself through a public method SetConnectionInterface()


using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using aspnetwebparts = System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using wsswebparts = Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;

namespace ExcelFilters
{
public class ExcelFilters : aspnetwebparts.WebPart, wsswebparts.ITransformableFilterValues
{
CheckBoxList cblRegionList;
ListItem cbitemRegion;
string[] countries = new string[]
{ "Canada", "Central America", "Mexico", "South America", "United States",
 "Albania", "Andora", "Austria", "Aizerbejan", "Belarus", "belgium",
  "Bosnia and Hersegovina", "Bulgaria" };

public virtual bool AllowMultipleValues
{
   get
   {
       return false;
   }
}
public virtual bool AllowAllValue
{
   get
   {
       return true;
   }
}

public virtual bool AllowEmptyValue
{
   get
   {
       return false;
   }
}
public virtual string ParameterName
{
   get
   {
       return "Geography";
   }
}

public virtual ReadOnlyCollection ParameterValues
{
   get
   {
       string[] values = this.GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies();      
       List param=new List();

       foreach (string str in values)
       {
           if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str))
               param.Add(str);
       }
       return values == null ?null :new ReadOnlyCollection(param);
   }
}

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
   cblRegionList = new CheckBoxList();
   cblRegionList.AutoPostBack = true;
   Controls.Add(cblRegionList);

   foreach (string region in countries)
   {
       cbitemRegion = new ListItem();
       cbitemRegion.Text = region;
       cblRegionList.Items.Add(cbitemRegion);
       cbitemRegion = null;
   }

   base.CreateChildControls();
}

[aspnetwebparts.ConnectionProvider("Region Filter", "ITransformableFilterValues", AllowsMultipleConnections = true)]
public wsswebparts.ITransformableFilterValues SetConnectionInterface()
{
   return this;
}

public string[] GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies()
{
   String[] choices = new String[countries.Length];
   bool anythingSelected = false;

   for (int i = 0; i < cblRegionList.Items.Count; i++)
           {
               if (cblRegionList.Items[i].Selected)
               {
                   anythingSelected = true;
                   choices[i] = cblRegionList.Items[i].Text;
               }

           }
           if (!anythingSelected)
               choices = null;

           return choices;
       }

       protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output)
       {
           this.EnsureChildControls();
           RenderChildren(output);

       }
   }
}

Now, rather than explaining the simple webpart, which is already explained by Microsoft, I will point out key points which differentiates it from the examples at many places.

If we notice GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies() method, it returns the string array of selected geographies. However, the length of this string array is constant and is equal to number of selectable items, which causes the other items in string array to become null.

In the MSDN example here the string array is directly passed by converting it to ReadOnlyCollection of strings. This will not work since it includes the null items
in the array as well.

string[] values = this.GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies();
return values == null ?null :new ReadOnlyCollection(values);

Pivot table Report filter cell, expects a Collection of values only which are selected. Thus we need to modify the code as follows

string[] values = this.GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies();      
List param=new List();
foreach (string str in values)
{
 if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str))
 param.Add(str);
}
return values == null ? null :new ReadOnlyCollection(param);

This code snippets, creates a new List which includes all the string objects except the null items from the original string array which is returned by GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies()

Implementation of Logging and Instrumentation Application Block in MOSS 2007

2008-02-10T11:43:00.000+05:30

Continuing the series of articles on Enterprise Library, I have written the first article
on the implementation of Logging Application Block in MOSS 2007. Due to inclusion of formatted code and images, I have directly uploaded this on Codeproject.

The article can be viewed here

Microsoft Enterprise Library - Using Design Patterns and Best Practices with Sharepoint 2007 development

2008-02-03T07:30:00.000+05:30

Patterns and Practices Group within Microsoft has provided developers with useful code libraries in form of Enterprise Library which solve the common programming tasks and provide the developers with best practices.

The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application blocks are a type of guidance, provided as source code that can be used "as is," extended, or modified by developers to use on enterprise development projects.

Note: The purpose of this article is introduction of Microsoft Enterprise library. I would cover each specific application block in subsequent blog articles and demonstrate how they can be effectively used in Sharepoint 2007 development environment.

The seven application blocks are:

Caching Application Block - allows developers to incorporate a local cache in their applications.
Configuration Application Block - allows developers to read and write configuration information.
Data Access Application Block - allows developers to incorporate standard database functionality in their applications
Cryptography Application Block - allows developers to include encryption and hashing functionality in their applications.
Exception Handling Application Block - allows developers and policy makers to create a consistent strategy for processing exceptions that occur throughout the architectural layers of enterprise applications.
Logging and Instrumentation Application Block - allows developers to incorporate standard logging and instrumentation functionality in their applications.
Security Application Block - allows developers to incorporate security functionality in their applications.

Each of the application blocks uses similar design patterns and share similar deployment and configuration requirements.

Getting Started with Enterprise Library

In order to get rolling with the Enterprise Library you'll first need to download the library from Microsoft's site. The download is a near 9 MB file, which includes the complete Enterprise Library application block source code, Quick Start examples, off-line documentation, and the GUI tool.

During this installation process you can specify what application blocks to install, if you only want to install a subset of the seven. Upon completion of the installation, the files should be in the \Program Files\Microsoft Enterprise Library folder.

RSS Reader webpart with tab support and asynchronous periodic data refresh using AJAX

2008-01-26T21:39:00.000+05:30

I have recently written my first article on Codeproject.

The article describes the development of AJAX enabled webpart on MOSS 2007 SP1.

The cool thing about it is the that it also utilizes the AJAX Control Toolkit including programmatically adding and styling TabContainer and TabPanel controls which can be quite tricky for a beginner. The article can be found here:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/RssReaderAjax.aspx

Get RSS Url for a list or Document Library Programmatically

2008-01-20T23:30:00.000+05:30

Recently I developed an RSS Reader webpart which would take the RSS URL of list to render its feeds. Very much same like the out of the box webpart with the exception that it was AJAX enabled. I would post the details of that part on the blog when I am finished.

An idea came to me that wouldn’t it be nice to also enable users to just give the list URL rather than RSS URL since would reduce the few steps on the user’s side. I thought it would be just a matter of accessing the RssUrl property of SPList object, but to my surprise it was not to be. There is no property such property in the API, so I decided to write my own function for it.

