ChrisDomino.com Blog Feed

Login or Logon?

2012-05-15T22:00:00

As I've been template-izing my ASP.NET MVC work (here and here) and thinking about public-facing websites holistically, I came across an interesting metaphor around users, applications, and the Internet itself. I found a bug in the code I posted (and, yes, it's been fixed) in my Account controller where a view was named "Logon" and its backing Action was named "Login." My initial reaction was of course that I simply had to follow MVC conventions and just match them up.

A Really Sweet MVC 3 Project Template: Part 2 – The Web Project

2012-05-03T22:00:00

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced my version of a template for ASP.NET MVC 3 projects that contains the data access layer, a common library, and some other components that I tend to reuse on every site. Before diving into the final slice of the pie, the web project itself, I want to reiterate that this template isn't supposed to be the end-all and be-all of MVC projects; it's the stuff I need 90% of the time; use the cloner (code that'll be included in this post that clones folder structures, replaces guids, and other fun stuff) and strip out what you don't need.

A Really Sweet MVC 3 Project Template: Part 1 – The Infrastructure

2012-04-23T22:00:00

After doing a few MVC 3 pet projects, I've found myself starting each new one with a copy-and-paste sprint from the last. In one code session, I can have the SQL Membership provider, error handling, Email, user registration, and Entity Framework design and integration all ready to rock. However, as anyone who can spell "TFS" knows, this copy-and-pasting is of course bad. And I'm not just talking about manually touching up namespaces or hacking connection strings; those are more annoying than harmful.

Thoughts On Virtualization For SharePoint 2010 Development

2012-04-05T22:00:00

Being a SharePoint developer, I've always run Windows Server natively. From the timeframes of 2003, 2003 R2, 2008, and 2008 R2, I've gotten very used to having gray task bars, typing "sldkjf" into the Shut Down Tracker, and spending lots of time getting wireless and sound to work. There are a lot of resources out there that discuss how to turn Windows Server into a client operating system, going beyond configuring Aero and hacking the Zune setup to install in an unsupported environment.

Importing SharePoint Designer Workflows Into Visual Studio (Part 3)

2012-03-07T23:00:00

You've made it to Part 3! In Part 1, I described the general situations we faced importing SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD) Workflows (WF) into Visual Studio 2010 (VS). Part 2 went into a lot of detail about the specific issues we encountered. In this final piece, I'll outline the...are you ready for this...SEVENTY-ONE step procedure that I was given. When the engineer at Microsoft first sent over this document, it was actually only a few very (although extremely convoluted) steps. So I broke them down and distilled the process into something that anyone familiar with VS could follow.

Importing SharePoint Designer Workflows Into Visual Studio (Part 2)

2012-03-06T23:00:00

In Part 1 of this post, I discussed the general issues my team has run into importing SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD) workflows (WFs) into Visual Studio 2010 (VS). But for a quick overview: I am currently part of a hybrid team of SharePoint designers and SharePoint developers, and in order to make our application deployment one hundred percent automated, we wanted to import all of the WFs created via SPD into VS. I made the assumption that the "Import Reusable Workflow" VS project import was the winning ticket. But instead, it was more like a speeding ticket, and, to string along this weak metaphor, I was incarcerated for over two months for driving without insurance.

Importing SharePoint Designer Workflows Into Visual Studio (Part 1)

2012-03-04T23:00:00

SharePoint is a universe, and like our own, new distant galaxies are discovered and elucidated. Similar to an astronomer, as a SharePoint architect, I occasionally find myself making assumptions. It's sort of like dark matter: we only know it's there because it has to be there; it makes all the math work out. Coming from a development background, I know an awful lot about web parts, feature receivers, client objet models, timer jobs, and so on: all of the code-based galaxies of SharePoint.

Cache Busting With The SharePoint CssRegistration Control

2012-02-23T23:00:00

During the development cycle of my latest SharePoint project, we kept getting the same bug reported by the client: a lot of the branding updates weren't visible after refreshing their browsers upon a deployment. The obvious reaction is to have them do a Control + F5 (IE only in this particular client) first, and then panic if that doesn't work. Well, it always worked, so we never panicked, and like any other bug that isn't immediately apparent to end users, this issue slowly became a lower and lower priority.

Windows Phone 7 Memory Card Error On Samsung Focus

2012-01-16T23:00:00

Happy 2012!

Fixing Blank SharePoint 2010 Workflow Association Pages Caused By InfoPath Forms Services Not Rendering

2011-12-08T23:00:00

Part 3 of my continuing coverage of my hybrid all code Visual Studio / no code SharePoint Designer team's adventure discussed a weird workflow issue. Basically, an element in our master page was not playing nicely with workflow; errors were thrown upon loading the workflow association page (CstWrkflIP.aspx). Once I figured out the fix, I celebrated by leaving the office in a good mood for a change.

Resolving Workflow Association Errors Caused By Custom Master Pages

2011-12-05T23:00:00

As part of my continuing saga of working with my hybrid Visual Studio "all code" / SharePoint Designer "no code" team, I'd like to discuss, which, compared to part 1 and part 2, turned out to be a small issue. This time workflow is the name of the game. For this project, all workflows were created by our "native creative" folks using SharePoint Designer. The integration point revolved around creating a Visual Studio SharePoint 2010 workflow by way of a new empty workflow project whose template can suck in a WSP exported from a SharePoint Designer reusable workflow and go from there. Phew. Compared to the collaborations described in the previous parts, this one was actually the cleanest.

