SharePoint

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SharePoint

• Patterns of Development
• Lecturer Ken Wong

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Abstract

• Present common development patterns
• UI customizations
• Format theory plus some code and/or demo to back
  it up

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Agenda

• SharePoint Summary
• UI Customizations
• Basics
• Web part patterns
• Custom code behind
• Site Definition Modifications
• Custom property page
• Extending Areas

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What is SharePoint?

• SharePoint is about collaboration
• Information aggregator
• Hierarchal storage of data

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Areas

• Nodes in the hierarchy
• Storage of
• Lists ? tables of data
• Documents / images
• Urls
• Rich Text
• Landing page (default.aspx)

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Areas and Site Definitions

• Site definition template ? Area
• Analogy to OOP
• Site Def is to class
• Area is to object (instance of class)
• Schema of data (lists)
• Schema of files (including landing page ?
  default.aspx)

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Basic UI Customizations

• WSS
• apply themes
• SPS
• logo
• adding custom CSS
• Web Part Infrastructure
• drag and drop web parts
• web part zones

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Demo

• Basic UI Customizations

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Web Parts

• Web Control on steroids
• Visual augmentations
• Chrome
• Visual administration
• layout
• Connectivity augmentations
• WP2WP
• Inherits System.Web.UI.Control
• Very much like a web control
• RenderWebPart verus Render method
• Must go on a Web Part Page

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Web Parts

• Good MSDN white paper
• A Developers Introduction on Web Parts

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Web Part User Control

• User Controls are easier to make than Web
  Controls
• Separate of presentation and logic
• Code behind model

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Web Part User Control Benefits

• Develop User Control outside of SharePoint
• Prototype it on another dev environment
• Business logic doesnt access SharePoint OM
• Familiar to ASP.NET developers
• Dont know have to know SharePoint

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User Control Project Setup

• All User Controls in its own library
• Must follow SharePoint security model
• Signing it and putting in GAC is easiest
• Testing ASP.NET web site

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Demo

• Web Part User Control

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Web Part Xml/Xslt

• Alternative to user control
• Has separation of code / data
• Model from Sharepoint Portal Server 2001

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Web Part Xml / Xslt

• Can have developers to maintain the views ?
  dont need to know SharePoint nor ASP.NET just
  Xslt
• Transformation to Xml maintain by a core team
• Gotchas
• Caching will be needed for scalability
• Where Xslt is stored could be an issue

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Demo

• Web Part Xml/Xslt

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Custom Page Code Behind

• Extend existing SharePoint pages or to add new
  pages
• WebPartPage is still a System.Web.UI.Page

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Demo

• Creating a custom page code behind code
  walkthrough

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Site Definition ASPX Modifications

• Way to change the look, the UI of the landing
  pages and other pages
• Corporate branding
• TEMPLATES\1033
• MSDN article on how to create a new Site
  definition from an existing

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Site Definition ASPX Modifications

• DISCLAIMER
• Changes to the OTB Site Definitions are not
  supported by Microsoft
• Make modifications on a copy
• Setup your portal areas to use the modified Site
  Definition

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Modified Site Definitions Setup

• One Solution

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Ghosted / Unghosted Files

• Ghosted
• From NTFS
• Faster access
• centralized
• Unghosted
• From SQL Server
• Slower database hit
• Copy On Write (COW) algorithm

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Types of Site Definition Changes

• Easy
• Landing page changes
• Several default.aspx
• Includes creating new web part zones
• Hard
• All List CRUD pages
• Files in _layouts (shared management pages)
• Why? Couple of hundred files dont support the
  ONET.XML alternateHeader tag

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Types of Site Definition Changes

• Presents a big problem for corporate branding
• Customers dont like it when only half of their
  site is branded

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Sketch of a Solution

• Console app that iterates through the aspx pages
• Looks for source tags and does
• Replace/Insert
• Before tag
• After tag
• InnerXml First node
• InnerXml Last node
• Where clause based on tag attributes
• Challenges
• Aspx are not fully xml compliant
• Regex doesnt work across carriage returns (must
  use old fashion string.indexOf)
• Tags (ltIMGgt) are self closing without /

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What not to Do

• Do not get rid of server controls
• Hide them with a ltdiv stylevisibilityhiddenblo
  cknonegtlt/divgt
• Why? referenced in code behind
• ? Object reference not found
• Do not do this on the OTB site definitions
  (unsupported) do it on a copy

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Some Cavaets

• Brute force
• All pages need to be tested
• Get firm requirements before applying this
• Does not do major structural changes
• If possible convince the customer to only do it
  on landing pages and list CRUD pages try to
  leave out _layouts

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Site Definition ASPX Structural Changes

• Changes to the main table layout
• Very hard ? no automated solution
• Must be done manually (1000 files)

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Custom Property Pages

• SPS has encapsulated many UI components for its
  admin pages
• Tabs
• General page layout
• Can just reuse them to create new property pages

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Demo

• Custom property page code walkthrough

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Extending Areas

• Area object has user defined fields to store
  other information
• 3 booleans
• 3 integers
• 5 strings
• To get more strings serialize data to the
  NText1 field

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Demo

• Code walkthrough of AreaEx class

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Summary

• Basics of UI customization
• Web Part patterns
• user control / xslt
• Custom page code behind
• Site Definition ASPX changes
• Custom Property Page
• Extending SharePoint areas

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More Information Books

• Microsoft SharePoint Technologies
• Microsoft SharePoint Building Office 2003
  Solutions
• Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
  Resource Kit