Advanced SharePoint 2010 and 2013 Web Part Development by Rob Windsor - SPTechCon

Advanced SharePoint
2010 and 2013 Web Part
Development

Rob Windsor
rwindsor@portalsolutions.net
@robwindsor

About Me
• Senior SharePoint Architect with Portal Solutions
• Technical Contributor to the Pluralsight On-Demand Library
• Microsoft MVP, MCPD, MCT
• Founder and Past-President of the North Toronto .NET UG
• Co-author of Prof. Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 (Wrox)

Session Prerequisites
• Experience developing for SharePoint
• Experience building Web Parts

Agenda
• Visual Web Parts
• Persistent Web Part Properties
• Editor Parts
• Connectable Web Parts
• Web Part Verbs
• Asynchronous Web Parts
• Web Part Gallery
• Web Part Pages

Visual Web Parts
• Visual web parts traditionally combine a web part with a
user control
• User controls have full design experience in Visual Studio
• User interface and code behind defined in user control
• Web part “injects” user control dynamically using
Page.LoadControl
private const string _ascxPath = @"~/_CONTROLTEMPLATES/.../MyUserControl.ascx";

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
Control control = Page.LoadControl(_ascxPath);
Controls.Add(control);
}

Web Parts in Sandboxed Solutions
• Split page rendering
 Page code runs in ASP.NET worker process
 Sandboxed web part code runs in sandbox worker process
 HTML markup and JavaScript from two worker processes merged
• Sandbox restrictions
 Reduced set of server object model API
 Restricted access outside SharePoint
 No elevation of permissions
 Cannot deploy files to SharePoint system folders
 Must be ASP.NET web parts
 Can only use ASP.NET controls
 No web part connections

Sandbox Visual Web Part Template
• Native visual web part template not compatible
with sandboxed solutions
 Attempts to deploy user control to system folders
• Visual Studio 2010 Power Tools introduced a
sandbox compatible template
 No user control
 Designer makes web part behave like a user control
 Markup in user control converted to code at design time
• Visual Studio 2012 only has this template

Web Part Properties
• Web Parts support persistent properties
• Configure properties via attributes
 Personalizable(param)
 Directs SharePoint to persist property value
 Parameter indicates if property may be personalized
 WebBrowsable(true)
 Directs SharePoint to generate interface to edit property
 WebDisplayName, WebDescription
 The prompt and tooltip that accompany the data entry element
 Category
 The group in which the properties will be shown

[Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared)]
[WebBrowsable(true)]
[WebDisplayName("Year")]
[Category("Pluralsight")]
public int Year { get; set; }

Cross Site Script Safeguards
• Added in SharePoint 2010
• Indicates developer has taken steps to ensure code is safe
against scripting attacks
• Two key pieces
 SafeAgainstScript attribute of SafeControl entry
 RequiresDesignerPermission attribute
• Contributors can only set web part properties if:
 SafeAgainstScript is true (not the default)
 RequiresDesignerPermission is false (default)

DEMO
Cross Site Script
Safeguards

Editor Parts
• Editor parts enable user customization
• Editor parts contained within an editor zone
• ASP.NET supplies standard editor parts
 Layout, appearance, etc
• Developers can create custom editor parts
 Similar development experience to Web Part
 Control over interface used to edit properties
 Ability to validate user input
• In web part
 Override CreateEditorParts
• In editor part
 Override CreateChildControls, SyncChanges and
ApplyChanges

Creating Connectable Web Parts
• Pass data from one web part to another
• Loosely-coupled connection
 Communication managed by WebPartManager
 Provider web part supplies data
 Consumer web parts retrieve data
• Interface used to define data contract
 ASP.NET has standard connection contracts
 Shown later in this module
 Can use custom connection contracts
• SharePoint provides user interface elements to establish
connections
• Not compatible with sandboxed solutions

Web Part Connections using Ajax
• Communication between web parts requires a postback
• Generally, only consumer web part needs to be updated
• Can use partial page rendering (UpdatePanel) to only
update consumer
• Problem:
 Event triggered by provider
 UpdatePanel in consumer
• Solution:
 Pass reference to control that triggers update from provider to consumer
 Consumer registers control as AsyncPostbackControl with ScriptManager

DEMO
Web Part Connections
Using Ajax

Web Part Verbs

• Add additional menu options to
dropdown at top-right of Web Part
• Can be handled client-side, server-
side or both.