Passing Data To Partial Views That Submit In ASP.NET MVC 2

2011-11-27T23:00:00

I was presented with an interesting issue in an ASP.NET MVC 2 application. Basically, I had a strongly-typed partial view that submitted data. In addition to consuming, validating, and transmitting its model to the controller, the partial view also needed to pass some "loose" data from its parent view through to the controller as well.

SharePoint Designer / Visual Studio Deployments Part Two: Fixing Taxonomy Metadata (And Other) Issues After A Site Collection Restore

2011-11-16T23:00:00

Background

SharePoint Designer And Developer Collaboration: Integrating Site Columns, Content Types, and SPD Page Layouts Into Visual Studio For Proper Deployment

2011-10-13T22:00:00

Introduction

Detect Horizontal Window Scrolling With jQuery

2011-09-21T22:00:00

This one will be short and sweet. I'm working with a full screen Silverlight application that has a soft minimally-supported resolution. By "soft" I mean that the app will attempt to grow and shrink to fit itself in the screen; for resolutions that are too small, we refuse to shrink and further, and instead force the browser to have to scroll to see our love handles.

Using jQuery To Ignore The OSSSearchResults.aspx Page With The SharePoint 2010 SmallSearchInputBox

2011-09-11T22:00:00

Whenever I see "OSSSearchResults.aspx" in my browser's address bar while developing a SharePoint site, I immediately know one of two things: the search requirements have not yet been implemented, or I'm going to get a bug that search is not working. I am a huge fan of writing custom search queries from scratch using FullTextSqlQuery behind a service and returning a custom search results DTO that I can bind to on my custom search results page. Why? Because whenever I've had any customization to do around search queries, search terms, or search results, no amount of XSLT could possibly get me there.

Calling Configuration-less Silverlight-enabled WCF Services From SharePoint 2010 Timer Jobs

2011-08-28T22:00:00

Getting Silverlight Drag And Drop Support For FireFox 5 On A Mac

2011-08-09T22:00:00

I've been working on a massive cross browser, cross platform Silverlight application for the last year or so. One of the major components is file drag and drop (heretofore D&D, not to of course be confused with Dungeons and Dragons). Getting this to work on Windows is trivial, and there are myriad resources out there to get you started. However, over on the Mac, things were much more difficult.

Fixing Authentication Errors From The SlideShare API’s HTTP POST Methods

2011-05-31T22:00:00

For those of you who read me regularly, you are aware of my aversion to third party components, rouge APIs, open source code, etc. It's not that I necessarily believe that they are bad, or that I feel I could always do a better job building it myself from scratch. Instead, the reason the hair on the back of my neck stands up whenever I need to make a decision on including someone else's code in my project is because if it breaks, I can't fix it.

How To Configure SharePoint 2010 Search To Index SQL Server Databases

2011-05-17T22:00:00

I love selling SharePoint as an application platform. When I'm in client conversations or architectural debates regarding SharePoint development, I usually end up referencing my three "tiers" of SharePoint applications, depicted as follows:

How To Have Multiple Publishing “Pages” Libraries In A Single Web

2011-04-20T22:00:00

So this is not supported.

Using oEmbed To Generate Thumbnails From Content On YouTube And Other Social Media Sites

2011-04-10T22:00:00

In my second-to-last post, I talked about showing Flash superimposed over Silverlight without the need to enable IsWindowless mode on the plugin. Something I foreshadowed but didn't discuss was where the Flash content came from, so I wanted to continue along the topic and elucidate this detail.

The Official VSTO 2010 Sanity Guide For C# Developers

2011-03-28T22:00:00

I just spent the last three hours trying to get a reference to the first row of an Excel Spreadsheet using a Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2010 managed add-in. If I were still a VB guy like I was seven years ago, this would have taken only a three minutes. But as fate would have it, arrays of cells in Excel VSTO 2010 are not zero-based; they are 1-based. So to get the first row of a workbook, you need to do this:

Silverlight IsWindowless-ness, And How You Don’t Need It To Display Flash!

2011-03-10T23:00:00

Now, a lot has been written about Silverlight interop with regard Flash, not to mention HTML, JavaScript, WCF, and even other Silverlight controls. Like my last few postings on the topic, I want to call out that even though there's much blogging that's been done on this topic, I've stumbled onto an ancillary scenario seemingly along the same lines as others. However, it's distinct enough to be worth mentioning; distinct enough to not be yet another of the same thing as the previous six links you probably just glazed over on Bing or Google.

Oh The Pains of WCF

2011-03-01T23:00:00

I've written plenty about WCF, most of it negative, some if it positive, but all of it encouraging: despite whatever issue I was facing, I always ended up being able to blast thought it, or at least circumvent it. But this encouragement has now run out. I have spent too many "courageous" nights fighting fighting fighting to get WCF to return data to me from a distant computer.