Let’s analyze the RSS URL of a list or a library. Whenever the user clicks on View RSS feed on a library, here is how SharePoint constructs the URL:

http://<server>/<site>/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=%7B14206B18%2DF68F%2D479B%2DBC84%2D15EE48D19D7D%7D

Listfeed.aspx is the inbuilt RSS viewer of sharepoint which accepts a parameter which is the GUID of the list. %2D tokens refer to ‘-‘characters which exist inside the GUID. Considering all this, it’s easy to write a function which will return the RSS URL. Here is the code for the same:

private string MakeRssUrl(string rawurl)

{

try

{

Uri url = new Uri(rawurl, UriKind.Absolute);

if (url.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Path).Contains(“_layouts/listfeed.aspx”))

{

return rawurl;

}

else

{

string rssurl;

using (SPWeb web = new SPSite(rawurl).OpenWeb())

{

SPList list = web.GetListFromUrl(rawurl);

rssurl = web.Url + "/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?list=" + list.ID;

return rssurl;

}

catch (UriFormatException e)

{

return string.Empty;

}

The code is pretty self explanatory. The argument to function is list URL or RSS url. We first check if the URL is RSS URL itself, and if it is we just return. Otherwise, if it’s a list URL, we create a SPList instance, grap the GUID and contatenate it with the site URL and listfeed.aspx.

Note that the function does not validate if the given URL was actually a valid list URL or not. The exception handling for that case should be left to the caller of the function.

Reveal Unknown Error on Sharepoint 2007 pages

2008-01-14T20:41:00.000+05:30

How often you have encountered the infamous Unknown Error on Sharepoint 2007 pages. If you are a Sharepoint developer, chances are that innumerable times :)

However, if you are also seasoned ASP.NET developer as well, you also know the trick behind it to reveal them., which I am going to give it here.

The trick is that ASP.NET Framework wants to show the real error message, but its the sharepoint which abstracts the message from the user. This is good for production systems since those cryptic error message may not be user friendly. Or revealing those full stack trace could cause potential security concerns.

But for an experienced developer, this is almost must to turn them off. This is achieved by turning off custom errors in web.config

Find the web.config for the site you normally use as your development site. Locate this tag

<SafeMode ... CallStack="false" ...> and change it to CallStack="true"

Set <customErrors mode="On" /> to mode="Off"

Set <compilation batch="false" debug="false"> to <compilation batch="true" debug="true">

Now you will get the full stack trace as soon as the error is raised.

Unknown Error on Manage Form Templates Page (Manageformtemplates.aspx)

2008-01-06T09:42:00.000+05:30

Getting Unknown Error on this page?.

No helpful clue in Sharepoint log or Event Viewer?

This can happen if database record in the list of published InfoPath forms had a null where it shouldn't be.

Thanks to this blog, there is small code snippet given here which will delete the culprit entry.

http://geekswithblogs.net/HammerTips/archive/2007/12/07/unable-to-manage-form-templates.aspx

But make sure that you run this script under the debugger and only execute the delete operation for the offending form, otherwise it will delete all the published forms in your farm.

Unable to Join the Game: Age on Kings (Conquerors)

2008-01-06T09:35:00.000+05:30

This is a first off topic post on my blog about a lovely game from Microsoft: Age

of Kings also called as Age of Empires II : Conquerors. I have been a fan of this

game from my schooldays and been playing multiplayer matches on zone.com

during my college days. Lately Microsoft has closed zone.com. However there

are few third party multiplayer sites going on which are exactly same as

Zone.com. For ex:

http://www.igzones.com/

http://www.gamepark.eu/en/

However I was facing the famous issue Unable to Join the Game. Forwarded all

the required ports, turned of firewalls , still no issue. I even installed the

TCP sniffer to see if incoming packets were hitting my system. To my surprise

they were and still no luck in connection. Finally after 3 days of trying, I found a

hidden setting in my wireless router which was causing this issue. I had Upnp

enabled in my router by default and disabling it completely resolved the

issue. To anyone curious who want to know what the Upnp is : J

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play

Performing Operations on Infopath 2007 Contact Selector Control using Managed Code

2007-12-24T19:35:00.000+05:30

Infopath 2007 provides an out of the box contact selector control to select the user and validate against the Active Directory.

In this blog, We will see, how to get more out of this control. Performing some advanced functions using managed code.

For basic usage of this control, see this blog entry on infopath blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2007/02/28/using-the-contact-selector-control.aspx

To start with basics, this control has predefined schema, since it simultaneously stores the display name, account id and account type.

  user display name

  DOMAIN/user account

  user or group type

It is interesting to note that this control behaves like a repeating control, in a sense,

the user can select multiple users from the same control. Internally, the XML schema
shown above is repeated for multiple users.

2. Get the Display Names and Login Names for all users in contact Selector Control

To get the display names and login names, we just need to parse the generated XML
schema. We will store the names and login names as comma separated values.

Assuming that our control name is gpContactSelector, the code below extracts the
display names and login names.

XPathNavigator xNavMain = this.XmlFormView2.XmlForm.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();

XmlNamespaceManager xNameSpace = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());

xNameSpace.AddNamespace("my", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2007-11-20T20:01:12");

XPathNodeIterator[] nodes = new XPathNodeIterator[4];

nodes[0] = xNavMain.Select("/my:myFields/my:gpContactSelector/my:Person/my:DisplayName", xNameSpace);

nodes[1] = xNavMain.Select("/my:myFields/my:gpContactSelector/my:Person/my:AccountId", xNameSpace);

nodes[2] = xNavMain.Select("/my:myFields/my:gpContactSelector/my:Person/my:AccountType", xNameSpace);

string names=string.Empty;

string accid=string.Empty;

for (int j = 0; j <>

{

for (int i = 0; i <>

nodes[i].MoveNext();

if (nodes[2].Current.ToString() == "User")

{

names = names + nodes[0].Current.ToString()+";";

accid = accid + nodes[1].Current.ToString()+";";

}

The code above is pretty self explanatory. It parses the generated XML Schema
and stores the Names and login ids in two variables, names and accid as semicolon
separated values. Further operations can be then performed on these.

2. Sending Emails to All users selected in Contact Selector

To send emails, we obviously need email addresses of the contacts selected.
However, contact selector does not automatically grabs out the email addresses
of the contacts. To get the email addresses, we will first extract the login names
from the XML schema and then use the Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.GetFullNameandEmailfromLogin
class to get the email addresses.