Web Part Verbs
public override WebPartVerbCollection Verbs
{
get
{
var verbs = new List<WebPartVerb>();

var verb1 = new WebPartVerb(this.ID + "_ClientSideRssOpenerVerb",
string.Format("window.open('{0}','RSSXML')", this.FeedUrl));
verb1.Description = "Open RSS Feed in an external window";
verb1.Text = "Open RSS Feed";
verbs.Add(verb1);

var verb2 = new WebPartVerb(this.ID + "_ServerSideRssOpenerVerb",
new WebPartEventHandler(ServerSideVerbHandler));
verb2.Description = "Load the RSS Source Feed.";
verb2.Text = "View RSS Source Feed";
verbs.Add(verb2);

var allverbs = new WebPartVerbCollection(base.Verbs, verbs);
return allverbs;
}
}

Asynchronous Web Parts
• Long running tasks are blocking calls
 One web part can bring a page to a crawl
 When on the same page, multiple instances can kill the
user experience
• Make long running tasks asynchronous
 Don’t hold up page processing

Asynchronous Web Parts
protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e) {
Page.RegisterAsyncTask(
new PageAsyncTask(
new BeginEventHandler(BeginFeed),
new EndEventHandler(EndFeed),
new EndEventHandler(TimoutFeed),
null, true));
}

public IAsyncResult BeginFeed(object sender, EventArgs e, AsyncCallback cb, object state) {
_feedCaller = GetFeed;
return _feedCaller.BeginInvoke(cb, state);
}

public void EndFeed(IAsyncResult ar) {
var feed = _feedCaller.EndInvoke(ar);

var posts = from item in feed.Descendants("item")
select new
{
Title = item.Element("title").Value,
Description = item.Element("description").Value,
Published = DateTime.Parse(item.Element("pubDate").Value)
};
posts = posts.Skip(_pageNum * _hostPart.PageSize).Take(_hostPart.PageSize);

FeedListView.DataSource = posts.ToList();
FeedListView.DataBind();
}

Cleaning the Web Part Gallery
• Files provisioned into Content DB do not get
removed on Feature deactivation
 This includes webpart / dwp files added to Web Part
Gallery
• Deletion of files can be done in Feature receiver
 Examine element manifests to find web parts
 Remove from web part gallery

Cleaning the Web Part Gallery
public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
var site = properties.Feature.Parent as SPSite;
if (site == null) return;

var parts = new List<string>();
var elements = properties.Definition.GetElementDefinitions(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);
foreach (SPElementDefinition element in elements) {
if (element.ElementType != "Module") continue;

var node = element.XmlDefinition;
if (node.Attributes["Url"].Value != "_catalogs/wp") continue;

foreach (XmlElement childNode in node.ChildNodes) {
if (childNode.Name == "File") {
parts.Add(childNode.GetAttribute("Url"));
}
}
}

var web = site.RootWeb;
var gallery = web.Lists["Web Part Gallery"];
var items = gallery.Items;

for (int i = items.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
var item = items[i];
if (parts.Contains(item.File.Name))
{
item.Delete();
}
}
}

DEMO
Cleaning the Web
Part Gallery

Creating Web Part Page Templates
• Create a site page
• Set base type to
Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPartPage
• Add one or more web part zones to page
• Provision page instances using Module
<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>

<%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages"
Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages"
Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, …" %>

<%@ Page Language="C#"
Inherits="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPartPage"
MasterPageFile="~masterurl/default.master" %>

<asp:Content ID="Main" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderMain" runat="server">
<WebPartPages:WebPartZone
ID="MainZone" runat="server"
FrameType="TitleBarOnly"
Title="Main Web Part Zone" />
</asp:Content>

Adding Web Parts to Web Part Pages
• Use SPLimitedWebPartManager
 Get reference from property of Page object
• Use SPLimitedWebPartManager.AddWebPart to add
var page = web.GetFile("SiteAssets/Test02.aspx");
using (var manager = page.GetLimitedWebPartManager(
PersonalizationScope.Shared)) {
if (!manager.WebParts.Contains(webPartTitle))
{
var part = new MostPopularProducts2.MostPopularProducts2();
part.Title = "Most Popular Products";
part.Category = "Condiments";
part.Year = 1997;
manager.AddWebPart(part, "Left", 0);
}
}

Note: Contains method shown in code sample is a custom extension

DEMO
Creating Web Part
Pages and Adding
Web Parts

Additional Stuff
• Closing versus deleting web parts
 Closing a web part does not remove it from page
 Having many closed web parts on a page can degrade
performance
 Set AllowClose to false to remove option to close from
web part verbs
• Versioning
 DO NOT change the assembly version of your
assemblies
 SharePoint stores the full name with version of all web
parts in galleries and on pages
 Use the AssemblyFileVersion instead

Thank You
• Big thanks to the organizers, sponsors and you for making
this event possible
• Please fill out your evaluation
• Please keep in touch

rwindsor@portalsolutions.net
@robwindsor
msmvps.com/blogs/windsor

Advanced SharePoint 2010 and 2013 Web Part Development by Rob Windsor - SPTechCon

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