SharePoint Kings

Original title of list or library

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:39:00 +0000

Have you ever noticed while coding when you have changed the name of the list and then we you refer the list.title property, all you get is the new name.

Yes, that is how it should be. You must be wondering what the big deal in this is. Well, here is a catch in that.

When you write or call any method or property that returns the list items path URL or document URL, you still will get the old name of the library.

Here I have one library called Orders.

In a button click, I have written a code to change the name of a list. you can do this even from UI by going to list settings and changing the name.

protected void btnNameChange_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)

{

SPWeb currentsite = SPContext.Current.Web;

lblTitle.Text = string.Empty;

SPList listOrders = currentsite.Lists.TryGetList("Orders");

if (listOrders != null)

{

lblTitle.Text = listOrders.Title;

listOrders.Title = "Orders New Title";

listOrders.Update();

}

else

{

lblTitle.Text = "Orders list does not exist";

}

Now we have a new title of the list.

Let’s click the button again.

See now we have got a message that list does not exist because we have changed the name of the list. So in this situation, what one should do if you already have code written which fetches a name of the list and perform an action on it at many places?

Are you going to rewrite your code at all the places? Think on this and you’ll get an idea how difficult this can be.

So here is a solution to this. Answer is very simple use rootfolder property of a list that always gives you original name of the list.

Let’s change a code a little.

protected void btnNameChange_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)

{

SPWeb currentsite = SPContext.Current.Web;

lblTitle.Text = string.Empty;

SPListCollection lists = currentsite.Lists;

Boolean IsNotFound = true;

foreach (SPList list in lists)

{

if (list.RootFolder.Name.ToUpper() == "ORDERS")

{

IsNotFound = false;

lblTitle.Text = "Original Title:" + list.RootFolder.Name.ToString() + " and Current Title " + list.Title;

list.Title = "Orders New Title";

list.Update();

break;

}

if (IsNotFound)

{

lblTitle.Text = "Orders list does not exist";

}

And here is what you get

Hope you must have found this useful.

Reusable workflows in SharePoint 2010 – Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:59:00 +0000

If you have not gone through Part-1 of this series, I would recommend you reading it first and then continue reading here.

Now open the SharePoint Designer, connect with your site and click on Reusable Workflow.

Select document content type, here we can select the content type on which we would like to attach the workflow to.

Now check the condition, that if the current field is equals to department category and compare that with Marketing then log to history that marketing was selected.

And I have then put if else condition for each department.

Save the workflow and then publish the workflow.

Now it’s time to associate this workflow with the content type. Being on the same workflow settings page, click on associate to content type option from ribbon.

When you click on it, the browser window opens which allows you to associate. Select start this workflow on item adding.

Once you create a document using the template, and when you save it, you can see the workflow has triggered and then completed by saving the right information in the workflow history list.

Result is out

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:36:00 +0000

Finally the result is out

and it seems that people think PCs will never die and some think that it will still take another 4-5 years.

Reusable workflows in SharePoint 2010 – Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:43:00 +0000

A long awaited feature has finally come to the SharePoint 2010 and the feature is reusable workflows. In earlier versions we could not create reusable workflows.

We now can create reusable workflow for a content type. Yes, there is one limitation which is we can create a reusable workflows only for content types. So when we add content type to list or library we get the workflow along with it which has logic attached to it.

We will see that in action. First we will create a content type, add that content type to list, then we will create a very simple workflow of course a reusable one which is attached to the content type that we will create and then we will see how that works with workflow in a library.

So go ahead and open SharePoint designer 2010. I am first going to create a site column and content types can only contain site columns.

Click on New site column, I am selecting Choice column and giving name and assigning to a new group and add some data to it.

So now we have site column in our site and we will now create content type.

Now create a new content type.

Now you can find it to the custom group that we gave

Now click on content type and go to its settings page

Click on edit content type columns and then click on add existing site columns from top left

And then select our site column to include the column in the content type.

Keeping the content type settings page open, click on administration web page from where we will associate document template with this content type.

Click on advanced settings, upload a document template. So now we have associated a document template with this content type.

Now is the time when we will add this content type to the existing document library.

Go back to designer, in all lists and library open the library on which you want this content type to be added.