The code below accepts the login names as semicolon separated values and builds
a string containing email addresses as semicolon separated values.

private string GetEmails(string final)

{

char[] a = { ';' };

string[] loginIds = final.Split(a, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

string[] emailids = new string[loginIds.Length];

for (int i = 0; i <>

{

Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPGlobalAdmin ga = new Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPGlobalAdmin();

string dispname, email;

Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.GetFullNameandEmailfromLogin(ga, loginIds[i], out dispname, out email);

emailids[i] = email;

}

string finalstring = string.Empty;

for (int i = 0; i <>

finalstring = finalstring + emailids[i] + ";";

return finalstring;

}

Now, we can use using System.Net.Mail namespace to send mails. This namespace
overrides the System.Web.Mail used in .NET 1.1. For those who are new to this
namespace, below is the sample code given to send mail.

private void SendMail()

{

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();

mail.From = new MailAddress("Admin@domain.com", "Administrator");

char[] a = { ';' };

string[] emailIds = to.Split(a, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

for (int i = 0; i < style="">

mail.To.Add(new MailAddress(emailIds[i]));

mail.Subject = "New Meeting Request";

mail.Priority = MailPriority.Normal;

mail.IsBodyHtml = true;

mail.Body = GetBody();

new SmtpClient("smtpserver").Send(mail);

}

Doing Data Validations in Infopath 2007 Programmatically

2007-12-16T22:40:00.000+05:30

Infopath 2007 provides rich validation function for each of its controls. For ex, you can validate a text box or a field

For conditions such as equal to, is blank, is greater than and if that field fails the validation, we can display a message box.

One important thing to be noted is that, Infopath 2007 would not submit the form unless all the controls pass the validation.

Now, let’s talk about the complex validation, let’s say, I want to validate whether or not the textbox contains email address or not.

Surprisingly, this can be also done out of the box using pattern matching. If we look at the validation options in Infopath, one finds the options matches pattern, does not matches pattern. Here one can specify a complex regular expression to be matched.

Custom Validation

Now we come to our main topic, custom validation, means validation using some business logic which Infopath cannot provide out of the box.

To implement custom validation, each control in Infopath provides a validating event, which is usually called when the value of the control Changes. This is almost same as Changed event, with one difference that during the execution of validating event, the whole document tree is read only. That is, we cannot write to any field in Infopath while validating event is being executed.

The reason for this is that, the values of Infopath fields can change due to the change in values of other fields, which will result in Validating event to be called again and again, until the stack runs out of memory.

Now, coming to our main point, validating event, here we will see how to validate a simple field in Infopath, programmatically.

To write managed code in Infopath, you must have either VSTO or VSTA installed.

To write a validating event for a field, right click the field and choose Programming ->validating event

The code editor will open up the desired function for inserting the code for the validating event for particular field.

Below is an example of one of the typical implementation of validating event

public void OtherAttendees_Validate(object sender, XmlEventArgs e)

{

try

{

this.Errors.Delete("Invalid Value");

}

catch (Exception) { }

string str = e.Site.Value;

bool flag = CheckAttendees(str);

if (flag == false)

{

this.Errors.Add(e.Site, "Invalid Value", "The value of the "+ e.Site.LocalName + " field must be email addresses seperated by ;");

}

To understand the above code, we must first realize that this function will be called as soon as the value of the field will be changed.

We clean up the Errors collection prior to validating our field using this.Errors.Delete();

CheckAttendees function implements the business logic which determines that weather the field is valid or not. The input to the function is nothing but the value of the field.

Now, if the decide that field validation has failed, we add an error into the Error Collection using this.Errors.Add(), indicating the value and the custom error message we want to be displayed.

You can find out about the Errors collection here:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb229714.aspx

Now the point is, if the Errors Collection contains an item, the Infopath will not allow to submit the form. And, if you try to submit it, it will highlight the particular field and display the custom error message.

Tip about Validation and Submit in Browser Forms

This sort of validation works fine in client form since everything is executed on client. However in browser based forms, the user would not come to know about the failure in validation until he clicks submit and this would cost an expensive server page postback.

To overcome this limitation, we can implement the same logic in Changed event handler and set a value of hidden field which would indicate the validity of the form at the time of submission. Now on submit button, we can use custom rules to check the value of the hidden field and prevent the submission at the client side only. This prevents considerable overhead of page postback.

Train Signal Sharepoint 2007 Training Kit – A review

2007-11-26T21:59:00.001+05:30

Last week, I received a complimentary copy of the Train Signal’s Sharepoint 2007 raining kit. The training I found it to be very interactive one with audio/video tutorials.

The training covers almost all of these topics comprehensively:

1. Lab Setup
2. Installation of SharePoint Services 3.0
3. Web Apps and Site Collections
4. Site Creation
5. Site Building Blocks
6. More Site Building Blocks
7. Adding Users and Groups
8. Document Libraries
9. Custom Content Items and Lists
10. Alerts and RSS
11. Monitoring SharePoint
12. Back Up and Restore
13. Setting Up an Extranet Environment
14. SSL Configuration
15. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Installation
16. Workflows
17. Personalization and MySite
18. Excel Services and Report Center
19. Search Configuration for MOSS
20. Site Template and Publishing Portal

The training starts with guiding you to setup your own Sharepoint 2007 environment in Virtual Server 2005. Installation of Sharepoint 2007 given is also comprehensive.

The training in beginning starts from simple things like creating document libraries, configuring users and then goes on to advanced concepts like Creating custom content types and configuring email for Sharepoint 2007. In fact, I was impressed by some of the topics covered like securing a site using SSL, setting up Extranet which have not been usually covered by other training kits and bloggers.

The instructor manages to get straight to the point on most all the subjects and can have you successfully administering the Sharepoint 2007 server in a short amount of time. The class seems aimed at the administrator for the most part but developers would also benefit from it. In my view, this training kit could prove a boon for a complete beginner in Sharepoint as it does not assume any previous knowledge in Sharepoint and takes things from scratch.

The training kit covers from set up to detailed creation of web applications, sites, document libraries and work flow. There is a load of information in the presentations. The presentations are then followed up with demonstrations. The presentations are split up in easily accessible videos integrated using a Flash program to review and re watch the segments you need to use as a refresher.

The good thing about training is that the instructor explains each and every option like Host headers, Quota templates, which can be quite confusing for a beginner.

