Office DevCon Session Downloads

As promised, you can download my Office DevCon session slides and project below:

SharePoint WCM – Breaking the Ice – Content Driven User Controls

In our previous post, we saw how to build user controls and reference the same from our Home Page layout. In this post lets see how we can retrieve the Latest News from a SharePoint List rather than static HTML code.

Latest News

Jet30 publishes their latest news daily and wishes to show them in the Home Page. The Latest News section in our home page reflected this daily news section.

Jet30 wants their content authors to manage the daily news and hence they choose to create a new Announcements List called LatestNews where they can manage (add/edit/delete) the daily news. The Latest News section should only display the news of that day.

As you can see in the above screenshot, we have 2 items which expires today (October 6th) and the other which has expired (October 5th).

Injecting the SharePoint Logic into our user control

We now know our exact job – Query the LatestNews list for the items which expires today

The LatestNews user control now changes to:

We will use a Label to update today’s date and a Repeater to display today’s latest news.

Below is the updated .ascx code:

<div id="news">

    <h2>Latest News</h2>    

    <h3><asp:Label ID="lblDate" runat="server" /></h3>

    <asp:Repeater ID="rptrNews" runat="server">

        <ItemTemplate>

            <p>

                <span><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"Title")%></span>

                <%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"Title")%>

            </p>

        </ItemTemplate>

    </asp:Repeater>

    <br class="spacer" />

</div>

And below is the code behind:

/// <summary>

/// Handles the Load event of the Page control.

/// </summary>

/// <param name="sender">The source of the event.</param>

/// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.EventArgs"/> 

/// instance containing the event data.</param>

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

   AddTodaysDate();

   AddTodaysNews();

}

/// <summary>

/// Adds the todays date.

/// </summary>

private void AddTodaysDate()

{

    lblDate.Text = String

                   .Format("On {0}",

                         DateTime.Today.ToString("ddd d MMM yyy"));

}

/// <summary>

/// Adds the todays news.

/// </summary>

private void AddTodaysNews()

{

    List<LatestNews> latestNewsCollection = new List<LatestNews>();

    SPSite site = SPContext.GetContext(HttpContext.Current).Site;

    using (SPWeb curWeb = site.OpenWeb())

    {

        SPList lstLatestNews = curWeb.Lists["LatestNews"];

        SPQuery camlQuery = new SPQuery();

        camlQuery.ViewFields = "<FieldRef Name='Title' /><FieldRef Name='Body' />";

        camlQuery.Query = 

          "<Where><Geq><FieldRef Name='Expires' /><Value Type='DateTime'><Today/></Value></Geq></Where>";

        SPListItemCollection lstLatestNewsCollection = lstLatestNews.GetItems(camlQuery);

        foreach (SPListItem latestNews in lstLatestNewsCollection)

        {

            LatestNews news = new LatestNews

                                  {

                                      Title = latestNews["Title"].ToString(),

                                      Body = latestNews["Body"].ToString()

                                  };

            latestNewsCollection.Add(news);

        }

        rptrNews.DataSource = latestNewsCollection;

        rptrNews.DataBind();

    }

}

Pretty basic ASP.NET and SharePoint code :)

The AddTodaysDate updates the label with today’s date and AddTodaysNews queries the SharePoint list LatestNews items which expires today.

Build the code and deploy to the site.

You should still see the same home page, the only difference this time being that Latest News section is now content driven :)

What about Web Parts?

You might be wondering why I haven’t used Web Parts and chosen to build User Controls. I think this discussion would take us away from our current trending topic, but do hold on, I will come up with a separate post explaining why I choose to build User Controls and not Web Parts in the WCM world.

What next?

In our next post, we will see the necessity of building custom field controls and build one!

For now, you can download the source code from here.

If you don’t have SPVisualDev, build a WSP package and deploy it to test.