Once the library opens, click on content type settings and add the department category content type to it.

Now we have that document template available in the library. To see that you can open this in browser and then see the library all items page and click on New.

Read Part-2 for further reading.

Masking fields in SharePoint 2010 list and libraries

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:43:00 +0000

I came across to a situation where people wanted to enter the list items and upload the documents but would not like see their names in them. They also did not want anonymous access to list or library.

So now what can be the solution? Then I read about the PowerShell and came to know one technique that we can imply to do this.

Here is a classic example. I have one customer list and after using following command in PowerShell, I got what I wanted.

And here is the result

You can also use the SharePoint object model to set the same property. Use SPList.ShowUser property to perform the same operation where SPList is your list object.

I hope you like this trick.

The result is out

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:32:00 +0000

Finally the result is out

Sandbox Solutions in SharePoint 2010 – Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:23:00 +0000

If you have not gone through Part-1 to Part-3 of this series, I would recommend you reading them first and then continue from here on.

In this post, we are going to see how Visual Studio helps us creating SandBox solutions easily.

Let us open the same example that we wrote in our earlier post.

Let us add a code of line which is actually not permitted in sandbox solution.

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

Label lbl = new Label

{

Text = "Hello from sandbox",

ID = "lblSandBox",

ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Blue

};

Controls.Add(lbl);

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate

{

});

}

We know that SPSecurity is the class which is not allowed in the sandbox solution. However when I build the project and even create a package, it allows me to do that.

No errors were given and let us see if we try to deploy this package and see what happens.

So how can we ensure that something which is not allowed in sandbox solution, we should not be able to use while program against sandbox solutions.

There is a way to do this, however we need to keep in mind that this should be done only on developer’s machine and not on production. I am showing this just to give you an idea that we have something like this available which we can use but not for the production.

We know that the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly which is there in the project refers to this global path.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.dll

Let us go ahead and locate one more Microsoft.SharePoint dll but at other location and add it to the project. Remove the Microsoft.SharePoint dll which is right not in the project.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\UserCode\assemblies\Microsoft.SharePoint.dll

And now try to build the project.

It does not allow us to build the project because SPSecurity is not allowed to be used inside sandbox solution.

Do not forget to remove and get the original assembly back while deploying to production.

I hope you like this series of sandbox solutions. We will keep adding new content in SandBox solution when we come across to anything.

Till then keep reading, keep visiting SharePoint Kings as we together explore the world of SharePoint.

Sandbox Solutions in SharePoint 2010 – Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:54:00 +0000

In this post we are going to see how resources count in sandbox solution. If you have not gone through part-1and Part-2 of this series, I would recommend you reading it first and then continue reading from here on.

Let us change the code that we had written in earlier post. This time we will write something which will utilize the resources and hence we get some bar increment in resources area in solutions.

Default resource quota allotted is 300 and we can change that using PowerShell or through central administration.

Let us do this with PowerShell as it is the easiest option. Open Powershell module from administrative tools.

Replace the URL of your site collection.

You need to be a farm administrator of course to perform all these operations.

So now if you come back and check the resource quota allocation then you should see it has dipped from 300 to 100.

Now let us add a code to our existing solution which will consume resources.

public class SandBoxWebPart : WebPart

{

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

Label lbl = new Label

{

Text = "Hello from sandbox",

ID = "lblSandBox",

ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Blue

};

Controls.Add(lbl);

RunLoop();

}

private void RunLoop()

{

int i = 0;

while (true)

{

i += 1;

}

What we have done is we have placed a never ending function which keeps executing while true and hence some point of time it will exceed the run time environment threshold value and throw an error.

So let’s build the solution and then generate WSP and then upload to solution gallery. After deploying and activating this new WSP and coming back to home page where this web part is placed, here is what we get.

Because of infinite loop we get this error message, if we keep executing this code for number of times then we can see the change setting up on resource quota bar and usage increased in solution gallery.

Farm administrator can also block the solution if administrator found that particular solution is consuming many resources. Go to system settings, user code solutions.

Select wsp to block and click on block.

And this is what we get when we try to run our solution.

In next post we are going to explore visual studio experience and capability working on sandbox solutions. Read Part-4 for further reading.