To summarize the review of this training kit:

This is a great learning aid. Takes you from scratch to quite advanced SPS/WSS administration and customization quickly if you go straight at it, or a little at a time if that's all the time you have. The presentation style is relaxed and adds enormously to the rate at which concepts are picked up. I have often been disappointed by the depth of knowledge that some 'trainers' actually have, but this package is supported by vast in-depth knowledge of the product.

Score: 9/10

Pros:

Interactive with audio video
Each and every topic explained in detail
Very useful for a complete beginner in sharepoint

Cons:

More Admin oriented rather than developer

How to put a latest post of your blog on sharepoint homepage

2007-08-08T02:31:00.000+05:30

Recently, we had a requirement to create a blog site and also put a latest blog entry on the homepage of the

sharepoint site. To make things difficult, customer wanted only the preview of the latest post i.e. first few lines

and an out of the box solution :)

I was stuck with an awesome idea to accomplish this with DataForm webpart in MOSS 2007 and bingo, it worked ! Here is how to do it :

Open the page on which you want to place the blog entry in Sharepoint Designer. If its a publishing page, SPD wont allow you to directly open it, but instead it will open the page layout instead. To circumvent this, create a webpart page through sharepoint and open it in sharepoint Designer.

Once the page is open in sharpoint designer, Go to Insert -> Data View. It will open a data sources pane to select the data source. However our data source is a seperate blog site. Thus, Choose Connect to another library, Enter a display name and enter the URL of the blog site.

Now you will get the lists of all lists and libraries from the blog site. Choose the list Posts as it is the list in which blog posts are contained by default.

Once you have inserted the dataview, now we have to customize the XSLT of the DataForm webpart to make it show us only a preview of single post.

For this,

* Strip of the headers of the list, called Title, Body etc. enclosed inside the <th> tags, we dont want to show the headers obviously.

* Now to show the preview, we will make use of the function

<xsl:value-of select="substring-before(@Body,'<p')" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>

What this function does is, gives us all of the string upto the string <p. Now since @Body is in actual an HTML representation of the body post,

we will get the first paragraph of the blog in the result. disable-output-escaping="yes" will make sure that it does not renders the HTML as it is.

* You can also sort it by Modified to show the latest entry automatically.

For those, who does not want to make these modifications themselves, I am giving the snippet of the XSL which I used here :

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" version="1.0" exclude-result-prefixes="xsl msxsl ddwrt" xmlns:ddwrt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/runtime" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" xmlns:ddwrt2="urn:frontpage:internal">
<xsl:output method="html" indent="no"/>
<xsl:decimal-format NaN=""/>
<xsl:param name="dvt_apos">'</xsl:param>
<xsl:variable name="dvt_1_automode">0</xsl:variable>
<xsl:template match="/" xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls">
<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="dvt_1">
<xsl:variable name="dvt_StyleName">Table</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Rows" select="/dsQueryResponse/Rows/Row"/><table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
<tr valign="top">
<xsl:if test="$dvt_1_automode = '1'" ddwrt:cf_ignore="1">
<th class="ms-vh" width="1%" nowrap="nowrap"></th>
</xsl:if></tr>
<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.body">
<xsl:with-param name="Rows" select="$Rows"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</table>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="dvt_1.body">
<xsl:param name="Rows"/>
<xsl:for-each select="$Rows">
<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.rowview"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="dvt_1.rowview">
<tr>
<td class="ms-vb">
Posted : <xsl:value-of select="ddwrt:FormatDate(string(@Created),1033,3)"></xsl:value-of> by <xsl:value-of select="@Editor" disable-output-escaping="yes" />
<p/>
<b><xsl:value-of select="@Title"></xsl:value-of></b><p/>
<xsl:value-of select="substring-before(@Body,'<p')" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
<p/>
</td><td class="ms-vb">
</td><xsl:if test="$dvt_1_automode = '1'" ddwrt:cf_ignore="1">
<td class="ms-vb" width="1%" nowrap="nowrap">
<span ddwrt:amkeyfield="ID" ddwrt:amkeyvalue="ddwrt:EscapeDelims(string(@ID))" ddwrt:ammode="view"></span>
</td>
</xsl:if>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a class="ms-vb" href="http://sp.sony.com/sel/CorporateMarketing/multichannel/blog">Read More</a></td>
</tr>
</xsl:template></xsl:stylesheet>

SharePoint 2007: using ASP.NET server side code in your pages

2007-07-11T07:13:00.000+05:30

This is fairly undocumented piece of information which I have got from this blog

http://www.bluedoglimited.com/SharePointThoughts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=242

I havn't tried it myself, so I cannot gaurantee its completeness. I am posting it

here for the sake of interest and community .....

In the web.config file in the Sharepoint virtual directory contains the following section:

By default the node <PageParserPaths> is empty. You can add <PageParserPath> nodes to specify the

virtual paths where you want to allow server side scripts:

Where CompilationMode is one of the following values:

Always	The page should always be compiled (default value)
Auto	ASP.NET will not compile the page, if possible.
Never	The page or control should never be dynamically compiled.

I assume that the AllowServerSideScript and IncludeSubFolders flags speak for themselves.

Be careful with the virtual paths you specify in your PageParserPaths. Anyone that can modify or add a page to the virtual path can insert code that will be executed server side with no restrictions.

A good location to specify as a PageParserPath is the location where you store your masterpages, for example /_catalogs/masterpage. You can now add server side script to your masterpages, which makes it available in all pages using this masterpage.

Preventing caching of page : Strategies in ASP.NET 2.0 and MOSS 2007

2007-07-11T06:24:00.001+05:30

Here I would discuss strategies to disable caching in your pages especially related to ASP.net and MOSS 2007.

If you wanted to prevent caching in plain old HTML, you would use these directives

I wont explain these tags here. You can refer to W3C HTML specification. Rather I would focus on how

to insert these HTML tags while developing in ASP.NET and MOSS 2007 i.e. master - content pages.

1) If you using plain aspx pages you can directly put these tags under the

<head> section and you are done.

If you are using master - content pages, you can add this to master page but beware, this will prevent

caching of all the pages.

Usually you are looking to prevent the caching of single page which contains dynamic data.

In that case, you can use strategies given below.

If you are using MOSS 2007, and want to prevent the caching of a content page, there are two choices:

Create a new page layout which contains these tags and bind that page to this page layout.
This way you can, create more pages which do not get cached using this layout.
Entirely detach the page from its layout using Sharepoint Designer. This way, the markup is copied to the
aspx page itself and you can add these tags easily. However this is not a recommended procedure as this
is not scalable.