A Color Comparison Algorithm

2011-02-28T23:00:00

Every once in a while you are presented with an opportunity to write something that is truly cool. And by "cool" I don't mean programmatically interesting or logically fun. I've done cool things with SharePoint list event handlers and cool things with .NET RIA Services, for example. But what I mean here is something, literally, cool; something that someone who is not in the world of software development would overhear and think to themselves, "Wow. That sounds...cool."

Silverlight Navigation with 100% Custom Transitional Animations

2011-02-25T23:00:00

Something that's always impressed me about Silverlight (and has made my life a lot easier) has been the browser integration, both in terms of the HTML bridge and the navigation history functionality. I want to focus on the latter; the former has been beaten to death, and at this point, it's hard for me to get excited about yet another way to sling JavaScript.

Document Integration With SharePoint 2010 / Office 2010 / Silverlight 4

2011-01-29T23:00:00

I've noticed over the years that a lot of different types of windows popup whenever I click on a document in SharePoint. Back in the "2003" days, you'd be lucky if anything popped up at all. Then in 2007, when the whole publishing paradigm started to solidify in people's minds, we began to see different options when we accessed different documents...especially Office documents.

Using The SQL Server 2008/R2 MERGE Statement To Merge Single Rows In Tables

2011-01-23T23:00:00

The following logic flow seems to come up a lot in social media applications whenever there is some type of event aggregation (i.e. tracking page views, calculating popularity, counting "likes" or "comments," etc.).

Full Content Databases Causing Random COM Exceptions in SharePoint 2007

2010-12-01T23:00:00

Aw man it's been a while! My latest project is in full swing, placing me in that doldrum-ish phase when all the new/fun stuff has been figured out and I'm left with coding through the minutia of the requirements. Between that, playing with my new Windows Phone 7 (which is simply exquisite), and working on a pet project on the side, I haven't had much time to write.

The SUESS Lifecycle: Stage 3 - SmoothStreaming

2010-09-03T22:00:00

Configuring Custom Providers Using SharePoint 2010 Claims Based Authentication

2010-09-01T22:00:00

Introduction

The Truth About How Daily SharePoint Alerts Actually Work

2010-08-25T22:00:00

A document changes.

The SUESS Lifecycle: Stage 2 - Encode

2010-08-22T22:00:00

SharePoint Search: The Difference Between RowCount And TotalRows

2010-07-19T00:00:00

I just wanted to post a real quick note about something that finally dawned on me regarding the SharePoint 2007 search API. There are two properties in the ResultTable object that I've been using interchangeably, as the documentation on MSDN does little to discern them from one another. These are RowCount and TotalRows.

The SUESS Lifecycle: Stage 1 - Upload

2010-07-16T00:00:00

Getting Silverlight 4 Drag And Drop Working With The SharePoint 2010 Silverlight Web Part

2010-07-05T00:00:00

I'm working on some Silverlight 4 drag and drop functionality for a SharePoint 2010 site, and ran into the old situation where it worked fine locally, but not fine in SharePoint. What would happen is the browser, in SharePoint, actually opened the image instead of tunneling the drop event to my Silverlight control. I actually knew it wasn't going to work immediately when I noticed that the cursor was different between the two browsers: the one spawned by Visual Studio had the correct "drag" cursor, while SharePoint sported the "shortcut" one.

SUESS: A Silverlight Uploader, Encoder, and Smooth Streamer

2010-06-13T00:00:00

Programmatically Consuming Silverlight Styles

2010-04-28T00:00:00

Hard coding, as anyone who has been development software for more than 20 minutes knows, is bad news. Yet it happens over and over, but probably more as a result of laziness than anything else. And I'm not afraid to say that I've been guilty too. A lot of times, for example, when building a new web site, I am extremely diligent at putting as much styling as possible in my CSS files; my pages' HTML is so pristine that they won't even have style tags!

A Nifty SharePoint Utility to Get Web, List, and List Item Ids from a URL

2010-04-25T00:00:00

I love passing the current SharePoint page's URL around, and using that information to get access the underlying SharePoint structure and supporting data objects. The most common scenario is this: you give me a page's URL, and I'll give you the associated SPListItem- without the overhead of using the SharePoint Publishing API. Or give me URL of an SPFolder that's nested beneath several other layers of folders, and I'll return the containing SPList. In any case, the current page's URL (or, any page's URL, for that matter) can give us a great deal of context.

Programmatically Working With Alerts (And Somehow Getting List Does Not Exist Errors)

2010-03-31T00:00:00

Somehow, I've made it through over five years of SharePoint development without ever having to play with alerts. (I love whenever my posts start out that way! It's like if I haven't had to deal with it, then it must be easy, right?)

401 Reasons Why SharePoint Web Services Don't Work Anonymously

2010-01-07T00:00:00

<RANT>

Extending SharePoint Approval Workflows Using Custom Initialization And Association Data

2009-12-30T00:00:00

It is always with a bit of hesitation that I recommend using Out-Of-The-Box SharePoint Workflows to my clients. It's not because they are exactly terrible or anything; it's just another application of the 80-20 rule. And since I take such good care of my clients, they seem to become fairly well acclimated to never hearing phrases like "No" or "That's out of scope" or "That's not in the budget" or "No thanks, I've already eaten."