The Result is out

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:55:00 +0000

Finally the result is out

Sandbox Solutions in SharePoint 2010 – Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:32:00 +0000

In this post we are going to see how to create and deploy sandbox solution. If you have not gone through part-1 of this series, I would recommend you reading it first and then continue reading from here on.

So let us go ahead and start the visual studio and this time we will create an empty project and select sandbox solution and not the farm solution. Select empty solution project.

Mention the URL of the site that you would like to connect to.

And click on finish. You will be presented with this screen.

If you see a property of a project, then you can see a property called Sandbox solution as true. If you wish to turn this solution to farm solution, you can always come back to property setting and set it to false. This is a handy tip. Isn’t it? J As of now we will keep it true as we are developing sandbox solution.

Now click on add new item and select web part (not visual web part – as it is not supported in sandbox solution). Give it a name SandBoxWebPart and add it to solution.

We are going to write a simple code to this. Write a code in createchildcontrols method.

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

if (!Page.IsPostBack)

{

Label lbl = new Label

{

Text = "Hello from sandbox",

ID = "lblSandBox",

ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Blue

};

Controls.Add(lbl);

}

So now we are going to package this solution, not deploy because we want to deploy it as a sandbox solution. So now you get a wsp created in your physical path of this project once you right click on project and select package.

And you can see your wsp file

Now the beauty is if you are the site collection administrator you can go ahead and deploy and activate this solution.

So let us open the site and go to site settings and go to gallery and click on solutions.

As you can see solutions quota has been assigned by farm administrators. As and when solution uses the resources it keeps increasing the bar which tells us the limit that solution has used.

Click on the solutions tab and then upload the solution. You can also down the solutions from Microsoft office.com and use it in your application.

Once you upload, you also get an option to activate at the same time. We will activate the solution. You can see it has been activated and now deployed.

Now go ahead and open the site, edit the page and add a web part. Look for the web part with the name ‘SandBoxWebPart’ in custom category.

Add that web part and this is what you get.

In next post, Read Part-3 to see how the resources count in sandbox solution.

Wishing you all a very happy new year

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:52:00 +0000

Hello SharePointKings reader,

Wish you all a very happy new year and prosperous year ahead. Thank you all for being such a wonderful readers. We appreciate your reading and participating in polling. We value your feedback. We will continue to grow and expand our value of sharing the knowledge at its best.

Thank you once again. Keep visiting, sharing and reading SharePointKings.

Sandbox Solutions in SharePoint 2010 – Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:07:00 +0000

Before starting what sandbox solution is, first let us understand what solution mean? If you have worked with MOSS 2007 version then you must be aware of solutions. Solutions can be deployed over a farm. With 2010 version solution can also be deployed in sandbox. Solution may contain web parts, images, pages, event handlers, lists etc.

Sandbox solution is a new concept introduced in SharePoint 2010. Advantage of sandbox solution is this solution actually executes in a restricted zone. It cannot access everything in object model. It cannot access certain resources from SharePoint object model.

This is the advantage because it cannot affect the farm environment. If something goes wrong in the sandbox solution then entire farm does not get affected.

Sandbox solution is always given certain number of resource allocation space and that is monitored by farm administrator. If farm administrator wants, then it can be disabled or even it can also be promoted to be a farm solution as an upgrade.

Other advantage of sandbox solution is it can free farm administrator for deployment stand point. Site collection administrator can deploy and activate the sandbox solution. If the sandbox solution does not contain any assembly, then even a user with full control over a top level site of site collection can also deploy the solution.

Sandbox solution runs in a separate process and that is the reason if something goes wrong in sandbox solution then it does not impact farm. It does not run in w3wc process but runs under SPUCWorkerProcess.

For the hosted SharePoint environment, this can be one of the best ways to deploy and maintain the solutions and sites.

There are many limitations in terms of accessing resources while you program against sandbox solutions in SharePoint. I am listing down some of them. You cannot:

1) System.IO, ADO.Net

2) Write to disk files

3) Oher site collection content

4) SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges

5) Change threading model

6) Create visual web part

7) Access programmatic workflow

8) Timer Job

9) Web Application scoped features

Here are certain items that you can do in sandbox solution environment

1) Web Parts (not visual)

2) Event receivers

3) Feature receivers

4) Custom SharePoint Designer Workflow Activity

There are certain steps that farm administrator has to perform before setting up sandbox solution environment if entire set up is farm architecture. Farm administrator starts the sandbox service in each server in farm, configures the best load balancing service for sandbox solutions on each server and then set the resource quotas.