Remember that, until we have our own site definition, we are not done yet and things will be little messy :)

SharePoint WCM – Breaking the Ice – Building User Controls

In our previous post, we saw how to build a Page Layout for our Jet30 site. Today we will see how to build user controls. We will dissect some of the parts of the Home Page and build them as user controls.

So, for those who don’t remember our Home Page, below is a screenshot:

And weeks back, we also had our initial discussion on dissecting the page into various user controls.

Let us take the simplest of the controls – Latest News and New Services Overviews and turn them into user controls:

User Controls 101 For SharePoint

If you are an ASP.NET developer, you are already familiar with User Controls. They are nothing different in SharePoint except that they may consume SharePoint API and interact with SharePoint data. Let us initially forget that ‘SharePoint interaction’ and just try to build the user control with the static HTML data we already have. The user controls are going to built as assemblies (.dll) and deployed to GAC.

Where do user controls live?

User controls should be living somewhere so that we can load them in the code. So, where do we put our user controls?

The best and recommended place to put them is in the CONTROLTEMPLATES folder in the 12Hive. You can find many of the out-of-the box SharePoint user controls there:

Since our user controls are custom built (not out-of-the box), it is always better to put them in a separate folder inside the CONTROLTEMPLATES. So, for Jet30, our user controls will reside in a folder Jet30 inside the CONTROLTEMPLATES:

But we are not going to create the folder manually, rather deploy them as solutions (.wsp)

Jet30 User Control Solution

To keep things granular, I created a new SPVisualDev solution called Jet30.SharePoint.UserControls :

I then created the CONTROLTEMPLATES\Jet30 folder:

Added my two user controls (.ascx) to the CONTROLTEMPLATES\Jet30 folder:

You can easily add user controls using SPVisualDev item templates:

Adding the static HTML code to user controls

Now as we have our user controls ready, we are good enough to move the Latest News and New Services Overview sections to their respective user controls from the Home Page layout.

Browse the Home Page layout until you hit the two required sections:

Copy the code inside the news start & news end , services start & services end to the respective user controls.

Latest News user control:

New Services user control:

Referencing user controls in the Home Page

So, now the only task left is to reference and add these user controls in our Home Page layout.

First, register a tag Jet30 whose src tag match the location of our user controls:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="Jet30"     

    Src="~/_controltemplates/Jet30/LatestNewsControl.ascx" 

    TagName="LatestNews"%>

<%@ Register TagPrefix="Jet30"    

    Src="~/_controltemplates/Jet30/NewServicesControl.ascx" 

    TagName="NewServices" %>

Now, we can make use of the tag prefix and name and reference our user control in the page:

<!--news start -->

<Jet30:LatestNews runat="server" />

<!--news end -->

<--services start -->

<Jet30:NewServices runat="server" />

<!--services end -->

SharePoint WCM – Breaking the Ice – Building the Home Page Layout

In our previous post, we saw how to build a SharePoint Master Page with custom branding. Let us now build a Page Layout. A page layout defines various components in a page – web parts or field controls or static content etc.,

MSDN describes the relationship between a master page & page layout in the best way possible:

So, currently we have our Jet30’s Home Page, which is:

And we were able to build a master page which essentially had everything in it. A master page typically should contain a header, content area and a footer. The page layouts now come in and fill the content area, which makes:

Yep, so that separates the header, top navigation, footer and footer navigation.

Home Page Content Type

As we only have home page design at the moment, lets create the Home Page layout, which essentially will become the home page of the site.

Everything is a content type in SharePoint. So does a Page.

And our Home Page layout is no exception. Before creating the home page layout, we will create a Home Page content type inheriting from the Page content type. We will then create the page layout and associate this content type to our home page.

Creating the Home Page Content Type

There are several ways to create and deploy content types. The one I follow is – wrap each content type into its own feature – one feature for every content type. Why? This makes much easier to manage the content types, especially when you want to upgrade them.

So, I added a new feature using SPVisualDev. With SPVisualDev, its quite easy to create a content type inheriting from another content type.

