Sharepoint 2010

TaxonomyWebTaggingControl is not rendering properly (WebTaggingUI.css not added)

2013-10-22T11:56:00.000-04:00

Recently, I faced a small issue with rendering the TaxonomyWebTaggingControl. It works but the display was really weird. I figured that it would be a css not being added properly to the page. I found the respective css file to be added to the page (WebTaggingUI.css). But I was not sure what control needs to be added to include that css file to the page.

After a little bit of research and playing with my master page and page layouts, I found that the CssLink control is responsible for including required css files to the pages. I have added a new CssLink (Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.CssLink) (shown below) control to the master page and everything magically looks to work fine.

CssLink control added to master page:

    <SharePoint:CssLink ID="CssLink1" runat="server" Version="4" />

TaxonomyWebTaggingControl before the css link added:

After adding css link control:

Happy Coding.

Senthil S

Not able to add web parts to any page - page does nothing when clicking "Add Web Parts" is clicked

2013-08-28T14:54:00.001-04:00

I faced a weird issue where I was not able to add any web parts to any page in the site. What weird is that Chrome works fine. It happens only in IE (all versions) and FireFox. On inspecting the bug I got an error when the page tries to get the web parts data back from the server asynchronously (you can view it in the console window/network traffic)

The error looked in FF console window some thing like this:

And the detailed Exception message was some thing like this:

[FormatException: Invalid character in a Base-64 string.]
   System.Convert.FromBase64String(String s) +0
   System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) +98
   System.Web.UI.Util.DeserializeWithAssert(IStateFormatter formatter,

String serializedState) +59
   System.Web.UI.HiddenFieldPageStatePersister.Load() +124

[ViewStateException: Invalid viewstate.

...

...

[HttpException (0x80004005): The state information is invalid for this

page

and might be corrupted.]
   System.Web.UI.ViewStateException.ThrowError(Exception inner, String

persistedState, String errorPageMessage, Boolean macValidationError) +148
   System.Web.UI.HiddenFieldPageStatePersister.Load() +10989814
   System.Web.UI.Page.LoadPageStateFromPersistenceMedium() +11074728
   System.Web.UI.Page.LoadAllState() +46
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsy

ncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +11070247
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPo

int, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +11069786
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest() +91
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) +240
   ASP.LEFTRIGHTWIDEPAGELAYOUT_ASPX__745581150.ProcessRequest(HttpContext

context) +9
   Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.TemplateRedirectionPage.ProcessRequest

(HttpContext context) +175

   System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecu

tionStep.Execute() +599
   System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean

& completedSynchronously)

Did some research for almost a day and it turned out to be an issue that I introduced when fixing an issue with Chrome browser which did not load the SP.js file for all the clients. I inserted the below java script in all the page layouts which triggered twice in IE and FF which caused the issue.

The java script which introduced the bug is

if (typeof (_spBodyOnLoadWrapper) != 'undefined') _spBodyOnLoadWrapper();

the js function _spBodyOnLoadWrapper() got called twice and made the web parts panel to stop working.

I got this above javascript to fix some bugs in Chrome browser from the below site

http://developer.mintrus.com/2012/08/sharepoint-2010-improving-chrome-support/

But I made a mistake of just copying the the code to call just the function regardless of what browser it is. It made my day worse.

Be cautious to not to mess with all the JavaScript function of SharePoint. If you do make sure twice you are doing the right thing. Track any java script errors occur in any page before moving forward.

This I learnt the hard way. I still enjoy coding.

Happy Coding.
Senthil S

Site Navigation does not show the subsites

2013-08-20T10:16:00.000-04:00

Yes. It happened to us where one WFE shows all the sub sites in the "Navigation" options under "Navigation Editing and Sorting" whereas another WFE was showing all the sub sites correctly. Dues to this the navigation menu is different between the servers.