2) Add a contentplaceholder inside the <head> in your master page. Then in
any pages that need these headers, populate the content control with
these meta tags. Other pages don't need to populate (or even have) the
content control.

I do this a lot and it's much easier

If you want to do this programmatically, you can put this line in a webpart or custom control :

Page.Master.FindControl("Content PlaceHolder").InnerHtml = < no caching tags >

This is a small piece of code, which programmatically adds the <meta http-equiv="refresh" ... />

to the <head> page.

void DisableBrowserCaching(HtmlHead hdr)
{
Control ctrl = (Control)hdr;

string currGMT =
DateTime.Now.ToUniversalTime().ToLongDateString() +
" " + DateTime.Now.ToUniversalTime().ToLongTimeString() + "
GMT";

HtmlMeta meta = new HtmlMeta();
meta.Name = "expires";
meta.Content = currGMT;
ctrl.Controls.Add(meta);

meta = new HtmlMeta();
meta.HttpEquiv = "pragma";
meta.Content = "no-cache";
ctrl.Controls.Add(meta);

meta = new HtmlMeta();
meta.HttpEquiv = "cache-control";
meta.Content = "no-cache";
ctrl.Controls.Add(meta);

}

You can use this code like this, in your controls or webparts

HtmlHead hdr = Master.Page.Header;
util.DisableBrowserCaching(hdr);

or if you are not using master pages, you can directly pass the Page.Header.

This works and, I think, is more general for the different browser
behaviors. Also, it allows me to set the behavior for any page, whether a
master page is involved or not.

2007-05-18T00:15:00.000+05:30

Resolving Workflow Status Stopped when sending mail to a Sharepoint Group

There is a mysterious stalemate occurs when you create a normal sharepoint Designer workflow with An action of sending a mail to a sharepoint group. The workflow runs fine when run under Administrator Account but shows status stopped when run under any other account like Contributor etc.

This occurs due to the fact that by default, the visibility of members of sharepoint group is granted only To the members of those group. Any other user outside that group cannot enumerate the members of the group And hence the workflow fails with the status as stopped. To resolve the issue, Go to Sharepoint Group settings And allow Everyone to see the members of group.

This issue engrossed my whole day due to the fact that, there is no error reported when this occurs.

2007-05-14T22:41:00.000+05:30

Data View Web Part Problems

Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator.

This problem occurs if the site is saved as the template and restored onto another server.
The resolution is given here, I wont repeat to avoid unnecessary redundancy
http://suguk.org/forums/thread/3001.aspx

But in brief, therotically solution is

we have to add curly braces to the list ID

We have to do this before saving the site as site template. There are some five occurences of the site ID which we need to change, we just have to add curly braces to the listID then only designer generates the new list IDs for these webparts.

2007-02-22T05:04:00.001+05:30

EMC's Getting Out of the Way of the SharePoint Train
EMC Documentum and Microsoft today announced an alliance that integrates SharePoint 2007 with EMC's Documentum products. Some of the high points are:

Users will be able to use the Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007 user interfaces as ways to put content into the Documentum repository. All of a sudden, users -- especially casual users -- won't have to go to Documentum training to use the Documentum system.

Read the full story at
http://creese.typepad.com/pattern_finder/2006/10/emcs_getting_ou.html

2007-02-21T11:58:00.001+05:30

Features of Office 14

Have a look at the Features that are being considered for Office 14….

Feature set includes:

· Better support on web 2.0

· Deeper unification of communications

· Knowledge networks (out of spps 2007)

· Content tagging/rating

· Improved search relevance and result refinement

· Enhanced WCM capabilities

· BI capabilities to business processes

Read here for more :

http://www.aeroxp.org/index.php?categoryid=10&p2_articleid=42

How to use Site Groups as audiences in Shared Services

2007-01-22T10:12:00.001+05:30

SSP's can only target Active Directory lists or Security Groups. Ben Curry shows in his blog,

how to use even use Site Groups as audiences in Shared Services ...

See more here..

http://mindsharpblogs.com/Ben/archive/2007/01/05/1459.aspx

2007-01-21T21:26:00.001+05:30

Adding data to Sharepoint Lists in bulk from database, Excel files

Many a times, it is required to import data in sharpoint lists from sources like SQL Server, Access db

or Excel files.

Here I will outline the steps required to import data in list from these sources. We can even link a sharepoint

list to SQL database, so that updates made to one are relfected in other and vice versa.

This is achieved through linked table feature.

Lets fire up Access 2007 and create a new blank access database.

Go to External data ribbon and we will choose ODBC to link this table to the SQL Server database.

Choose link to data source by creating a linked table

Choose a DSN for your data source or create a new one.

Once you get the table into Access 2007, right click the table and Choose Export -> Sharepoint List

Specify the address of sharepoint site and the name of the list you want to create and you are done :)

Sharepoint will itself create the site columns and select the data types for these columns based on the data types specified in the table.

Here we have imported the data into list from SQL server database. This can be extended to XML files, Excel files or even the Access database , paradox or even the Lotus database :)

Not to mention, just like import, you can export the data from sharepoint list to Access, SQL Server etc.....

2007-01-21T11:16:00.001+05:30

Errors syncing SharePoint 2007 lists with Outlook 2007

I used to get a very frequent error whenever I got my document library offline to

Outlook 2007.

Task 'SharePoint' reported error (0x8000FFFF) : 'An error occurred either in

Outlook or SharePoint. Contact the SharePoint site administrator.'

'Outlook cannot connect to Windows Sharpoint Services site.'

If anyone is facing similar error, try doing NET STOP SENS at the command prompt.

This stops the System Event Notification Service.

After stopping this service, all connections to offline calendars, document libraries

started working fine.

Although I am yet to determine the reason for this :)

2006-12-23T08:39:00.000+05:30

Opening Infopath forms in Browser directly from a link

Many people have faced the problem of not been able to open Infopath form in browser in

MOSS 2007 directly from a link to .xsn file other than Form library itself. If the user tries to open an

.xsn file from the form library which is configured to render the form in the browser, the user

gets a open/save dialog box instead of a form being rendered in browser.

This is because the links clicked inside a form library or document library behave differently

than the link to same target clicked on any other page. An Office compatible client like Word 2007,

Excel 2007, InfoPath 2007 is smart enough to detect that the link is opened from Document library and

when it detects such a link click, it automatically opens the document directly from the document library

without showing the open/save dialog box in the browser. If you try to modify the document, the

document will be saved directly to the document library. This behavior of document library is identical

to that of normal Windows folder.