You can see in the above screenshot that SPVisualDev allows you to inherit either from built-in content type or from a content type on a site. Since the content type Page is part of the Publishing Feature, it is available as a content type on a site.

And my Home Page content type is ready!

That was easy :)

Home Page Layout

Now that our Home Page content type is ready, we can now create our home page layout.

How do we create a page layout?

• Create a new Feature.
• Include all your page layouts in this new Feature
• Add a new Page Layouts module which will tell SharePoint about your page layouts
• Deploy to your site

Here is how it will look like:

The feature Jet30_PageLayouts contains a layout called HomePage.aspx and an elements file PageLayouts.xml

The PageLayouts.xml has the Page Layouts module and our Home Page Layout defined:

The Home Page layout is copied to the site’s Master Pages and Page Layouts library with a title Jet30 Home Page. We also associate the Home Page content type by specifying the Home Page Content Type in the PublishingAssociatedContentType property.

How do we move content to Page Layout?

We are dealing with Master Pages, which are nothing but ASP.NET master pages. As we discussed earlier, SharePoint is built on top of ASP.NET platform. So, think SharePoint Master Pages and Page Layouts to be ASP.NET Master Pages and ASP.NET Application Pages in a normal ASP.NET application. All we need to do to move the content area to a page layout is create ContentPlaceHolders in the master page!

So, our Master Page now looks like:

If you deploy the new Master Page, the site now looks like:

With the contents moved over, our Home Page layout looks like:

As you can see, we have brought the home page content area from the Master Page to this Page Layout!

So, now we can go ahead and deploy our new page layout!

Selecting the Home Page Layout

After deploying the page layout, you can find it in the Master Pages and Page Layouts library:

If you now create a new SharePoint Page, you should see the Jet30 Home Page listed in the page layouts option:

Create the new page and you now have the new Jet30 Home Page (not yet the site default page though ;) )

That wasn’t tough!

What next?

In the next post, lets dissect this page layout into various user controls as we discussed earlier!

For now, you can download the source code from here.

If you don’t have SPVisualDev, build a WSP package and deploy it to test.

Remember that until we have our own site definition, we are not done yet and things will be little messy :)

SharePoint Guidance: Developing SharePoint Applications

The patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance team have just released a new Guidance for Developing SharePoint Applications. Whether you are a newbie or an intermediate or an experienced SharePoint developer, this guide is going to help you improve your SharePoint development skills. Many people (at least the newbies) fail to get the SharePoint basics right and this guide explores various application and design patterns to help build a good SharePoint application.

From the guide:

This guidance covers the following subjects in the context of SharePoint applications:

• It describes how to use application and design patterns to help solve common development challenges.
• It describes the design and use of the SharePoint Guidance Library, which is a set of reusable components.
• It describes how to design and secure a site topology.
• It describes how to design and implement an application that is scalable, manageable, and configurable.
• It describes how to integrate a SharePoint application with Web services. This includes security options and design tradeoffs.
• It describes how to develop a SharePoint application that can publish and deploy content.
• It describes flexible approaches to navigation and branding, including how to implement custom cross-site collection global navigation and custom site navigation.
• It includes guidance on many of the common decisions that developers encounter, such as choosing between a list and database.
• It includes implementation examples that are demonstrated in the Partner Portal application, the Training Management application, and in the QuickStarts.
• It includes guidance on testing. For example, there are discussions on unit tests, build verification tests, and continuous integration tests.
• It includes a discussion of scale and stress testing that uses the Partner Portal application as an example.
• It describes how to set up different team build and testing environments.
• It describes how to manage the application life cycle through development, test, deployment, and upgrading.
• It describes a team-based application development.

You can download the guide here.

Just for the heads up, the guidance also has the SharePoint Guidance Library logging and tracing component that can be included in your SharePoint applications to log events/error messages.

SharePoint WCM – Breaking the Ice – Building the initial Master Page

In our earlier post we got introduced to our new client Jet30, had our initial discussions and we came out with the initial home page/website design.