I'm Now Considered A SharePoint 2010 Subject Matter Expert

2009-12-22T00:00:00

I was recently asked to go to Redmond to consult on SharePoint 2010. I know that is a very obscure sentence, but being as though I am under a hefty Microsoft NDA, I basically cannot go into further detail. But what I can tell you is that I am now officially considered a SharePoint 2010 Subject Matter Expect!

I'm Back!

2009-12-20T00:00:00

I'm back...

Silverlight Controls Rendering Borders Or Paddings Of Whitespace When Deployed

2009-05-01T07:56:21

I've finally gotten to a point in my Silverlight learning where I've been able to build something worthy of running on the actual Internet instead of just letting it incubate indefinitely inside Visual Studio.

Silverlight 2.0 In Firefox 3.0 Not Working

2009-04-09T00:00:00

Boy did I pull my hair out on this one!

Weird Issue With Silverlight Repeat Buttons And Control Templates

2009-03-19T08:14:51

I've always felt that one of the coolest features of WPF and Silverlight is that the "big" controls are simply composites of smaller ones. For example, in a button, you can dig in and find borders, gradients, etc.

Microsoft Has Fixed The Visual Studio 2008 Floating Window In Debug Mode On Windows Server 2008 Bug I Submitted!

2009-03-13T00:00:00

I first noticed this bastard and posted it here. After receiving several notifications about Microsoft's progress on the resolution of this issue, without any actual fixes, I gave up, and just got used to deving with 97 windows docked on the right side of my screen.

Customizing SharePoint (WSS and MOSS) Navigation From Scratch

2009-02-27T09:07:21

My Lord, it's been a while! 2009 has gotten off to a tumultuous start for me: water damage in my condo, two home improvement projects, two failed mortgage refinances, two internal projects at work, and two public facing SharePoint web sites. With all that going on, when could I have had to philosophize about SharePoint?

WCF Service References Generating Empty Proxy Classes

2009-01-28T00:00:00

WCF has, admittedly, given me more problems that any other .NET technology I've encountered. This is probably my fault, since a colleague of mine, Scott Seely, was on the WCF team during his blue badge days, and could answer all my questions immediately. In other words, I never had to figure anything out on my own, so I never really learned it.

SharePoint - Use WCF To Get Around AllowUnsafeUpdates Errors Elegantly

2009-01-18T09:47:53

Any SharePoint developer's arch enemy is the following evil exception:

MOSS Content Management Tips

2009-01-09T11:13:39

I've been getting a lot of questions lately regarding a procedure on how to use out-of-the-box MOSS functionality to customize pages within a publishing portal. Therefore, I thought I'd write one up real quick and post it here.

The Hybrid Provider 3.0 - Released On CodePlex

2008-12-25T00:00:00

The true power of the ASP.NET SQL membership infrastructure is fully felt as a triumvirate: authentication, authorization, and profiles. Until now, the Hybrid Provider has only manifested two-thirds of this possible functionality; indeed, a "biumvirate." Allowing SharePoint authentication and profiling simultaneously against AD and SQL has been the extent of what it can do.

Silverlight Circle Animation - Animate Any UIElement Over A (NOT Bezier) Curve

2008-11-27T00:00:00

The Problem

I'm Speaking At LCNUG This Thursday! (11.20.8)

2008-11-17T00:00:00

If anyone lives in the Chicagoland area and really really really wants to haul it up to Grays Lake, IL, I'm going to be giving my first-ever keynote at the Lake County .NET Users Group!

The Hybrid Provider 2.0 - Some Sweet Updates

2008-11-03T12:56:01

After seeing all of the amazing technologies at PDC that are coming out from Microsoft, I've decided to fly though all of the side projects on my plate so I can start playing! This includes a round of updates I've been meaning to make to the Hybrid Provider 2.0. Here are some of the highlights:

The Hybrid Profiler - Picture Support

2008-11-03T00:00:00

I've added a new control to the Hybrid Profiler that supports pictures for SQL users. What it does is gets the images from a Picture Library, and loads them into a drop down for selection when the profile page is in "Edit" mode. There's also a thumbnail next to the drop down to make the user experience a little richer.

SharePoint Online - Thoughts On PDC 2008 Talk

2008-10-28T00:00:00

Okay so yesterday I got really excited about Microsoft Windows Azure, especially when SharePoint was one of five highlighted technologies that would be natively hosted in the cloud. These technologies are the "services" that make up, well, the could, and are Microsoft's bet that the current software development paradigm trend shift from SOA to services will really take off.

Windows Azure Announced At PDC 2008!

2008-10-27T00:00:00

Windows Azure was just announced, seriously, like fifty one minutes ago at PDC 2008 by Ray Ozzie at Microsoft. It is a new operating system that implements the whole “cloud” environment for hosted services and applications. The first few times I’ve heard or read about the cloud (in general) I had the same reaction I always do when I hear about new development trends or paradigm shifts.

The Hybrid Provider - Power Tools

2008-10-24T00:00:00

Something that's been passed over in all of my Hybrid Provider work has been some of the cool little tweaks I've come up with to get some of the "supporting characters" to work. If custom SharePoint authentication plays the lead role, then login pages, administrative web parts, and SQL user management tools might not be center stage, but they are certainly crucial.