The solution to this problem is to have a link to URL (when the form is rendered in browser) rather

than having link to xsn file itself.

This solution is not suitable if you have a link coming in dynamically for ex. for each form in form library,

there is a link in your custom webpart. However you can easily avoid this problem by writing a simple

code which will incorporate the filename of your form in the URL.

2006-12-23T08:15:00.003+05:30

Cannot find Data Connection Library in WSS v3

If you are wondering, when you go to create page in your sharepoint site and cannot see

Data Connection Library option there, most likely, you do not have MOSS 2007 installed.

Data Connection Library is a document library which lets you hold you data connections like

Office Data connection files which hold connection string pointing to your external data.

This feature is only available in MOSS 2007. If you are using WSS v3 only, you are out of luck J

If you have MOSS 2007 installed and still there is no option of creating Data Connection Library, you
are most probably using a team site template. Data connection library is not activated as a feature in team site.

So better solution would be to create site out of Publishing Portal or Collaboration Portal.

2006-11-29T20:57:00.001+05:30

Determining the Current User Context inside Sharepoint

What's the best way to determine the current user within a custom web part
developed for MOSS 2007? I've found four solutions so far, but I'm pretty sure
there are more:

1. Use System.Web.HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name, like in any
ASP.Net web application

2. Use System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name

3. Have the Current User Filter send the current user to your web part,
and (of course) make your web part a consumer of that value.

4. SPWeb web = SPControl.GetContextWeb(Context);
SPUser currentUser = web.CurrentUser;

2006-11-27T22:31:00.001+05:30

Resolving : Server is either too busy or not responding in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

I recently faced this error while connecting to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis services from Microsoft

Excel 2007. Inspite of the several solutions given on various sites none of them seemed to work.

The solution was simple, you need to install Microsoft OLE DB Driver 9.0 for SQL 2005, old 8.0 drivers

doesnt work.

To install the driver go to this page :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DF0BA5AA-B4BD-4705-AA0A-B477BA72A9CB&DisplayLang=en

and choose the appropriate download. Note that the download needs to be installed for every client access machine.

Virtual PC SP1 Networking problems (address "00:00:00:00:00:00" failed to initialize)

2006-10-04T11:57:00.001+05:30

There have been a number of people reporting that when they start a virtual machine - they get the following error:

The network adapter with address "00:00:00:00:00:00" of virtual machine "...." failed to initialize because the address is a null address.

To fix this problem you should use REGEDIT to:

Examine the key value at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318}\<nnnn>\DriverDesc to locate the desired host adapter where <nnnn> is a four digit number.
Look at the GUID value for the NetCfgInstanceId key value.
Add the DWORD key at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VPCNetS2\Parameters\Adapters\<guid>\Flags and set the value to 0 where <guid> is the GUID found in step 2.
Restart the computer.

If you want to see the details of this error see

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/01/17/354971.aspx

Code names from MS

2006-10-02T11:35:00.001+05:30

Ø Longhorn (code name): The next major release of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Ø Avalon (code name): Graphics presentation technologies in Windows "Longhorn" that provides a unified architecture for presenting user interface, documents and media in the system.

Ø ClickOnce: Technology in Windows "Longhorn" designed to speed & simplify deployment of applications.

Ø Indigo (code name): .NET communications technologies in Windows "Longhorn" designed to build and run connected systems.

Ø SuperFetch: Technology in Windows "Longhorn" designed to help applications launch more quickly.

Ø Whidbey (code name): Next generation of the Microsoft Visual Studio system of software-development tools.

Ø WinFS (code name): Next-generation search and data storage system that provides a unified storage model for applications running on Windows "Longhorn."

Ø WinFX: Programming model Windows "Longhorn," used by software developers to build applications for the Windows platform.

Ø Yukon (code name): The next generation of Microsoft SQL Server database software.

Site Definitions Demystified - Creating a custom site definition having Custom webparts

2006-09-03T09:29:00.001+05:30

There are two confusing terms in MOSS 2007, site templates and site definitions.

A site template is a .stp file which contains only the difference of changes from the

Original site definition. A user wants to install a custom .stp file must have a site

Definition installed from which the .stp file was saved.

(Note: In MOSS B2, you can only save top level sites. i.e. site collection as a site

Template. This is a bug and will be corrected in B2TR.)

A site definition on the other hand is a complete definition with a directory structure

Containing .aspx files and important Onet.xml file.

We will create here a simple site definition which when applied shows a custom webpart

On page.

The site definitions are stored in this directory

\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates

Each site definition needs an entry in webtemp*.xml file which are located here

\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\1033\XML

To begin with:

Make a copy of this directory

Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\sts

In the Site Templates directory and name it sample. This will create a site definition named sample having the

Same structure as team site i.e. sts directory.

Now to make it appear in the create site list, create a file named webtempsample.xml in the directory

\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\1033\XML

And paste these contents

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

</Template>

</Templates>

Reset the IIS and try creating the new site. We will get a custom tab while choosing the site definition which

Three choices.

Now the important bit, we will now modify the site definition file onet.xml and place a custom webpart in the definition

So that when site definition is created, a custom webpart appears on the page.

I assume we have a custom webpart .dll and .dwp file ready.

Open the onet.xml file from

\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\sample\xml

This is the main file of the site definition and it stores the structure of whole site definition.

Observe this section of the file, the <modules> tag.

<Modules>
<Module Name="Default" Url="" Path="">
<File Url="default.aspx" NavBarHome="True">
<View List="$Resources:core,lists_Folder;/$Resources:core,announce_Folder;" BaseViewID="0" WebPartZoneID="Left" />
<View List="$Resources:core,lists_Folder;/$Resources:core,calendar_Folder;" BaseViewID="0" RecurrenceRowset="TRUE" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="2" />
<AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="Right" WebPartOrder="1"><![CDATA[

<Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>

<TypeName>Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ImageWebPart </TypeName>

<Title>$Resources:wp_SiteImage;</Title>

<iwp:ImageLink>/_layouts/images/homepage.gif</iwp:ImageLink>

</WebPart>

]]></AllUsersWebPart>

<View List="$Resources:core,lists_Folder;/$Resources:core,links_Folder;" BaseViewID="0" WebPartZoneID="Right" WebPartOrder="2" />
<NavBarPage Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" ID="1002" Position="Start" />
<NavBarPage Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" ID="0" Position="Start" />
</File>
</Module>

If we try to understand this section, we also have an .aspx file in our site definition directory. If we observe the .aspx

File, we will see that it defines two webpart zones, left and right . See the snippet below of .aspx file :

The ids of webpart zones are left and right respectively.