On researching on this issue we did not hit any pages at all but one. We tried what is told in that post as well. Tried to reset the Global Navigation to same as Parent Site and came back to the page to find out nothing shows up still.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/eeffd225-066f-44a1-ac8d-bdae1f7a7406/navigation-settings-out-of-synchow-to-repair

Since we did a recent migration to a new server we thought some clock might have got out of sync in one of our servers and it affected the navigation system and decided to re-deploy the package again.

Re-deploying the whole package must have cleared up any SP cache built up internally which made it to work. Until now we do not have any idea of what has happened or how it got fixed. We are good for now.

Please follow the steps mentioned in the above link if that does not work just do a re-deploy to the server.

Thanks

Senthil S

ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded does not work in SharePoint 2010

2013-08-07T14:19:00.002-04:00

Hoi everyone.

It has been a very long time since I wrote a post about SharePoint. I was working on another small jQuery, KO project. Since it is nearing completion, I am back on track in SharePoint 2010.

We had a bug where all the script calls using ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded doesn't get executed and was throwing exception SCRIPT5009: 'Type' is undefined which I had no idea of. After searching for some time, I came to know that for some reason MicrosoftAjax.js does not get loaded on all pages especially in Chrome browser. I came across this post and it seemed to be working for some time after adding reference to "/_layouts/MicrosoftAjax.js" on the master page.

http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/50995/js-web-worker-and-sp-js-type-is-not-defined

Make sure you add MicrosoftAjax.js reference before any instance of ScriptManager gets loaded in the page. Otherwise you will get a different error saying that Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager is not defined.

There are other solutions as well like the one in the below link. you can give this also a try if it is applicable.

http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/aspnet-ajax/general-discussions/microsoft-jscript-runtime-error-unable-to-get-value-of-the-property-pagerequestmanager-object-is-null-or-undefined.aspx

But, unfortunately then I got a different error on some other java script functions. I got the below error

Sys.ArgumentTypeException: Object of type 'Sys._Application' cannot be converted to type 'Sys._Application

Again did a search and found that it can be rectified by setting the ScriptManager's ScriptMode to "Release".

<asp:ScriptManager id="ScriptManager" runat="server" EnablePageMethods="false" ScriptMode="Release" />

Changing all the ScriptManager references in all the pages fixed the whole issue for now at least.

There are other solution that you can also

Hope this helps someone else or may for me itself sometime later.

Happy coding.

Senthil S

Scrollbars not appearing in IE 7 with SharePoint 2010 sites

2013-04-25T10:20:00.001-04:00

Finally, I had an issue with scrolling in SharePoint 2010 site pages and IE version 7 or lower. The Scroll bar appears for all the browsers but these scroll bars does appear in IE browsers version 7 and lower.

After a long research I found a great blog post talking about the same issue I was having. I implemented the changes and magically it started working for me.

http://kyleschaeffer.com/sharepoint/sharepoint-2010-scrolling/

Thanks
Senthil S

Resize SP Modal Popup (SP.UI.ModalDialog)

2012-11-20T08:53:00.001-05:00

It has been a very long time since I posted a new blog post. I was working temporarily on MVC which is very exciting, interesting and hell lot to learn .....

Now coming to SP 2010, recently I had a requirement to re-size the modal popup dynamically based on the content on the page. As everyone know that we can set the width and height of the modal popup before opening the popup as below.

var options = {
    url: "/_layouts/useregistration.aspx",
    title: 'Login/Register',
    allowMaximize: true,
    showClose: true,
    autoSize: false,
    y: 50,
    width: 400,
    height: 600
};
var currentDialog = SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);

The width and height parameters will be applied when the autoSize option is set to false. But I could not find any methods or options to re-size an already opened up popup using any functions. If the autoSize option is set to true, it re-sizes the window if the page gets posted back.

What happens when some dynamic content gets shown/hidden using css/jQuery? SP does not resize the popup based on this.