Read Part-2 for further reading.

The result is out

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:06:00 +0000

Hi

Finally the result is out. It seems people think that MS has to work harder when Google launches its OS.

Using the Dialog framework in SharePoint 2010 – Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:34:00 +0000

If you have not gone through Part-1 to Part-4 of this series, I would recommend you reading them first and then continue reading from here on.

In this post, we are going to see how we can pass parameters to model dialog window from a parent page.

We are going to take the same example which we had taken in previous posts.

Add a query string to a url parameter to the function.

function OpenModalDialog() {

var sitename = 'SharePointkings';

var options = {

url: '/{site url}/_layouts/SharePointActivities/CustomDialog.aspx?sitename=' + sitename,

tite: 'Open a custom dialog',

allowMaximize: false,

showClose: true,

width: 750,

height: 550,

args:parameters,

dialogReturnValueCallback: FunctionToCall

};

SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);

}

If you would like to get an intellisence of Visual studio for SP.UI and SP.UI.Debug javascript file, then add a reference like this

/// <reference path="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\SP.UI.Dialog.debug.js" />

/// <reference path="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\SP.UI.Dialog.js" />

</script>

And then when you type, you get the Intelisence.

And on the receiving model dialog page write down the following JavaScript functions in your model dialog page.

/// <reference path="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\SP.UI.Dialog.debug.js" />

/// <reference path="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\SP.UI.Dialog.js" />

if (typeof (_spBodyOnLoadCalled) == 'undefined' || _spBodyOnLoadCalled) {

window.setTimeout(AlertParametersPassedFromParent, 0);

}

else {

_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push("AlertParametersPassedFromParent");

}

function getQuerystring(key, default_) {

if (default_ == null) default_ = "";

key = key.replace(/[\[]/, "\\\[").replace(/[\]]/, "\\\]");

var regex = new RegExp("[\\?&]" + key + "=([^&#]*)");

var qs = regex.exec(window.location.href);

if (qs == null)

return default_;

else

return qs[1];

}

function AlertParametersPassedFromParent() {

var sitename = getQuerystring('sitename');

alert(sitename);

}

</script>

When the page loads, we push the function AlertParametersPassedFromParent to execute and called a function called getQueryString which is actually logic to retrieve query string which is passed from the parent page. There is no ready method in JavaScript like server side methods. So we have to use our own method to get that.

And we have then just prompted the parameter value with alert to see if it has passed properly.

Here is what we get as an end result.

I hope you have enjoyed the entire series of model dialog framework. We will try and add some new content if we find anything interesting about model dialog more. Of course we encourage and appreciate our readers to share their experiences so that we all SharePoint working community get benefited from it.

Using the Dialog framework in SharePoint 2010 – Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:43:00 +0000

If you have not gone through Part-1 to Part-3 of this series, I would recommend you reading them first and then continue reading from here on.

In this post, we are going to see how we can pass parameters to a parent page from where we have opened up the model dialog.

We take the same example that we have in our previous post. I am not going to rewrite the entire code and pages. You can have a look at previous posts to gain the insight of it.

Open your aspx page and change the button click functionto following. As you can see we have declared an array of result and we have passed name and value pair of parameter values in it and then passed the entire results array as an object to our window.frameElement.commitpopup method.

function OkButtonClicked() {

var results = {

message: "Custom message from a custom dialog page",

passedvalue : "yes"

};

window.frameElement.commitPopup(results);

}

</script>

So when the page is closed, we can now retrieve these parameters in the parent page. We can do so in following way.

Change the function on parent page code to this.

function FunctionToCall(dialogResult, returnValue) {

if (dialogResult == SP.UI.DialogResult.OK) {

SP.UI.Notify.addNotification('OK was clicked' + ' \n Message : ' + returnValue.message.toString() + '\n passed value : ' + returnValue.passedvalue);

}

if (dialogResult == SP.UI.DialogResult.cancel)

SP.UI.Notify.addNotification('Cancel was clicked!');

}

What we are doing here is we get the returnvalue as results and can access the parameters as a property.

