Archive for category: Blog

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Sharepoint greatly ease the process of developing custom Sharepoint solutions. The extension provides a set of visual studio templates for rapid creation of Sharepoint Web Parts, Content Types, and Modules etc. You can download the extensions from this Microsoft link.

Using this extension creating and deploying a webpart is just a breeze and everything works to perfection for the first web part we create. But troubles arise when we start deploying subsequent web parts. During deployment of subsequent webparts Visual Studio 2008 comes up with the following error message.

“The feature name WebPart1 already exists in SharePoint. You need to rename the feature before solution deployment can succeed.”

This error happens even if you are given a different name for your web part file and web part class file. This is because behind the scenes Visual Studio stores the solution name as Webpart1 even if you have given a different name to your webpart. To overcome this VS 2008 behavior, the following changes have to be made to the webpart feature files.

1. Change the name of webpart folder, webpart xml and webpart files from Webpart1 to the name of your web part for e.g. WP1. So in effect, the folder WebPart1 will become WP1, the file WebPart1.webpart will become WP1.webpart and the file WebPart1.xml will become WP1.xml.
2. Select the Show All Files option from VS 2008 Solution Explorer toolbar.
3. Three additional folders namely bin, obj, pkg will be displayed in grayed out style.
4. Expand the pkg folder. Pkg folder will have a subfolder named Webpart1 and two XML files manifest.xml and solution.xml.
5. Rename Webpart1 folder name to your webpart for e.g. WP1
6. Edit solution.xml and change the name of feature from Webpart1 to your webpart name

<featureElement id=”c140c619-8e16-47f8-8bd0-532184591afe” name=”WP1″ />

7. Edit manifest.xml file and change the feature manifest file location path

<FeatureManifest Location=”WP1\feature.xml” />

8. Edit WP1/feature.xml file to change the manifest and file location
   <ElementManifest Location=”WP1\WP1.xml”/>

<ElementFile Location=”WP1\WP1.webpart” />

After performing the above changes the web part deployment will happen successfully. A simpler method to avoid all this trouble is as follows

1. Immediately after creating a new webpart project, remove the Webpart1 folder completely.
2. Add the new web part to the project by right-clicking on the project and selecting the new item from the context menu.
3. In the Add new item dialog box select Sharepoint from categories and Select Web Part from templates.
4. Give a name for your webpart and click Add button.

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Sharepoint greatly ease the process of developing custom Sharepoint solutions. The extension provides a set of visual studio templates for rapid creation of Sharepoint Web Parts, Content Types, Modules etc. You can download the extensions from this Microsoft link.

This blog entry details the steps involved in debugging a web part created using visual studio 2008 web part template. The steps listed are for the scenario where Sharepoint and visual studio exists on the same machine.

Steps

1. Develop the Sharepoint web part using VS 2008 web part project template.
2. Deploy the web part. With VS 2008 you don’t have worry about manifest and WSP files. Just right-click on the project name in solution explorer and select Deploy.
3. Add the web part to a Sharepoint page.
4. Set up breakpoints in your web part code. This similar to setting up breakpoints in any .Net code.
5. Attach debugger to ASP.Net worker process (w3wp.exe)

a. From the VS 2008 Debug menu select Attach to Process option
b. From the list of running processes that show up select w3wp.exe and click Attach button.

c. If a recent iisreset was performed on your machine, you must navigate to the Sharepoint site to create a new instance of w3wp process.
d. Sometimes you may also find multiple w3wp process showing up in the Attach Processes list. In such situations you can follow any of the below methods

i. Attach debugger to all w3wp.exe processes. This will ensure that you attach to the process that is running your web part.
ii. You can kill all the w3wp.exe processes by using iisreset /noforce from the command line and navigating to the Sharepoint site to create a new w3wp instance.

6. Navigate to the Sharepoint page which contains the web part you want to debug.
7. As the page starts rendering, control will be transferred to the visuals studio code editor with the execution stopping at first break point.
8. You can continue debugging as with any .Net code.

If you are not able to lay hands on a machine that has Sharepoint and VS 2008 installed, you can download virtual PC image from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1beeac6f-2ea1-4769-9948-74a74bd604fa&DisplayLang=en

Happy debugging  

Web Slices

Web Slices is a new feature enabling websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. Web Slices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify users of changes.

A Web Slice is a section of a webpage that is treated like a subscribable item, just like a feed. To enable a Web Slice on your website, annotate your webpage with class names for the title, description, and other subscribable properties.

Features of Web Slice

• Apply styles
<div class=”hslice” id=”2″ style=”color:blue”>…</div>

• Navigating to a Different Web Page
<div class=”hslice” id=”3″>
                           <h2 class=”entry-title”>Search</h2>
                              <a rel=”bookmark” href=”http://www.Google.com” style=”display:none;” ></a>
                        </div>

• Enable or disable the Webslice for all  sites
– Tools->Internet Options
– Under the Content tab
– Click Settings of Feed
– Select or deselect the “Turn on in Page Webslice discovery”

• Turn on or off Webslice discovery for a specified websites
 <meta name=”slice” scheme=”IE” content=”on”/>   

                                                              or

                            <meta name=”slice” scheme=”IE” content=”off”/>   

• webslice icons with various sizes

• We can control the Webslice duration using
endtime property :    Expiration time for a Web Slice. The inner text will be disabled after expiration.

<abbr class=”endtime” title=”24 sep 2008 05:00:00 PST”>6 hours</abbr>

This is an example of how to mark up an auction item with the link, title, and description properties

<div class=”hslice” id=”1″>
  <p class=”entry-title”>item – $66.00</p>
  <div class=”entry-content”>high bidder:buyer1
    … 
  </div>
</div>

• Hslice         

The hslice element contains all of the required and optional properties of a Web Slice.

• entry-title        

Title of the webslice.

• entry-content  

Content of the Webslice

Did you get the following message will be a turn-on when loading public Sharepoint sites,

The Web site wants to run the following add-on: ‘Name ActiveX Control’ from ‘Microsoft Corporation’. If you trust the Web site and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here…

To fix this problem, just create a js file and paste the following codes to that file,

function ProcessDefaultOnLoad(onLoadFunctionNames)
{
ProcessPNGImages();
UpdateAccessibilityUI();
for (var i=0; i < onLoadFunctionNames.length; i++)
{
var expr=”if(typeof(“+onLoadFunctionNames[i]+”)==’function’){“+onLoadFunctionNames[i]+”();}”;
eval(expr);
}
if (typeof(_spUseDefaultFocus)!=”undefined”)
DefaultFocus();
}

And then upload the javascript file to SharePoint site. After the above process, then refer the javascript file link to SharePoint master page.
Now you didn’t get any ActiveX Control problem. For more information Email us.

Shantha Kumar T ( MCTS )
[email protected]