So I had to write a java script function to do that. I added the below function to a common JS file that is references in every page of my application to make use of it. Below is the function to re-size the popup which was opened up already.

this.Utility.resizeSPPopupWindow = function (width, height) {
    $(window.frameElement).parents('.ms-dlgContent').width(width);
    $(window.frameElement).parents('.ms-dlgContent').find('.ms-dlgBorder, .ms-dlgTitle').width(width);
    $(window.frameElement).width(width);

    try {
        var _intHeight = parseInt(height);
        height = _intHeight + 34; //34 is added to the height,the title bar's height adds up
    }
    catch (ex) {
    }

    $(window.frameElement).parents('.ms-dlgContent').height(height);
    $(window.frameElement).parents('.ms-dlgContent').find('.ms-dlgBorder').height(height);
    $(window.frameElement).height(height);
}

Of course it needs jQuery to work, it is one-way that I know of re-sizing already opened up modal popup.

If anyone out there knows any other way to achieve the same, I would love to know about it. Hope this helps some one.

UPDATE: If the popup modal is a new url, both the parent and the modal popup page should be from the same domain and should be using the same protocol (http or https).

Happy Coding !!!
Senthil S

Copying additional dlls (assemblies) to GAC with SharePoint project deployment

2012-05-31T15:35:00.003-04:00

Frequently, we reference some external assemblies in any project event SharePoint projects as well. The need in the SharePoint project is that we may need to copy those dependent assemblies to GAC with the SharePoint project assembly.

We do not want to manually copy all the dependent assemblies to GAC by ourselves. How to copy the assemblies to the GAC with the deployment itself?

The trick is to add the reference in thePackage.package file to tell the SharePoint to copy the assemblies also to the GAC. Just edit the Package.package file in a notepad or any xml editor and add the reference just like below.

Things to Note:

All the assemblies to be copied to GAC needs to be signed with a strong key.
The "sourcepath" value is the relative path of the location of the referenced assembly
"SafeControl" entry may be needed based on how the control is being used. (mostly needed to be used as any UI control)

Manage SPListItem publishing programatically

2012-05-29T12:07:00.001-04:00

Recently, I had to work on converting a regular SPList to have similar to a publishing feature. Like, have an item edited, review it and then publish the page for public.

I made the below modifications to the list settings to enable versioning of list items.
Go to the List Setting page and select "Versioning Settings" and set the options to the same as below.

This enables the list items in the list to be version controlled. The author can save a version of the list item, review it and publish it at any point of time or revert to its previously published version.

I wanted to do it programatically using a layouts page (application page) since we are using the application pages as the default display form of the particular content type.

For saving a new SPListItem, the code should look similar to this. This will save the list item content and assign the status to "Pending".

var item = SPContext.Current.ListItemitem["Title"] = SPHttpUtility.ConvertSimpleHtmlToText(this.txtTitle.Text, 255);
//this will set the status of the current item to "Pending"
item.Update();

To know how to get the CurrentListItem in an app page, please see my other post here

To publish the list item, the code would look like this.

if (SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation != null)
{
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Status = SPModerationStatusType.Approved;
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Comment = String.Format("Published on {0} by {1}",  
                                                   DateTime.Now.ToString(), SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.Email);
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.Update();

    //Added to refresh the page content and hide the publishing controls

    Response.Redirect(SPContext.Current.ListItem.Url);
}

To revert a saved list item to it's previously published version, the code would look like below:

if (SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation != null && SPContext.Current.ListItem.Level != SPFileLevel.Published)
{
    //Getting the last published version of the current item

    var lastPublishedVersionInfo = SPContext.Current.ListItem.Versions.Cast<SPListItemVersion>()
                                                                            .Where(v => v.Level == SPFileLevel.Published)
                                                                            .OrderByDescending(l => l.Created).Take(1);
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.Versions.RestoreByID(lastPublishedVersionInfo.First().VersionId);
 
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Status = SPModerationStatusType.Approved;
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.ModerationInformation.Comment = String.Format("Reverted on {0} by {1}", 
                                                               DateTime.Now.ToString(), SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.Email);
    SPContext.Current.ListItem.Update();
 
    Response.Redirect(BlogManager.GetBlogPostUrl(SPContext.Current.Web, SPContext.Current.List.ID, SPContext.Current.ListItem.ID));
}

Hope this helps some one or even myself somewhere in the future.