Getting Accurate JavaScript Scrolling Information In SharePoint

2008-10-18T15:23:11

If I were a SharePoint psychiatrist, (which indeed I may very well be...) I would have a list of panaceas tantamount to what a therapist might actually tell a real patient. For example:

SharePoint Web Part Zone / Page Manager - Released On CodePlex

2008-10-15T15:26:27

Have you ever tried to use custom layouts to programmatically provision web part pages via the SharePoint API? F that! It seems to me like you need to take a dependency on MOSS and the Office Server publishing infrastructure. All this just to modify a web part zone? There has to be an easier way to get tasks like these done!

Assigning Custom Permission Levels On-The-Fly In SharePoint 2007

2008-10-09T18:52:45

The SharePoint API has, for the most port, elegantly deprecated obsolete functionality from 2003 to 2007. This allows legacy code to continue to compile, but still urges you forward to use new methods and procedures. One of the areas of the API that has been heavily overhauled is the permission classes.

Yeah? Well your padding is invalid and cannot be removed!

2008-09-24T00:00:00

This little error seems to poke its ugly little head in several different areas around the .NET world. In my little corner of this world, SharePoint, and more specifically custom authentication with my Hybrid Provider, this error almost brought my portal to its knees. I've finally gotten enough of a grasp on one of the causes of this error; even if this doesn't match your situation, hopefully my description will point you in the right direction.

The Hybrid Provider 2.0 - Released On CodePlex

2008-09-21T00:00:00

I've finally completed the 2.0 Code Plex release of the Hybrid Provider There are three major areas in which I have made improvements.

The Hybrid Profiler - Aggregating AD and SQL User Profile Properties For SharePoint 2007

2008-09-21T00:00:00

Introduction

Follow Up: SharePoint SPWebConfigModification Bug Closed!

2008-09-14T00:00:00

In a recent post, I discussed the SPWebConfigModification class. Part of this discussion was about an exception thrown when you use an invalid XPath to access a particular section, element, or attribute in your configuration file. The issue I noted was that there was a bug in the exception's message.

Follow Up: Visual Studio 2008 Floating Window Bug - Will Be Fixed!

2008-09-04T00:00:00

I recently blogged about a bug I found in Visual Studio where it crashes when you have undocked toolbar windows and try to run your solution. It only happens after upgrading to SP1 (VS 2008 and .NET 3.5) and running Windows Server 2008.

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Floating Window Debug Bug

2008-08-25T00:00:00

Ugh. So I just stumbled onto a bug in Visual Studio. Those of you who have upgraded to VS 2008 SP1, use floating toolbar windows, (probably on a second monitor) and debug your code have no doubt come across this. When you combine all three of these circumstances, pressing F5 to debug your code causes VS to crash with an irrecoverable internal error.

Web Setup Projects - Target Framework Issue

2008-08-12T09:39:17

I think one of the coolest new features of Visual Studio 2008 is the ability to change the target framework of a project on-the-fly. I personally wouldn't have minded if developers were only allowed to choose their framework when they created a project; the ability to change it afterwards makes upgrades and rollbacks very easy.

Programmatically Adding SmartParts To A Web Part Page

2008-08-03T11:01:19

So I'm really getting into good habits using Features, whereby every little piece of SharePoint code I write or page I customize must ultimately be deployable. All custom SharePoint functionality should be treated no differently than any other piece of software: it should be deterministic, uninstallable, and scalable. And pretty.

The SPWebConfigModification Class: No, It Doesn't Suck

2008-08-01T11:07:29

When I was working on my Hybrid Provider Installer, I came across a few things to discuss regarding the SPWebConfigModification class. One is a very minor SharePoint bug, and others are some nuances I ran into.

The Hybrid Provider Installer

2008-08-01T00:00:00

It's finally up on CodePlex! Get it here.

Replacing "HTML" Events With "AJAX" Events

2008-07-28T12:09:46

Before I developed my client-centric model for creating ASP.NET pages, I handled everything in code-behind, especially any dynamic HTML. I really only used JavaScript for quick-and-dirty DOM updates; any concept of creating controls was implemented via creating .NET objects and programmatically adding them to the page, or at the very least calling RenderControl on them to get the HTML out.

I'm Now Considered A SharePoint Subject Matter Expert!

2008-07-27T00:00:00

And NOT just by my mom!

WPF PasswordBox Using "•" (Bullet) As The PasswordChar

2008-07-14T00:00:00

Real quick:

Creating MembershipUsers With The HybridProvider

2008-07-14T00:00:00

Another quickie:

Programmatically Creating And Programmatically Deleting List Templates Programmatically Via A SharePoint 2007 Programmatic Feature That Uses Code And Not XML Programmatically!

2008-07-10T00:00:00

(Sorry that title is so obnoxious. I really want people to find this post, as it answers questions about programmatic access to SharePoint List Templates that I couldn't find elsewhere! And I want to stop as many people as I can from writing needless and onerous several thousand line XML files...)