And when you build and deploy the solution and check, you get the result like this.

Rear Part-5 for further reading.

Using the Dialog framework in SharePoint 2010 – Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:56:00 +0000

If you have not gone through Part-1 and Part-2 of this series, I would recommend you reading them first and then continue reading from here on.

In this post, we are going to create our own page and then open the page with dialog framework and then handle Ok and Cancel event to that just like how we saw in previous post with library upload page.

Open your own project in Visual studio 2010. If you have not created a project, create an empty SharePoint project and add new item an application page. Give it a name like CustomPage.aspx. Visual studio will automatically map the page to layout folder.

All the dialog pages that open in SharePoint 2010 inherits from dialog.master file which is in TEMPLATE/LAYOUTS folder. So we also need to modify our markup to inherit the page from dialog.master.

We can remove the dynamicmasterpage file attribute from the page tag. We will see about this attribute in some future post. As of now, we simply remove it.

Now because we have changed the master page URL and we are referring to a different master page, all the content place holders which are on the page may not be there in the master page that we are now referring.

So we need to make the change in the content place holders as well.

Remove all these content tags.

When you are not sure, you always should check the master page content place holder IDs and the content place holder IDs present in content page. If there is any misplaced place holder, then you will not be able to work on the page. The page will not be rendered.

Add following content place holders to the page.

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderDialogHeaderPageTitle" runat="server">Custom Dialog Box</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead" runat="server">

<SharePoint:CssRegistration ID="CR1" runat="server" Name="ows.css" />

<SharePoint:ScriptLink ID="SL1" Language="javascript" Name="core.js" runat="server" />

<SharePoint:FormDigest ID="FormDigest1" runat="server" />

</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content3" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderDialogImage" runat="server">

</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content5" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderDialogBodyHeaderSection" runat="server">

</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content4" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderDialogDescription" runat="server">

<tbody>

<tr>

<td>Description Goes here</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>

</div>

</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content8" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderHelpLink" runat="server">

</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content6" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderDialogBodyMainSection" runat="server">

You can create the entire HTML here to work on a page. Table layouts, controls etc.

</asp:Content>

Use the same OpenModelDialog method in your web part or any button on your custom page to open this layouts page.

function OpenModalBing()

{

var options = {

url: '/sites/SP2010/_layouts/SharePointActivities/CustomDialog.aspx',

tite: 'Open a custom dialog',

allowMaximize: false,

showClose: true,

width: 750,

height: 550,

dialogReturnValueCallback: FunctionToCall

};

SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);

}

function FunctionToCall(dialogResult, returnValue) {

if (dialogResult == SP.UI.DialogResult.OK) {

SP.UI.Notify.addNotification('OK was clicked');

}

if (dialogResult == SP.UI.DialogResult.cancel)

SP.UI.Notify.addNotification('Cancel was clicked!');

}

And this is what you get. You can see the default buttons OK and Cancel been added to the page. We thought have not hooked up any event to that.

Now because we have inherited our custom page from dialog master page hence we got the ok and cancel button on a page. We need to write a custom code to the ok and cancel button. So we need to hook up our code to ok button.

So let’s add some code to it. Open the cs file of our custom page and write down the following code to it.

public partial class CustomDialog : LayoutsPageBase

{

protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) {

if (Master is DialogMaster)

{

DialogMaster dialogMasterPage = Master as DialogMaster;

dialogMasterPage.OkButton.Attributes.Add("onclick", "return OkButtonClicked();");

}

base.OnLoad(e);

}

Now we need to add this script to a aspx page. So open up aspx page and add the function script.

function OkButtonClicked() {

window.frameElement.commitPopup();

}

</script>

Now build and deploy the solution and see this in action.

Click cancel, the message appears and click ok, the message appears after clicking on cancel or ok. Window.frameelement.commitpopup closed the model dialog and passes the dialog option value based on ok or cancel button clicked.

Read further in Part-4 of this series.

Using the Dialog framework in SharePoint 2010 – Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:20:00 +0000

If you have not gone through Part-1 of this series, I would recommend you reading part-1 and then continue reading from here on.