Thanks
Senthil S

Filtering list items by user id using CAML in SPSiteDataQuery

2012-05-08T10:45:00.000-04:00

I had some struggle finding out how to filter the list items by a particular user (SharePoint user). I am sure that this can be done but the filter does not seem to work for me if it is using the field value as "Integer". It was working very fine if the filter is applied for current logged in user as below:

<Query>
  <Where>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="Author" />
      <Value Type="Integer">
        <UserID Type="Integer" />
      </Value>
    </Eq>
  </Where>
</Query>

Of course, this only works if the filtering is applied for the currently logged in user. so, what does need to happen when the query needs to filter based on another user?

I tried the above CAML by replacing the <UserID Type="Integer" /> with the particular user's id value (SPUser.ID). This does not seem to work. Always it returns no items.

<Query>
  <Where>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="Author" />
      <Value Type="Integer">
        75
      </Value>
    </Eq>
  </Where>
</Query>

It turns out to be an attribute "LookupId" needs to be added to the <FieldRef> element as below.

<Query>
  <Where>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="Author" LookupId="True"/>
      <Value Type="Integer">
        75
      </Value>
    </Eq>
  </Where>
</Query>

Happy Coding.
Senthil S

Get items from multiple webs using SPSiteDataQuery

2012-05-01T10:37:00.000-04:00

I know there is no easy way to get list items from multiple webs using SPSiteDataQuery. But I had to work on a similar situation for one of my projects. Looking deep into the list items attributes I came to know that there is a possibility to do the filtering based on the web itself (given some other small conditions)

Properties "ServerUrl" (server Relative Url) and "EncodedAbsUrl" (Encoded Absolute Url) cannot be used since the field values are of type "Computed" and SPSiteDataQuery does not filter based on "Computed" field values (there are some workarounds for some computed fields as well)

So I started looking into "FileRef" (URL Path) and "FileDirRef" (Path) for filtering. It seems to be working for me.

For a particular SPFile/SPListItem the above field values would give the exact location of the item.the values would look similar like below:

Publishing Content Types:

FileDirRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Pages
FileRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Pages/default.aspx

Non-Publishing Content Types: (normal SPListItems)

FileDirRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Lists/{ListRootFolderUrl}
FileRef: SubSite1/SubSite12/Lists/{ListRootFolderUrl}/{ItemName}

Using the above field values and with proper CAML filter xml, items can be filtered from multiple webs.

In my case I was querying against non-publishing content types. So I was applying ContentTypeId filter primarily to filter based on content type. Above that, I was applying filters for "FileRef" values to get the items from multiple webs.

Sample CAML Query would look like this:
(The first one with value "Lists" is to filter the items in the root web)

In addition to the above filters, I was also using the "ContentTypeId" filter to get list items of particular type.

NOTE: If you are using just "SubSite1/SubSite12" to filter on the items, it would include the sub webs as well. Include the "/Lists" or "/Pages" at the end of web relative url to restrict to a single site.

If you have any questions, please add a comment.

Thanks
Senthil S

Error while adding Site columns (fields) to list content types

2012-04-26T13:16:00.007-04:00

Recently, I had a situation where I need to add site columns (available in root web) to a content type reference in a particular list under a particular web.

I wrote the code below

var field = web.Site.RootWeb.AvailableFields[new Guid("<<FieldID>>")];
foreach (SPContentType cType in web.Lists["ListName"].ContentTypes)
{
    cType.Fields.Add(field);
    cType.Update();
}

but it was not working as expected and throwing the below exception

"This functionality is unavailable for field collections not associated with a list."