Before getting into the discussion of what would be our site columns, content types and page layouts, let us use this template, create a SharePoint master page and activate it on an existing publishing site and see whether it works. It is always better to go step-by-step than going down and creating everything at once (site definitions, page layouts etc.,). However, if you are quite familiar with this process, you might end up doing everything at once than going this way. But for now, let us build a Jet30 Master Page.

Create a Sample Publishing Site

Create a publishing site (with publishing site features enabled). The master page, style sheets will be deployed to this site for now.

[I created a site called http://jet-thirty]

SharePoint Development Tools Used

1) WSPBuilder

2) SPVisualDev

Building the Master Page

All master pages (and page layouts) reside in the Master Pages and Page Layouts list in the publishing site.

It is always the best practice to manage everything and anything using Features in SharePoint. The same applies for our master page too – We will create a SharePoint Feature to deploy the Master Page to the publishing site.

Using SPVisualDev, I created my SharePoint project and added a new feature called Jet30_MasterPages.

The feature has two modules.

1. Jet30MasterPage
2. Jet30Css

As you can see, both the Master Page and Css files are going to the SharePoint Master Pages and page layouts list in the site.

Modifying the Jet30MasterPage.master

If you added the Master Page using SPVisualDev, it will generate the minimal master page with all the necessary placeholders.

Insert all the HTML code of the Jet30 website template into this master page after the line

<PublishingConsole:Console runat="server" />

One another change we need to do in the master page is to add reference to the Jet30 style sheet. This can be done in the head section.

<head id="Head1" runat="server">

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

    <SharePoint:RobotsMetaTag ID="RobotsMetaTag1" runat="server"/>

    <title><asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderPageTitle" runat="server"/></title>

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

    <link rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_catalogs/masterpage/jet30-style.css" media="screen" />

    <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead" runat="server"/>

</head>

Modifying the CSS

There is nothing much to modify in the Jet30 style sheet except for the image references. Images are now available in the /_layouts/images/jet30/ than the template’s images folder.

The original CSS file will have entries something like this:

#header{

    background:url(images/header.gif) 0 0 no-repeat;

    width:981px;

    height:274px;

    position:relative;

    margin:0 auto;

}

Which will change to:

#header{

    background:url(/_layouts/images/jet30/header.gif) 0 0 no-repeat;

    width:981px;

    height:274px;

    position:relative;

    margin:0 auto;

}

Images will now be properly referenced.

Deploy the Jet30_MasterPages Feature

You are now ready to deploy this feature to your publishing site [I deployed to my sample site http://jet-thirty]

As you can see in the above screen-shot, it is quite easy to manage features if you are using SPVisualDev.Once deployed, you can find the master page & CSS style sheet in the SharePoint Master Pages and page layouts list in the site.

Selecting the Jet30 Master Page

Now as the master page is installed & activated, we can select the master page in our site.

Go to Site Actions->Site Settings->Modify All Site Settings. Select Master Page from Look and feel section.

Select the Jet30MasterPage for Site Master Page and System Master Page

If you browse to your site, you should see the Jet30 template up and running!

You can now build the WSP package and deploy it to any other server/site.

So, are we done with Master Page?

NO – So far, we have managed to load the master page into an existing site. Since we applied the master page to the whole site and to all page layouts, it has been applied to every page. If you scroll down, you can still see the existing web parts.

This is because of the page layout being used which has web part zones in them.

What next?

Our next step is to create the Home Page layout than using the pages in the site.

For now, you can download the source code from here. If you don’t have SPVisualDev, build a WSP package and deploy it to test.

Remember that until we have our own site definition, we are not done yet and things will be little messy :)

SharePoint WCM – Breaking the Ice – A look into the website template, Home Page and other Controls

In the previous post we saw the basic initial steps in getting started with SharePoint and WCM. I also warned you are going to have one hell of a ride with SharePoint and WCM!

Well, lets get started then!