The HybridProvider - Retrieving Passwords

2008-07-01T12:32:42

I originally wrote the Hybrid Provider using all of the default settings for its underlying SQL and AD providers. The basic paradigm I tackled was that "internal" users would be authenticating against AD; their accounts are essentially (except for profile information) read only to SharePoint.

SharePoint Workflows: Adding The Workflow Field To All Views

2008-07-01T00:00:00

I just finished building a massive SharePoint feature that provisions a list, adds a web part to a page, installs a workflow, associates that workflow with the list, adds settings to the web.config and encrypts them, and then makes you a sandwich when it's done.

Create Your Own Toolkit - ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX Control Toolkit Inheritance

2008-06-13T00:00:00

One of my favorite aspects of the AJAX Control Toolkit is that we were given not only a fully functional web app detailing all of the controls, but also the full source code. As a home-grown .NET developer, exploring the source code of the tool / control I am dealing with is a new and fantastic experience. My inner (and sometimes outer) monologue when working with other people's code is usually as such:

A Quick Gotcha With JavaScript Function Callbacks

2008-06-12T00:00:00

I thought I'd share a quick gotcha when wiring function callbacks with $addHandler in JavaScript. $addHandler takes in a DOM element, the name of the event, and a method to handle it. This looks something like:

Using ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 JSON Web Services Part 2 - A Client MVC Architecture For Your Pages

2008-05-18T00:00:00

JSON Web Services really are the jumping off point between server-centric and client-centric web development. You can add all of the pretty, JavaScript-y, AJAX-y sugar you want to your UI, but if your page or control posts back, (weather or not it is asynchronously via an Update Panel) then it is still server-centric in terms of logic.

ABCPDF "HTML To Render Is Blank" Error

2008-05-14T00:00:00

We are using WebSupergoo’s ABCPDF to render HTML as PDF documents in our application. In general, it’s not bad. However, like all third party components, stretching it outside the box is almost more difficult than it would have been to just write the damn thing from scratch. The “80-20” rule is alive and well here, and we’ve had to make several modifications to our exportation code to give our users exactly what they want.

Debugging JavaScript And Script Controls In Visual Studio 2008

2008-05-12T00:00:00

As I dig deeper and deeper into AJAX and client side programming in my ASP.NET web apps, more and more logic is being moved from managed code behind my UIs to lose JavaScript files and script controls. Of course, this means that more and more debugging is going to have to be done in non-managed source code files. And not being able to debug your code really takes the fun out of programming. It's pretty much like Moses telling the Israelites that they had to make bricks without straw!

Embedding .NET Code in XSLT StyleSheets

2008-05-11T00:00:00

XSLT is a great way to add extensibility to your application. You are basically storing procedural logic in, essentially, a text file. This way, as your app inevitably changes, you can update it without needing to go through a messy redeployment. Whether you are serializing business objects from a SQL FOR XML query or simply touching up some dynamic HTML, XSLT is the way to go for architectures that anticipate a lot change, and require the flexibility to keep up with it.

Using ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 JSON Web Services In SharePoint 2007

2008-05-01T00:00:00

I've been writing a lot lately about getting SharePoint 2007 operating in the latest-and-greatest environments, and using the latest-and-greatest technology to build its content. With this post, this will all come to fruition, as I add JSON Web Services to the mix. As it stands, in terms of my previous posts, (which make for excellent bathroom reading) here's where we're at:

The HybridProvider - Search

2008-04-29T00:00:00

An issue came up today with my Hybrid Provider that I felt I should address. Actually, the issue wasn't something not working; instead, it was a case where I had forgotten how I did it! And we all know this happens in programming, and especially in SharePoint. When, at about 3:47 AM you stumble onto a solution, you are more likely to want to move on with your life and put the issue behind you than you are to blog about it and dwell upon it.

SharePoint 2007, Windows Server 2008, AJAX 3.5, And Ibuprofen

2008-04-15T00:00:00

I just finished getting AJAX 3.5 working on SharePoint 2007 for an internal project I'm working on, and now I learn that we are going to be migrating our server from a Windows Server 2003 VM to a brand spankin' new Windows Server 2008 box. So I reimaged my machine with WS2K8, installed SharePoint, and got everything working.

SharePoint 2007 Workflow - Issue With Content Type For Custom Edit Forms

2008-04-06T16:25:19

I just ran into a little gotcha with SharePoint workflows. If you are using custom edit forms, you're going to have to create a new content type for them. This requires only adding a new XML file to your WF project that has a no more than a dozen lines, and adding it to your feature.

Getting A User Control Targeting ASP.NET 3.5 Working In The SmartPart For SharePoint 2007

2008-04-06T16:20:47

One of the really nice things about .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5, in terms of upgrading existing .NET 2.0 applications, is that all three target the same (2.0) runtime. What this means for developers is that we only have to worry about referencing the correct assemblies. It's the same CLR, just with all the new goodies of WPF, WF, WCF, and LINQ.

How To Get A Client Reference To An ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Accordion Control In JavaScript

2008-04-04T00:00:00

Every once in a while, you stumble onto something in programming that saves several days of thinking or several weeks of brute force. I just stumbled onto such a gem. If you Google how to use JavaScript to manipulate an ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Accordion, you're going to get more results on coffee and musical instruments than you will for actual help with this control...that seems to always cut it close in terms of the headache vs. AJAX magic ratio.