After some research, I came to know that the field needs to be added as a SPFieldLink and not as SPField itself since the field already exists in the root web. The below modified code is working fine for me.

var field = web.Site.RootWeb.AvailableFields[new Guid("<<FieldID>>")];
foreach (SPContentType cType in web.Lists["ListName"].ContentTypes)
{
    SPFieldLink fieldLink = new SPFieldLink(field);
    cType.FieldLinks.Add(fieldLink);
    cType.Update();

Hopefully this helps some one or may be myself in the future when I struggle with the same issue.

Thanks

Senthil S

Java script error when trying to change Page Layout

2012-04-02T13:58:00.000-04:00

Recently, I faced a weird issue with SharePoint publishing pages and changing the layout of the page. I was able to add a new publishing page with different layouts in a pages library. But when I try to change the page layout of an existing page, I got a java script error in cui.debug.js. Just like the one below, I was not even be able to get the drop down with different page layouts to change

To fix this issue I had to debug the java script (CUI.debug.js) file in IE 8 or greater using the Developer tools. Once the exception occurred in the java script, traced the function calls using the "Call Stack" option and found a variable "$v_0.PopulationXML" and inspected the XML in VS and found the malformed XML.

After some research, I came to know that there was a orphaned page layout in the "Master Pages and Page Layouts" gallery. I was testing something else with page layout and content type relationships and left it there. But I removed the content type associated with the page layout.

After I deleted the particular page layout from the gallery, everything started to work fine.

Thanks

Senthil S

Refreshing user roles using custom role provider without logging out

2012-03-12T13:55:00.000-04:00

Recently, I had a situation where the user's roles needed to refresh to allow the user to gain access into some site's resources. We were using a custom role provider and custom membership provider to manage our users. We were able to assign roles to user when they click on a button control. But, the problem we faced with this is that the user has to log out and log back in to get the role he/she just got assigned. Obviously, no one liked it and it should be seamless to the end user.

After a long research it turns out to be that the SP 2010 somehow caches or stores the user's roles in memory until the user logs off or the session ends. so I was searching for a way to force SharePoint to refresh the role assignments for the current user. I came across this great post

Force FBA Token Refresh

You do need to have your own global.asax file to the webroot (where your web.config lives for the front-end servers).

After implementing the above method everything worked perfectly. I found that this particular event handler code is getting called for every web request to the server. so if you are planning on doing any costly operation, do it with caution.

Thanks
Senthil S

Custom FormUrl s (Display, Edit & New) does not work for a custom content type

2012-01-19T08:50:00.000-05:00

I was developing a custom list template with a custom content type. I had to implement our own custom forms for our custom content type (MyContentType). You can get how to add custom FormUrls for a content type from this MSDN documentation (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa544142.aspx).

I did change the <FormUrls> in the custom content type definition as below. Even after I tried deploying quite a few times, it did not seems to take effect.

I was totally confused. After some struggle, I changed the inheriting content type to "Item" (0x0100) instead of "Post" (0x0110) content type, then the custom forms took the effect.

So, somehow it seems to me that some OOTB content types have display forms defined and it is not allowed to be overridden by our custom forms urls.

Happy coding
Senthil S

SPSiteDataQuery not returning all results when using ContentType filter

2012-01-18T10:48:00.000-05:00

Recently, I was working on a case where all the SPListItems using a specific content type needs to be listed from the whole site collection. As you all know, SPSiteDataQuery is the way to go.

As I was getting to the end I noticed it was not returning all the items from the whole site collection. Instead it is returning only a few items, more like list items only from one particular list (weird!!! right) and no errors as well. If the same web part is added in some specific inner webs and tried to get all teh items from current web and all the sub webs the query works perfectly well. I was totally confused ...

After some researches, I came across this thread (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepoint2010programming/thread/1294669a-546d-44f1-8b7d-6972bc11bc34) where it said the SPSiteDataQuery has some issues with filtering with "Computed" fields such as "ContentType" field. So I changed the filter from "ContentType" to "ContentTypeID" which f type "ContentTypeId" which seems to be working perfectly fine.