To make things simpler, I have downloaded a website template called Jet30 from Templateworld. Below is the screenshot of how the website looks

Jet30 and Home Page

Assume that Jet30 is our new client who is interested to build their website using SharePoint, and has agreed upon the above template for the home page. Its more than enough for us to start the SharePoint development. But before that, we also need to make sure what components make up this home page, things like:

- Which are static content?

- Which contents are editable?

Site Structure

As you can see in the template, Jet30 is interested to have categories or sub-sites or sections in their website, which reflects the horizontal navigation menu at the top

To make things simpler again, lets say we create a root site and build the rest as sub-sites.

So, we are going to have a root site (site collection) called Jet30(Home) and the rest are going to be sub-sites:

- About Us

- Services

- Support

- Communication

- Why Choose Us

- News

- Testimonials

- Contact Us

Lets also assume these categories have their own reasons to be a sub-site.

Dissecting the Home Page

After discussing further with Jet30, I am now able to dissect this home page layout into individual components.

So, below is the first section:

and the second section:

As you can see from the screenshots above, below is the list of controls:

1. Top Menu Control
2. Home Page Banner Text Control
3. Page Second Banner Control
4. Page Pods Control
5. Main Description Pod Control
6. Latest News Control
7. New Services Control
8. Login Control
9. Footer Control

Jet30 also confirms that most of these controls will be used in other page layouts too.

Jet30 has also confirmed that the following controls should be editable, meaning contents be managed:

1. Home Page Banner Text Control
2. Page Second Banner Control
3. Page Pods Control
4. Main Description Pod Control
5. Latest News Control
6. New Services Control

Sweet, I think we are now ready to open Visual Studio and do some SharePoint development!

Whats Next?

There is still one thing we haven’t dealt with – the required site columns, content types and site definition – which is what we are going to see in our next blog post!

SharePoint WCM – Breaking the Ice – Getting Started

SharePoint, with its Publishing Feature provides a powerful and extensible platform to build public facing websites, which are otherwise called as internet websites or public facing websites or WCM websites. Some of the top SharePoint (publishing) websites include - Ferrari, Cadbury, Hawaiian Airlines, NZTE (more here & here). Without much discussion, lets get straight to the point – What it is like to build a website using SharePoint?. There are so many myths (which you might hear and read often) surrounding this which conclude SharePoint is not suitable for building such complex websites - Well, SharePoint is indeed a powerful platform not only to build intranet portals, but also WCM sites.

Some of the things you might immediately hear from your customers as well your own team (if the team is new to SharePoint WCM) would be:

Do we really need to use SharePoint to build this website?

I heard SharePoint is used only for Intranet and document management. Are you sure about this?

We don’t have SharePoint here, do you think it is a good idea to invest?

What about branding?

I want to have all those Web 2.0 features in my website. Can I?

How do I manage my content? Will SharePoint provide the ability to backup data regularly?

Search is very important for my website. What options do we have in SharePoint?

I heard something about Content Deployment, can we make use of it too?

Under the hood, SharePoint is nothing but ASP.Net. SharePoint is built on top of the ASP.Net framework, so the same ASP.Net concepts/rules apply to SharePoint too, except that some might be very specific to SharePoint.

So, lets get started and become familiar with few things before we start our long journey!

Make sure you have a look (at least once) at Joel Oleson’s 10 Steps to SharePoint Success

SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Feature

One of the out-of-the box features available in SharePoint Server 2007 is the Publishing Feature. To use the web content management features, this feature must be activated in the site level or site collection level (based on where you need them). This feature provides the basic building block for the web content management websites. Turning on this feature will also install publishing-enabled content types and publishing-enabled site templates. Now, you have the basic platform which you can make use of to build your website!

Sweet, lets go with the Publishing Feature then!

One of the major misconceptions that I hear a lot of times is that the ‘out-of-the box’ Publishing Feature is all what is needed to build a public facing website – NO!

The Publishing Feature gives you nothing but the basic platform, and you as the website builder/developer have the full freedom to build/tweak/customize it to your needs and requirements!