Table Mouseover Fires When Cells And Rows Are MousedOver (More IE6 Fun)

2008-03-27T00:00:00

Today must be national "IE 6 Is A Piece Of Dog Crap" day...

Radio Button Bug In IE 6

2008-03-27T00:00:00

Radio buttons are kind of annoying. They always seem to have some little quark about them that doesn't quite seem to get us all the way there. Besides, they are gratuitous: if you need a single selection from several options, you can use a dropdown; if there are only two options, you can use a checkbox. (Checkboxes are more "natural" anyways, since you see these on paper forms all the time. Radio buttons always make me think of standardized tests.)

An In-Depth-ish Look At ASP.NET 2.0 Timeouts

2008-03-26T22:14:15

“Nothing on the web should ever take more than five seconds,” a mentor of mine once said. I’ve kept that in mind every time I’ve ever had to deal with a timeout issue.

Opening ASP.NET 2.0 Web Page Exports In Client Apps Instead Of Browser Plug-Ins (Part 2 - PDF)

2008-03-12T00:00:00

In a recent post I discussed how to open a web page in Excel...that is, in the actual Excel Office application, not in a crap-like Excel browser window. Well, the users loved it and inevitably wanted more. Whenever you see Excel exportation in your requirements, rest assured that PDF is soon to follow...

Using ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 JSON Asynchronous Web Services

2008-03-10T22:33:56

I have finally gotten around to playing with asynchronous ASP.NET AJAX JSON web services, and WHAT a beautiful thing they are! You can call a .NET web service asynchronously from the client, and play with a full object in JavaScript as the response all without a post back! And when I say a full object, I mean just that; my object had properties with primitive types, collections, and even other objects...all in JavaScript!

Listen JavaScript... I Need Some (Function) Closure To Our Relationship

2008-03-05T22:13:15

I am working on what I call the "TreeJAX" control. It a tree that is bound to a hierarchical collection of objects. The root node is built in code on the control's load method. Then, whenever a node is clicked, I use ASP.NET AJAX JSON asynchronous web services to dynamically build the children all from client script.

Opening An ASP.NET 2.0 Web Form In Excel Client, Not Excel Browser

2008-02-28T00:00:00

Exporting to Excel seems like a feature that everyone wants to see. I feel as though if I'm not mimicking or automating Excel in some way, I'm dumping data directly into it. Anyways, you can Google dozens of ways to get an ASP.NET 2.0 web application to export to Excel.

Cassini Slow To Load ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Assemblies

2008-02-25T00:00:00

For the last few weeks, I've been plugging along at my client, working on a massive ASP.NET 2.0 web application that makes a massive usage of ASP.NET AJAX. I use (and reuse) the term massive purposefully: this app, as everyone agrees, should be a Win Forms deal. We have had to manage modal dialogs, Office-like functionality, lots of pages and user controls, script controls, web services, and about a dozen references.

Rendering Divs As Buttons

2008-02-10T00:00:00

I'm sure we all know the difference between HTML input controls of type "submit" and "button" with respect to an ASP.NET web form. But just in case you don't, the major different is that submits (which are what ASP.NET buttons ultimately render) will do a post back. Now, nine times out of ten, if you but an actual button on a page, you are going to be posting back.

Opening A Window With Window.Open From A Window Opened With Window.Open (And AJAX)

2008-02-05T00:00:00

Using ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX has finally given me a server-side method to perform a window.open that I am comfortable with:

Office 2007 Integration With The SharePoint 2007 Hybrid Provider

2008-02-05T00:00:00

One of the first things that didn't work with my Hybrid Provider was opening Office documents from SharePoint. Since SharePoint loads the doc from the server, the user is re-authenticated before the client application will open it. In fact, when setting up a forms-based membership provider for SharePoint, a note on the page warns that client integration with forms auth is problematic. You actually have to check a box to enable it!

Getting ASP.NET AJAX (And The AJAX Control Toolkit) Working In SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 1

2008-01-22T00:00:00

What??? SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 1 will support AJAX? Awesome! Even though I already have all my hacks and workarounds in place to get it to work, explicit support will be great! Not only will my development experience be a lot cleaner and easier, but the fact that Microsoft is supporting it means that it will be more readily adopted by clients.

Reasonable Handler For Close (X) Click Event On The Browser

2008-01-15T00:00:00

Here's a little trick I came up with to "handle" the "event" when the user clicks the close (X) button on Internet Explorer. I use quotes because there really isn't an event for this action, and what I do with it isn't really handling an event either. But it works!

ASP.NET Pages Rendering Blank Body Tags

2007-12-02T00:00:00

Real quick: if you're ever working in ASP.NET and a page loads without any indication of an error other than there being 100% no content whatsoever, check the code in global.asax in that project. I had an application that did all sorts of nonsense in the application_start event, and due to an errant configuration file change, that code blew up.

Accessing AD Data From SharePoint

2007-12-01T00:00:00

I've been hitting the forums up lately to see if I can make the world a better place one SharePoint issue at time. Well, apparently, this SharePoint world is in really bad proverbial shape, and one of the largest oppressors is Active Directory. "How do I get AD information in SharePoint?" Ugh. AD has always reminded me of an old Oldsmobile. It'll get you from point A (not authenticated) to point B (authenticated) and even to point C (authorized) without any fuss.