ContentType Filter:

<Where>
    <Eq>
        <FieldRef Name="ContentType" />
        <Value Type="Computed">My Content Type</Value>
    </Eq>
</Where>

ConteTypeId Filter:

<Where>
    <BeginsWith>
        <FieldRef Name="ContentTypeId" />
        <Value Type="ContentTypeId">My Content Type</Value>
    </BeginsWith>
</Where>

Above filter goes for the ".Query" attribute of the SPSiteDataQuery to filter by ContentType name and ContentTypeID respectively.

Hope this helps someone facing the same issue.

Thanks
Senthil S

Adding Metadata fields as View fields in Schema.xml does not capture values

2012-01-09T15:09:00.000-05:00

Recently, I worked on creating a custom list definition from a custom content type. That was not a big deal with the awesome VS 2010. BUT, I faced an issue with one field (Enterprise Keywords) with capturing data selected in it.

I was using custom forms for the content type's Display, Edit and Delete forms. First I was thinking that I was doing something wrong with my custom forms. I changed the forms to default OOTB default list forms for that content type and deployed. But, even with the default forms also it was failing.

Then i found out if I remove the "Enterprise Keywords" column from the list fields (not the content type fields) and re-add the same, it was working fine.

After a long research, I found this blog (http://www.sharepointconfig.com/2011/03/the-complete-guide-to-provisioning-sharepoint-2010-managed-metadata-fields) which explained me about the list event receivers get added for capturing the Taxonomy Lookup fields.

After adding the above mentioned Item Event receivers based on the list template everything seemed to be working fine. Use the below elements.xml to add the above mentioned item event receivers.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <Receivers ListTemplateId="10002">
    <Receiver>
      <Name>TaxonomyItemSynchronousAddedEventReceiver</Name>
      <Type>ItemAdding</Type>
      <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy, Version=14.0.0.0,

 Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
      <Class>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.TaxonomyItemEventReceiver</Class>
      <SequenceNumber>10000</SequenceNumber>
    </Receiver>
    <Receiver>
      <Name>TaxonomyItemUpdatingEventReceiver</Name>
      <Type>ItemUpdating</Type>
      <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy, Version=14.0.0.0,

Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
      <Class>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.TaxonomyItemEventReceiver</Class>
      <SequenceNumber>10000</SequenceNumber>
    </Receiver>
  </Receivers>
</Elements>

Just make sure the "ListTemplateId" matches with the "Type" attribute defined in the List Template definition .

Happy coding.
Senthil S

Using master page and layouts page in custom list view

2012-01-04T11:26:00.000-05:00

I was struggling for couple of days now on how to make use of any master page in a layouts page which is used for a view of a custom list created using custom list schema.xml.

How to create a custom list definition is explained here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728096.aspx)

I was able to create a custom list definition and added a custom list view page also in the schema.xml file itself. Here is how to add a custom list view using a layouts page (application page)

After adding a custom list schema, find the node "<Views>" and add a new "<View>" tag. You can just copy and paste the already existing "<View>" tag which has the BaseViewID="1" (this is the one which constitutes for the web page view. It is important that you should be copying the whole "<View>" node with all the internal elements like below.

To make use of the layouts page for the view, just change the "SetupPath" parameter to point to the corresponding layouts page without the "/" in front of the "layouts" folder (i.e., should be starting as "layouts/setup/settings.aspx") and change "Url" parameter to the name you want to see in the URL.

When I changed the "MasterPageFile" parameter to an application master page like below,

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"

                           MasterPageFile="~/_layouts/AppMasterPages/Simple.master" %>

the custom view gave me the below error

"The referenced file '/_layouts/AppMasterPages/Simple.master' is not allowed on this page"

If the "MasterPageFile" is change to "~masterurl/default.master", everything works well. If you are using a custom master page for the site you may make use of that by setting the "MasterPageFile" to "~masterurl/custom.master".