Requirements is the KEY

As it goes with any project, know the requirements before getting down to build that website. Sit with your customer/team, arrange some meetings - get to know them and their requirements, what they want from the website, who would be the users of the website etc., And yes, don’t forget the SharePoint 80/20 Rule. This should roughly give you an idea what your customers are expecting out of this website and how SharePoint can help achieve that.

What would these requirements be?

Requirements can be anything and everything!

Some examples to get you started are:

- Site Structure

- Home Page or Welcome Page Layout

- Other Page Layouts

- Static Content Vs Dynamic Content

- HTML Web design template

- The SharePoint environment where the website is going to be deployed

There is also other requirements which you as a SharePoint consultant or developer need to consider. Some examples are:

- Dissecting every Page Layout into different individual components

- Web Parts Vs User Controls Vs Custom Field Controls

- Managing content in Lists Vs Providing in-place editing experience [More on this later in this series]

- Not to make any promises that everything and anything is possible, rather work out whether it is feasible to do so.

- Know your budget and work accordingly. [Some requirements might just go on and on and empty your pocket!]

[Requirements quoted above are solely to get you started and in no way mean these would be the only requirements list for a particular project]

To design or develop first?

This is a tricky question. I think it is better off if you have a HTML web design template ready by your designers. This would make the branding and development process much easier than what you might think. I am not saying the entire website should be designed, but at least an initial version with few page layouts. Remember that one of the requirements was to dissect the page layouts into different individual components – this task becomes much easier now as you have a template to work with. Now you can go build that master page, page layout(s), user controls or web parts or custom field controls depending on the requirements.

Know the SharePoint environment

This is the most important thing to do – Getting familiar with the SharePoint environment where the website is going to be deployed – Things can get really bad if you don’t configure the environment properly. So make sure you get hold of a SharePoint Administrator or SharePoint Network Infrastructure (or whatever you call them) and examine the available options in the environment. If there is not one yet, then this is the good time you start building one! This becomes entirely a separate challenging task! [ Good times, eh :) ]

Don’t ever under-estimate this task!

SharePoint WCM – Breaking the Ice

This blog post what you are reading is the first post of the kind, in this series. In the upcoming blog posts in this series, I will be taking you through the journey of what its like to build a WCM website using SharePoint.

All Set?

Then you are ready for one hell of a ride with SharePoint :)

jQuery Web Parts for SharePoint – Release v1.0.0.0

jQuery Web Parts for SharePoint brings the various jQuery UI elements to SharePoint as web parts. It uses jQuery SmartTools to integrate jQuery in SharePoint.

Installation Instructions

Available Web Parts
- Accordion Web Part for Announcements List
- News Ticker Web Part for Announcements List
- Image Cycle Web Part for Pictures Library

Screenshots

Accordion Web Part

News Ticker Web Part

Image Cycle Web Part

To download, visit the CodePlex site.

Item-level Permissions for Document Libraries – Release v1.1.0.0

Just released Item-level Permission for Document Libraries v1.0.0.0. You can get it here.

Changes in v1.1.0.0

- ILP now uses SharePoint Solution Installer for installation/un-installation

- Fixed a bug with Timer Job & RunWithElevatedPriviliges

- Changed the visibility of the ILP site columns, ILP list instance. They are now visible in the site.

- Added the ability for developers to hook their own event handlers. Read more here >> Info for developers

Known Issues

- If you are using the API to enable ILP & register your custom event handlers, you have to use the API again to disable ILP & un-register your custom event handlers to the corresponding document library or list.

Item Level Permission for Document Libraries – Release v1.0.0.0

[There is currently some problem with CodePlex and I am not able to upload my files or source code in my CodePlex project. This project will be eventually moved to CodePlex soon.]

This project is now available at CodePlex – http://ilp.codeplex.com 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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ILP enables item-level permission for document libraries and also allows users to select a set of default permissions that can be applied to the new items and existing items in the document library.