<td>

<tr>

<WebPartPages:WebPartZone runat="server" FrameType="TitleBarOnly" ID="Left" Title="loc:Left" />

</td>

<WebPartPages:WebPartZone runat="server" FrameType="TitleBarOnly" ID="Right" Title="loc:Right" />

</td>

The onet.xml defines which webpart goes into these zones and the order of those webparts. If we see the line number

Five above, it defines the right webpart zone and places the .dwp file of the out of the box ImageWebPart in the

CDATA section.

Now delete everything in the CDATA section and place the .dwp file of your custom webpart. We will also have to place

The .dll file in the web application bin directory.

Now again reset the IIS and create a new site based on this definition.

When we will create a site out of this customized site definition, we will get a custom webpart already created on the site

On the right zone.

There are lots of possibilities in customization of onet.xml file. We could have modified the left webpart and zone and

Place another webpart there. Or we could have modified an .aspx file and added more webpart zones.

If that's not enough, we could have added our own custom .aspx file and added its entry in the modules section of the

Onet.xml file. The possibilities are endless !

Mail me your comments and suggestions. I can mail the custom site definition discussed here to the interested.

Localization in WebParts

2006-09-02T00:01:00.001+05:30

Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server doesn't have support of localization in multiple

Languages natively. The document at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office/sps2003/maintain/spsinatl.mspx#E5F

Discusses this situation. It is clearly mentioned that

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 does not support a mixture of different localized portal servers on the server farm, nor does it support a mixture of different localized Windows Server 2003 servers. All servers running Windows Server 2003 in a farm topology must be in the same language, and all servers running SharePoint Portal Server 2003 in a server farm must be in the same language

Still, if you want to perform localization in webparts for whatever reasons, it is simple to do so.

We will create a simple MOSS 2007 webpart with localization support.

Create a simple class library project and reference to the sharepoint namespace.
Create a template of webpart
Now we will add a resource file to the project. Choose Add New file from the project menu
And add a resource file for each of the languages. For example

Healthcare.resx

Healthcare.de.resx for German

Healthcare.fr.resx for French

Note that you cannot add App_GlobalResources to the project since it is only valid for the web sites

And not the class library projects.

Add the following reference to your webpart source file
using System.Configuration;

using System.Globalization;

using System.Resources;

We will pick the language settings from the web.config file. Add the following tag to the

<appsettings> section of the web.config file of your sharepoint web site.

<add key=culture value="de-DE">

Add the following class variables to your webpart source file.

CultureInfo cult = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["culture"]);

ResourceManager rm;

This will create a CultureInfo object based on the language settings in the web.config file.

In the constructor of your webpart add a line like this

rm = new ResourceManager("CustomWebParts.HealthCare", this.GetType().Assembly);

Where HealthCare is the name of your resource file ex HealthCare.resx and HealthCare.de.resx

And CustomWebParts is the namespace of your webpart.

Basically this line creates a resource manager for the specific resource file.

Now we will load all the strings which are used in the webpart source to the resource file.

This is fairly easy.

Now to load strings at any point in the webpart source we will use the GetString() method of

ResourceManager class. For Ex

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

base.CreateChildControls();

this.Title = rm.GetString("CarePlan", cult);

}

This method sets the title of the webpart to the appropriate language based on the web.config file

The above localization is not specific to sharepoint instead it's an asp.net 2.0 feature.

I can mail the source code of the webpart to anyone if needed.

Send your suggestions and comments.

2006-08-20T16:29:00.000+05:30

Publishing Infopath form on Sharepoint Pages

The msdn document at

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ms406041.aspx

shows us how we can host our infopath form in a custom aspx page or a Windows Application.

What I would show here is how you can display your infopath form on the sharepoint page.

The hosting of infopath form on a sharepoint page can be done with either two ways :

Using Sharepoint Designer and dropping a XMLFormView Control
Creating a Webpart for hosting the infopath form

We will be using the second method since it is more intuitive. To develop a simple webpart for

Hosting infopath form, we will create a simple Class Library in Visual 2005 and add a reference

to Microsoft.Sharepoint

The main code we will be writing is in the CreateChildControls section.

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

base.CreateChildControls();

try

{

control = new Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.Controls.XmlFormView();

control.XsnLocation = text;

this.Controls.Add(control);

}

catch (Exception e)

{

EventLog.WriteEntry("Office", e.Message + e.Source + e.StackTrace, EventLogEntryType.Error);

}

In the above code, we have created a XMLFormView control programmatically. This control is in

Microsoft.Office.Infopath.Server.Controls namespace and this dll is located in Office Server directory

In Program Files directory.

In addition to it, we can use a property which can take the location of xsn file on sharepoint site to host. We will create

A property called xsn

[Browsable(true),

Category("Miscellaneous"),

DefaultValue(defaultText),

WebPartStorage(Storage.Personal),

FriendlyName("XsnLocation"),

Description("XSN Location")]

public string Xsn

{

get

{

return xsn;

}

set

{

xsn = value;

}

And then we can change the CreateChild controls code to take the xsn file location from the

Property like

control.XsnLocation = Xsn;

I can mail the source code to anyone if interested.

Mail me your suggestions. J

FW: SPS 2003 WebParts vs. ASP.NET 2.0 Webparts

2006-07-23T02:30:00.000+05:30

ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart Framework is a new feature in ASP.net 2.0. Although Webparts existed in SPS 2003 times, this framework is completely new and follows its own architecture. The cool thing is ASP.NET 2.0 webpart framework is now compatible with latest version of sharepoint
i.e MOSS 2007. This means ASP.NET 2.0 webparts can be used in Sharepoint 2007.