Happy coding.
Senthil S

Get SPContext.Current.ListItem in SharePoint layouts page

2011-10-18T09:33:00.000-04:00

I was developing a layouts page to view a list item for anonymous users with custom styles. So I was doing a little research on how to get the reference to the current list item (SPContext.Current.ListItem) so that the field values can be easily bound using SharePoint web controls itself.

It turns out to be, if a layouts page is being referenced relative to a proper web, and the List id and Item id are passed in as parameters, then I can get the SPContext.Current.ListItem referencing to the particular item being viewed and I can make use of the SharePoint Web Controls to display the field values.

http://localweb/{web url}/_layouts/ViewItem.aspx?List={list guid}&ID={itemid}

Example: http://localweb/home/_layouts/ViewItem.aspx?List={E2E0527C-EFB1-42D4-8FFE-20A6AC364845}&ID=1

In the ViewItem.aspx, I can make use of SharePoint web controls in the layouts page to display the field values as:

<SharePoint:FieldValue FieldName="Title" runat="server" />

Hope this helps some one else.

Thanks
Happy Coding
Senthil S

Custom Alerts in Sharepoint 2010

2011-10-17T14:41:00.000-04:00

Alerts are automated emails generated by Sharepoint when something changes (a list item for example) and if any user has created an alert for that particular change in the list item.

In some scenarios, we may want to customize the alert email generated by the Sharepoint 2010. This can be done in two ways

1. Altering the OOTB alert template xml to use whatever the text you would like to have in the alert email
2. Adding a custom alert handler in the dll deployed to GAC and alter the alert template xml to make use of that

I personally prefer the second method since we (programmers) have more control over the email subject and body and I find it little complex to achieve my particular situation (altering the default url to link the edited/changed item).

Option 1:
To briefly describe the first option, the OOTB alert template files need to be modified. The template file can be found under {root}\TEMPLATE\XML\alerttemplate.xml. In this file you can find AlertTemplate for different list types. For my purpose I had to modify for the discussion lists (Name="SPAlertTemplateType.DiscussionBoard). Inside an AlertTemplate XML item, you will find two elements "Digest" and "Immediate" one for each type of alert. To retrieve additional fields when generating the alert message, modify "ImmediateNotificationExcludedFields" and "DigestNotificationExcludedFields" respectively and make use of those fields in the xml itself.

With that said, I have done only a basic research on the above method.

Option 2:
To have the modification done using the Second option, the above template file needs to be modified to tell the SharePoint to use a custom handler when generating alert emails.

Please COPY the original alerttemplate.xml file and work on the copy. DO NOT CHANGE THE ORIGINAL.
In the file add the reference to the custom handler that you created and deployed to GAC (I'll explain how to create the alert handler later)

Find the "Properties" node under the AlertTemplateType and add the reference like this

After updating, a powershell script needs to be run to update SharePoint to make use of the handler. Like this below.

After doing the update statement, the SharePoint services need to be restarted. To restart them, you can use the below PowerShell script

Thats it. After this the custom handler must be called whenever an aler email is generated based on all discussion boards

Custom Handler Creation:

Now. How to create the custom alert handler for SharePoint 2010. Below is a sample code for a simple alert handler

Hope this helps some one else.

Thanks

Senthil S

Provisioning custom list when creating a site through onet.xml

2011-10-14T13:21:00.001-04:00

Recently, I had a situation where I need to provision a custom list which has the list template defined in the project itself. We know how to provision an OOTB list using onet.xml as explained in this msdn document

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms474369.aspx

But, I was facing an error when I was trying to provision a custom list using a custom list definition. I added a new list definition like below.

In the onet.xml, I had to add the below statement to provision a list instance based on the above list template.

The FeatureId is the feature id attribute of the feature in which the ListTemplate is added.

Hope this helps someone else too.

Thanks

Senthil S

Adding a lookup field to a list programatically

2011-09-27T08:28:00.002-04:00

Alright, I had a requirement where a lookup field needs to be added to list referencing another list's ID column. I managed to do this using the below code. You can understand without explaining all the inner details, I think.