Installation

Execute the install.bat to install. You will be prompted for two Urls – Web Application Url and Web Url.

ILP for Document Libraries will be activated in the Web Url you specify above. So in my above example screenshot, the ILP will be available for the root web / in the http:/sample web application.

How to activate for any other web?

Go to the Site Settings for your web and click on Site Features.

Activate the ILP:Item level permission library settings feature

Once activated, ILP will be available to that web.

To uninstall, execute the un-install.bat script.

Usage

You can locate the Item-level permissions for the document library in the document library's Settings Page under the Permissions and Management tab

Click on the Item-level permissions for this document library to open the item-level permissions page

You can now specify your options

• Require new items to inherit parent permissions?
  • Choosing Yes will enable item-level permission for this document library
  • Choosing No will disable item-level permission for this document library.
• Default Permission Levels
  • Any additional permissions you might like to give to the new items
  • Choose a Permission Level and then select the groups. Groups == SharePoint Groups.
  • If left empty, nothing happens.
• Permissions to existing items
  • This helps to update the existing items in the list.
  • If ILP is enabled
    • Choosing Yes will set ILP for existing items in the document library, inherit parent permissions and also apply any default permission levels (chosen in Step 2, if any).
    • Choosing No will not modify existing items in the document library.
  • If ILP is not enabled
    • Choosing Yes will disable ILP for existing items in the document library and copies the parent permissions back.
    • Choosing No will not modify existing items in the document library.

Developers, Developers, Developers – ILP API

If you are a devleoper and want to consume the ILP API, you can do so.

Download the latest ilp_api_{version}.zip. Unzip and add reference to the the Chaks.SharePoint.Docs.ILP.dll in your project

You can now use the Extension method EnableItemLevelPermissions on the SPList object.

Below is the declaration of the EnableItemLevelPermissions method:

It accepts ItemLevelPermissionSettings as the only parameter

• EnableItemLevelPermissions
  • Specify whether to enable ILP or not
• DefaultGroups
  • List of default SharePoint groups you want to apply to the items
• DefaultPermissionLevel
  • The default permission level you want to apply to the items
• ApplyToExistingItems
  • Specify whether to apply the changes to the existing items or not

You can safely ignore EventReceiverAssembly and EventReceiverClass as it is internally used by the ILP to hook to the proper event receiver. From next release onwards, developers will be able to hook up to their own event receivers using these two peoperties.

Using the API

Below are some code samples on using the API

using Chaks.SharePoint.Docs.ILP;

namespace ConsoleApplication
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite("http://sample"))
            {
                using (SPWeb spWeb = spSite.RootWeb)
                {
                    SPList imagesList = spWeb.Lists["Site Collection Images"];

                    List<SPGroup> spGroups = new List<SPGroup>();
                    spGroups.Add(spWeb.SiteGroups[1]);
                    spGroups.Add(spWeb.SiteGroups[2]);

                    ItemLevelPermissionSettings settings = new ItemLevelPermissionSettings
                                                               {
                                                                   EnableItemLevelPermissions = true,
                                                                   DefaultPermissionLevel = spWeb.RoleDefinitions["Full Control"],
                                                                   DefaultGroups = spGroups,
                                                                   ApplyToExistingItems = true
                                                               };

                    imagesList.EnableItemLevelPermissions(settings);

                    Console.WriteLine("Permissions applied....Press any key to continue");
                }
            }

            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

You can pass null if you dont intend to apply any default permission level and default groups

ItemLevelPermissionSettings settings = new ItemLevelPermissionSettings
{
     EnableItemLevelPermissions = true,
     DefaultPermissionLevel = null;
     DefaultGroups = null;
     ApplyToExistingItems = true
};

Note

Even though ILP for Document Libraries is meant only for Document Libraries (as the same suggests), using the API, you can also apply it to a SharePoint List.Please note that, it does not override the SharePoint out of the box Permissions settings and thus if you have already set up unique permissions for a SharePoint list, they will also be applied along with the ILP settings.