In this post, we are going to see how to open built in SharePoint list page and react to Ok or Cancel button clicked on a page.

Let us enhance the example that we saw in previous post. We will add some more lines to code and this time we will bind a function that will execute after we close the window from clicking ok or cancel button.

So let’s modify the code.

function OpenModalBing()

{

var options = {

url: '/{your site}/_layouts/Upload.aspx?List={1F68B750-98D7-4523-8C3C-F662E1E2386F}&RootFolder=',

tite: 'Add new document',

allowMaximize: false,

showClose: true,

width: 750,

height: 550,

dialogReturnValueCallback: FunctionToCall

};

SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);

}

function FunctionToCall(dialogResult, returnValue)

{

if(dialogResult == SP.UI.DialogResult.OK)

{

SP.UI.Notify.addNotification('OK was clicked');

}

if(dialogResult == SP.UI.DialogResult.cancel)

SP.UI.Notify.addNotification('Cancel was clicked!');

}

</script>

What we are doing here is we are opening a upload window page in model dialog and then based on a user action we display a message. If user uploads a document and click on Save or ok then dialog returns the OK status and if user clicks on cancel then it returns the cancel status that we check in the JavaScript function.

dialogReturnValueCallback is the function that executes after the model dialog closes. When declaring that function we need to define two parameters. One is the result and the other is return value.

Here in this example, we are not using the return value but checking the default button clicks.

Here is what you can see in action. When cancel clicked and when OK clicked.

In next post, we will create our own page, will deploy the page and then opens that page via dialog framework and handle Ok and Cancel button click event on our own.

Read Part-3 of this series to explore more.

The result is out

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:30:00 +0000

The result is out

It seems that we have more XBox lovers than Play Station.

Using the Dialog framework in SharePoint 2010 – Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:43:00 +0000

We are going to cover a new topic and a new series called dialog framework that has been introduced in SharePoint 2010 environment.

We all are aware about the dialogs if we have worked in web technologies. A model window that pops up and you can perform some operation without navigating to other page and then come back to the previous page.

If you would like to have a quick look at this series and would like to understand it as an overview, you can have a look at Opening any page as model dialog post.

Model dialog allows you to perform an operation and then close the window after performing an operation and you are back on the same page.

Most of the functionality is handled by two basic classes. SP.UI.Dialog and SP.UI.ModelDialog.

Classic example of model dialog is when you create, edit entries from list items, you get a dialog window to perform that. These pages open as a part of dialog.

We will deep dive into this dialog framework. In this post, I am going to cover a simple scenario of opening a window as a model dialog. You can have this enabled in your custom action click event, it can be a part of button click, and it can be a part of ribbon button.

Here is a very simple code written to open Bing search in model window from button click. We have defined a JavaScript that executes when we click on the button.

I’ve defined in a web part, one input type button and invoking a JavaScript function to open a model dialog.

function OpenModalBing()

{

var options = SP.UI.$create_DialogOptions();

options.url = "http://www.bing.com";

options.width = 750;

options.height = 550;

SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);

}

</script>

And this is what you get out of this code.

You can pass on different parameters in an option. So that when a window opens, it has some properties defined in it. just like how we do with window.open javascript function.

Here I have made some change to an existing code and look at the change in the behavior of how window open when button is clicked.

Now the maximize button does not appear as we have set it in JavaScript.

If you observe, the window opens in a center. If you would like to open a window at some other position, then you can use x and y properties and set it to options.

There is also another way you can create dialog. Observe the difference between two methods. Earlier we have created a window and then we set the properties on the window object with = sign. This is the other way around. Feel free to use the best suited way for you.

function OpenModalBing()

{

var options = {

url: 'http://www.bing.com',

tite: 'Bing Search',

allowMaximize: false,

showClose: true,

width: 750,

height: 550,

};

SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);

}

</script>

Both give you the same result. Keep reading Part-2 of the series to know more about model dialog.

Cannot find save site as a template under site actions

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:24:00 +0000

I recently ran into a need of saving site as a template and then reuse it. However even though being site collection administrator, I could not find save site as a template option under site actions menu.

I was wondering why. Then I did some search and came to know that if your publishing feature was turned on. I went to the site features and turned off the publishing feature for a while.