//Adding a lookup column to link the item to the related item

var list = web.Lists["LookupListName"];

thisList.Fields.AddLookup("LookupFieldName", list.ID , web.ID, true);
SPFieldLookup lookupField = reportThisList.Fields.GetField("LookupFieldName")

                                 as SPFieldLookup;
lookupField.LookupField = "ID";
//Adding indexing to enable "CACADE" delete of this list items
lookupField.Indexed = true;
//CASCADE - deletes all the related items in this list when an item is deleted.
lookupField.RelationshipDeleteBehavior = SPRelationshipDeleteBehavior.Cascade;
lookupField.Update(true);

After doing this above code, you will see a new column in the list (thisList). Here is a preview

If an item is deleted from the related list("LookupListName"), all the related items in thisList would get deleted automatically.

I know this might not give you a clear explanation. If you need more details, just add a comment, I will try to explain it in more detail.

Thanks
Senthil S

Adding list event receivers programatically

2011-09-27T08:07:00.000-04:00

Recently, I was in a situation where event receivers needs to be attached to a SPList. Here is how it can be added dynamically using the api.

Like the above code, we can add the event receivers for any list event.

I have not tried the same for any other event receivers, but I am guessing it should be working the same way.

Thanks
Senthil S

Check whether alerts are turned on for a Web Application

2011-09-10T11:34:00.000-04:00

Even, if a user has an alert created for a list or list item or any other kind of alert, the alerts need to be turned on for the particular web application from the Central Admin.

How do we check whether it is turned on or not?

Go to Central Admin -> Application Management -> Manage Web Applications
Select the Web Application and select General Settings option from the tool bar
Make sure "Alerts on this server are "Tuned On"

Hope this helps someone

Senthil

Allowing anonymous users access to SharePoint user's profile pictures

2011-08-25T11:11:00.000-04:00

I was developing discussion groups using web parts where I needed to show the discussion posting authors' profile images with the posting detail.

First problem I faced was, how to get the profile image url of the user. I was able to find the details about the User Information List living in the RootSite of the site collection. I was able to get the related user info by getting the list item as below and get the "Picture" property value
and properly formatting it.

userPictureUrl = SPContext.Current.Site.RootWeb.SiteUserInfoList.GetItemById(itemCreator.ID)["Picture"].ToString();

SPFieldUrlValue userProfileImage = new SPFieldUrlValue(userPictureUrl);

authorProfileImageUrl = (new Uri(userProfileImage.Url)).AbsolutePath;

But, then I faced the next issue of viewing user's profile image as an anonymous user. To achieve that I had to go through the below process of granting anonymous users access to List and libraries in the mys site site collection and granting "View Items" access to user profile pictures library.

STEP 1:
Go to http://<<MysiteSitecollection web url>>/_layouts/settings.aspx
Go to "Site Permissions" and click Anonymous Access from the ribbon
Select "Lists and libraries" and click "OK".

STEP 2:
Go to View All Site Content -> User Photos -> Settings (Picture Library Settings)
Go to "Permissions for this picture library"
Click "Stop Inheriting Permissions"
Click "Anonymous Access" from the ribbon
Check off "View Items" and click "OK"

After performing the above steps anonymous users were able to get access to profile pictures of other users.

Senthil S

Security validation exception when updating list items

2011-08-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

Recently, I faced an exception when trying to update an existing list item programatically. When trying to update the list item i.e., when trying to do SPListItem.Update(), I was getting the below exception message

              "Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The security validation for this page is invalid. Click Back in your Web browser, refresh the page, and try your operation again."

After some time, I found that I need to set the "AllowUnsafeUpdates" property of the parent web of the list item to true before doing an update.

               targetWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
   listItem["Title"] = newTitle;
               listItem.Update();
               targetWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;

This should work if the current user has proper privileges, otherwise the above code needs to be ran under an impersonated context.

Probably, the same will happen when creating, deleting a list item too. Happy coding ...

Senthil