Downloads

IE8 to SharePoint-‘Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?’

Building ‘easy’ and ‘complex’ user controls or field controls is one of those daily jobs that a SharePoint developer will do when building WCM websites.

Recently whenever I was navigating from the Edit Mode, whether it may be a postback or clicking on a link to a different page, IE8 prompts with this ‘wonderful’ yet ‘awesome’ message:

Here is my custom field control in edit mode

So, as you can see in the above screenshot, I have a repeater and then some command arguments – Remove and Sort – Whenever I tried to remove the item or sort, IE8 halts for at least a minute and then prompts me with that message. Clicking on OK does finish the job, but why this message?. This does not happen in IE6, IE7 and Firefox.

Luckily, one of the MSDN forums user Sergioko has found a workaround for this problem:

Hi people,
I have installed Intenet Explorer 8 and started experience a problem. When my publishing page is in Edit mode and I click any link to navigate out to a different page IE8 prints 'Saving Page Content...' in its status bar for about 20 seconds and then displays a message box 'The page took too long to save...'. There were no such error with either IE7 or FireFox. After playing with Javascript debugging, I found that SBN_CallBackHandler() client function of SaveBeforeNavigationControl is not called as it supposed to. It looks like the implementation of XMLHttpRequest object in IE8 is somehow different from the previous release. I'm not sure if it is a bug of IE8 or SharePoint javascript but the problem exists. Fortunatelly, IE8 allows you to turn off its advanced setting 'Enable native XMLHTTP support' (enabled by default) in menu Tools/Internet Options/Advanced. It solves the problem but I would like to have more correct solution :-)  Any ideas?

Yes! Go to Tool->Internet Options->Advanced and disable ‘Enable native XMLHTTP support’ and everything works fine!

I think the SharePoint Team should be made aware of this bug as this is indeed a show-stopper in regard to user experience in the Edit Mode (which is very common in WCM websites and upgrading to SP2 does not solve this issue)

Anyone from the SharePoint Team investigate this issue?

SharePoint Conference – My slide deck and samples

The first ever New Zealand SharePoint Conference which was held last week (July 2nd – 3rd) was a blast! We not only had local speakers, but also international speakers which included:

1) Joel Oleson

2) Paul Culmsee

3) Erica Toelle

3) Steve Smith

4) Paul Papanek Stork

I have uploaded my slide deck and samples for my talk– SharePoint Custom Field Controls.

You can download them below:

Hats off to Chandima, Mark Orange and Debbie Ireland for organizing the conference and everything!

Set Available PageLayouts for your Site

Below is a code snippet for setting available page layouts for your site:

 
List<String> strPageLayoutsToPersist = 

        new List<string> { "Home Page", 

                           "General Detail Page", 

                           "Email Me Page", 

                           "Category Page" 

                         };

using (SPWeb spWeb = spSite.RootWeb)

{

        PublishingWeb pubWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(spWeb);

        // Get avaialble page layouts for our content types

        PageLayout[] myPageLayouts = pubWeb.GetAvailablePageLayouts().Cast<PageLayout>()

            .Where(p => strPageLayoutsToPersist.Contains(p.AssociatedContentType.Name))

            .ToArray();

        // Set the available page layouts to our content type

        pubWeb.SetAvailablePageLayouts(myPageLayouts, false);

        // Update the web

        pubWeb.Update();

}

This will hide every page layouts except those you specify in the strPageLayoutsToPersist

Meet you @ New Zealand SharePoint Conference

The first ever New Zealand SharePoint Conference is just a day to go! If you haven’t registered yet, you can still do so!

If you have already registered, check out these excellent sessions and feel free to come to my session on Developing Custom Field Controls in SharePoint.

If you are not familiar with Field Controls – they are one of the essential key components in Publishing Sites which deliver and capture the contents of a Publishing Page. I will update my blog with download links to slide decks and samples after my presentation.

See you there!