Came back to the screen of site settings and yes, I could locate save site as a template.

Not sure, what is the logic behind this. However this is the trick that worked. After taking the site template I again turned on the publishing feature as it was necessary for the site.

Open different tabs in document library

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 06:16:00 +0000

Many times we want to open a document library in some or the other tabs default open.

Sometime we want browse tab to open when we click on document library, sometime we want Documents tab and sometimes we might want library tab to open.

To do this we need to set one parameter in the URL and that parameter is InitialTabId. Check out the following parameters set and observe the different tab that opens based on the InitialTabId set.

This is how we can set the different tabs to open by default when set that in URL.

Metadata term store management - Part-5

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:16:00 +0000

If you have not gone through part-1 to part-4 of this series, I would recommend you reading them first and then continue reading from here on.

In this post, we are going to talk about handling term store management programmatically. We will create term set and terms as well as navigate through the group inside term store session.

Before starting programming against term set, we need to take the term store session into a memory to work on it.

Here is a classic simple sample that helps you how to create a term set and add terms to it.

I have written a code in a button click event, in your case it can be at some different place based on your business logic. Different actions are defined in the regions.

protected void btnAddTermStore_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)

{

SPSite currentsite = SPContext.Current.Site;

TaxonomySession session = new TaxonomySession(currentsite);

if (session.TermStores.Count != 0)

{

var termStore = session.TermStores["Managed Metadata Service"];

#region "Creating a group"

Group grpCloud = termStore.CreateGroup("Cloud Computing");

termStore.CommitAll();

#endregion

GroupCollection groupcoll = termStore.Groups;

foreach(Group grp in groupcoll)

{

if(grp.Name =="Sample Group")

{

var termSet = grp.TermSets["Microsoft"];

#region "Creating a term set"

TermSet CTL = grp.CreateTermSet("Client Technologies");

termStore.CommitAll();

#endregion

#region "Adding Terms to an existing term set"

Guid id = new Guid("{9CB722E2-D120-4A85-9740-447E01697CAC}");

int lcid = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.LCID;

termSet.CreateTerm("TFS", lcid, id);

termStore.CommitAll();

#endregion

}

All we have done here is we have taken the reference of taxonomy session of the site and then located term store management.

And this is what we get as a result

Once we have them in our hand, we created group. We then navigated to a group called Sample Group and located Microsoft Term Set. We also created a new term set called Client Technologies. We added new Term called TFS under Microsoft Term Set.

I hope this will give you an idea on basic manipulation of term store management.

Result is out

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 05:56:00 +0000

Hello

Finally the result is out

Metadata term store management - Part-4

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 04:35:00 +0000

If you have not gone through Part-1 to Part-3, I would recommend you reading them first and then continue reading from here.

In addition to categorizing items in SharePoint 2010, we can also allow users to select specific tags for list items that they create.

When we allow users to select tags for specific list items, they become available for sorting and searching which allows organization to look for certain information faster.

Let’s check this out by playing with list items. Go to list settings and create one column. Call it as Keyword

Make sure that if you select allow multiple values, then you will not be able to sort that column in view.

I’ve kept it single selection for term.

You can select the display format as well. Would you like to see entire path of the term or directly the term in Display Format setting. After that we can select the specific term set to define. That means we allow user only to select terms from that term set only and no other terms allowed. I’ve allowed only terms from Microsoft Term set that we’ve defined in earlier post. If you want to create custom term set, you can create there using custom term option.

You can also allow fill in option. Only open term set allows user to submit new terms to a term set. If the term set is closed, then even by setting this option will not allow user to submit the term to a term store.

If you click on the icon, you get a model screen to select term.

And when you want to sort and filter with terms in list view, you get options.

Hope this helps. Read Part-5 for further reading.

Trying to use an SPWeb object that has been closed or disposed and is no longer valid

noreply@blogger.com (SharePoint Kings) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:06:00 +0000

I recently faced this error while i was working on some object model and by looking into the code i realized that i did a little mistake.

This error itself states everything. I used the current site object in the using clause while performing some operation. we should never close the SPContext.Current.Site when we deal with any coding. If we have manually declared any site or web object, then only we have to dispose them.

I made this correction and my code worked well.

I hope this helps others not to repeat the same mistake again.