I wont repeat here the steps required to use your ASP.NET 2.0 webpart in Sharepoint 2007. You can see several blogs on this topic like:

http://weblog.vb-tech.com/nick/archive/2006/05/10/1563.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms431087.aspx

One main thing here to be kept in mind while creating custom webparts is that 2003 webparts dwp file uses different schema than Sharepoint 2007 webparts. If you try to use the ASP.NET webpart with old schema and try to import it in sharepoint you get the error:

The class does not derive from the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart class and therefore cannot be
imported or used in a WebPartZone control

To resolve this ASP.NET webparts uses the different schema which is like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<webParts>
<webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3">
  <metaData>
   <type name="aspwebpart.FeaturePart, aspwebpart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" />
   <importErrorMessage>Cannot import this Web Part.</importErrorMessage>
  </metaData>
  <data>
   <properties>
    <property name="Title" type="string">FeaturePart</property>
   </properties>
  </data>
</webPart>
</webParts>

Using this schema you can easily import your ASP.net 2.0 webparts onto sharpeoint 2007.

The custom webparts you create can either be imported from
System.WEb.UI.WebControls.Webparts or Microsoft.Sharepoint.WebPartPages.Webpart

However if you plan to use feature like connections between webparts , you are left with
the option of using only deriving from Microsoft.Sharepoint.WEbPartPages.WebPart.

MOSS BDC MetaData Manager

2006-07-23T02:21:00.000+05:30

MOSS BDC MetaData Manager

Atlast there is finally a MOSS BDC MetaData Manager using which you can create BDC XML’s

Using a GUI application. I have hard time creating BDC XML in past since B1 TR. This application

Is a treat for sharepoint 2007 users J

See the blog at

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tbaginski/archive/2006/07/16/9259.aspx

2006-07-23T01:32:00.000+05:30

Customization of Sharepoint Site

There are very few blogs on customization of Sharepoint 2007 site which involves direct editing uses master pages. Here is one of the few blogs which discusses this topic to the heart.

Sharepoint Tips And Tricks

2006-07-22T01:43:00.000+05:30

Microsoft Announces Beta 2 Technical Refresh

Microsoft in its beta site announced that it will be launching Beta 2 Technical Refresh in short time. Although not much info was available , but according to microsoft :

The B2TR (Beta 2 Technical Refresh) build will be releasing in the not too distant future and we’re starting to outline plans for that release. Over the next weeks we’ll be providing more information about what TAP members can expect in the way of deployment planning, Vista interoperability and support from our product development teams for B2TR deployments.

2006-07-15T12:36:00.000+05:30

For all those who want to develop WSS 2.0 webparts in VS 2005

The Sharepoint Diary: Sharepoint Web Part Library Project Template for Visual Studio 2005

2006-06-27T00:10:00.000+05:30

Passing query string to a Infopath 2007 form

Support of infopath 2007 browser rendering has opened a whole lot of options for web forms. Now instead of creating a form in ASPX , one can create an infopath form and take advantage of various submitting options like submitting to web service, database etc.

One feature which I find hard to get is passing parameters to infopath form so that it can dynamically present the data to user. For Ex you can pass a customer id to the infopath form which updates the database based on that customer ID.

Normally rendering the infopath form using document library prevents us to pass our own parameters throught the URL since the URL is automatically generated by the Forms Server.

The trick is to use XMLFormView control as described in this link
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ms778201.aspx

Observe the code in OnInitialize event, here you can grap the parameter in the query string and send it to your infopath form to a text box. That text box can be set to hidden if possible.

protected void _xmlFormView1_OnInitialize(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
 XPathNavigator xNavMain = XmlFormView1.XmlForm.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();
 XmlNamespaceManager xNameSpace = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());
 xNameSpace.AddNamespace("my", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2006-04-20T16:26:21");
 XPathNavigator fTextBox1 = xNavMain.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:field2", xNameSpace);
 fTextBox1.SetValue(Request.QueryString["CustomerID"]);
}

This way you can pass the dynamic parameters to the infopath form rendered in the browser.
Note that the namespace specified here must be exactly same as that specified in your form.
To find out your namespace, rename the .xsn file to .cab and open the template.xml file.

Happy Working :)

2006-06-26T23:57:00.000+05:30

Installing MOSS 2007 on a single standalone machine

Normal installation of MOSS 2007 require a farm of computers like domain controller, database server and atlast a web server for a reasonable performance. But if you are a home user like me, who has unfortunately only a single laptop , even then you can install MOSS 2007 on your PC without installing Active Directory and that too with good performance.

The key to installing on a single machine is not choosing the standalone option while installing MOSS 2007. The standalone option works fine when installed with a domain account but on a standalone machine it fails on Step 8 with SQLException of failed login.

To Install MOSS 2007 on a single machine follow these steps:

Do a clean installation of Windows Server 2003
Install SP1
Configure the server as Application server with ASP.net support.
Install .net 2.0 framework
Install Windows Workflow components beta 2
Install either SQL 2k5, 2k or SQL Express
Install MOSS 2007 and choose complete option.

When it asks for the database server in the configuration wizard, give the name of your own machine as the database server. This is installing farm configuration but on the single machine.This way you dont even need the domain controller or a domain account.

2006-06-24T01:29:00.000+05:30

Limitations of Infopath 2007

Ability to submit to SQL Server

o In order to submit to a database (Access or SQL Server) you need to initially create the InfoPath form from the Access or SQL Database. So if you, say, created a ÂblankÂ form, added nodes, controls, etcAndnd now want to submit that to SQL Server there is no way to reverse engineer that template to do so.

o Assuming you did initially create the InfoPath form directly on your SQL Server database, you will not be able to ÂsubmitÂ to that database if your form was designed for both the client and the web browser. If this is the case, it is by design that you cannot submit directly to a database from a web enabled form.

- Message about an Administrator needing to approve the template

o This is also by design. If you create a form that includes the ability to be displayed in the web browser *and* either include managed code and/or set the form to Full Trust, you cannot deploy that form directly to Office Server. This is a security decision that was made: if your form requires Full Trust or contains managed code then a server administrator needs to be aware of this Â hence the only way to get this form deployed is via an ÂAdminÂ deployment.

2006-06-23T23:47:00.000+05:30

Publishing Infopath 2007 documents in Browser

Infopath 2007 brings the new feature of rendering the infopath documents in the browser. However this feature can be slightly confusing for the beginners. When MOSS 2007 beta 2 was released I took me 2 days to find out how to render your own infopath document to browser.

The steps for this are below:

§ Complete the publishing wizard (using the SharePoint option) and publish the form to a shared location

§ Launch the SharePoint Central Admin page

§ Select Application Management

§ From the InfoPath Forms Services section select Manage Form Templates

§ Click Upload Form Template

2005-12-18T23:11:00.000+05:30

Hello All,

This is my first blog... .basically I am still learning the basics of blogging...
and I am creating this blog just to preview my page....