The HybridProvider - An Investigation Into Slow AD Authentication

2007-11-14T00:00:00

So everything’s been hunky-dory with my Hybrid Provider; I’ll get back to that...

Fun Times With The AJAX Control Toolkit Collapsible Panel

2007-11-14T00:00:00

Now don’t get me wrong: compared to all other control suites I’ve used, ASP.NET AJAX has been, in terms of the whiz-bang-features-slash-make-my-life-easier vs. deal-with-the-hell-of-trying-to-make-other-people’s-code-do-exactly-what-I-want metric, the best tool. It gives my users a whole new experience, and actually integrates fairly seamlessly with my existing ASP.NET 2.0 web applications.

Using Access 2007 to Migrate SharePoint Content

2007-05-22T00:00:00

In my career, Microsoft Access has really played one and only one role: the legacy system we frantically had to get our client far far away from. Aside from one nightmarish development experience writing an application in it, Access has been that *** database that one person in the firm can’t live without and each and every developer / DBA / administrator refuses to touch it.

A Tale of Two Servers: Migrating SharePoint From a Hosted 2003 Environment to a Local 2007 Server

2007-05-22T00:00:00

When it comes to SharePoint 2007 migrations, Microsoft has plenty of different ways to approach them…well…actually only two different ways. And of course, when I sat down to perform our migration, the feasibility of each of these paths quickly evaporated. Here is the tail of my migration woes and the twisted path down which I had to travel to get it to work.

Circumvent Office Activation

2007-03-07T00:00:00

It took me a while to decide if I wanted to blog about this, but I decided that it is something that can make a developer's life a lot easier. There is a workaround to the whole Office 2007 activation wizard. Normally, you have (depending on your version) a certain amount of days or usages of Office before you have to activate it. Although this helps protect against software piracy, I've found it to be annoying when I'm developing against Office.

Where Is InfoPath Forms Services In SharePoint 2007 Standard?

2007-02-26T00:00:00

It's not!

The Hybrid Provider - Authenticating Both AD And SQL Users In SharePoint 2007

2007-01-29T00:00:00

Introduction

Taking The Bull By The (Codename) Longhorns

2006-12-16T00:00:00

It's been a while since my last post, and there's good reason for it: I've begun research for an article that will overview Windows Server Codename Longhorn's IIS 7 and its role in setting up a web farm. So stay tuned for that in the upcoming weeks.

Joining A Windows XP Virtural Machine To A Domain

2006-11-02T00:00:00

I broke one of my main rules in life and purchased a cheapo computer from an unkown website...and it's been problem after problem ever since. At first I thought that it might have something to do with the x64 architecture, but who knowns. Most of the issues I've encountered are probably due to this, and are not worth mentioning.

Converting Between String And Byte Array Representations Of SIDs

2006-10-22T00:00:00

I've been at a client for quite some time doing SharePoint work, and came across an interesting issue. They have about 1,000 "corporate" users and 5,000 "field" users, with account names that follow a first-initial-last-name naming convention. And despite some minor dyslexia floating around the domain administrators casing the occasional mis-named or no-named login, all was well. Whenever I needed to identify my users, I would rarely have to look beyond System.Environment.UserName to get it.

A Brief Insight Into SharePoint Lists

2006-10-21T00:00:00

SharePoint lists can be a convenient mechanism to store data in a database table-ish manner without having to leave your comfy SharePoint home. However, before you get too comfy living in a SharePoint list data storage paradigm, there are just a few things I'd like to throw out there.

Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition Shut Down Issue

2006-09-29T00:00:00

A friend of mine is running Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition on his machine, and was having an interesting problem. Apparently, Windows would decide to randomly shut down right in the middle of a session. There were no warning or error messages; the computer would behave exactly as if it were properly shut down: Office applications would ask if the current document should be saved, the standard Windows shut down procedures would run, and the computer would turn off.

InfoPathology - Part 12 - SharePoint Web Services

2006-07-29T12:41:29

Web Services are wonderful devices that allow us to run code from almost anywhere we have access to. The best part of all is that it is as easy as deploying the code's output to a shared location, and then adding a web reference to it. However, creating a SharePoint web service is a bit more involved. Below is my simplified (from MSDN) method of creating these web services from scratch.

InfoPathology - Part 11 - SharePoint Integration

2006-07-28T00:00:00

As mentioned in a pervious posting, SharePoint Form Libraries are a natural home for InfoPath forms to live in. If you are creating basic forms that will be filled out by multiple users and all stored in the same place, then out-of-the-box SharePoint and InfoPath functionality take care of over half of the system development for you.

InfoPathology - Part 10 - Form Deployment

2006-07-27T00:00:00

Finally, now that our InfoPath forms have been completed, it’s time to cover form deployment. (I’m going to skip SharePoint deployment for now, as that will be discussed in a later posting.) If you are going to use straight InfoPath with no managed code, then a lot what I discuss here will not be a worry for you.

InfoPathology - Part 9 - Calling Web Services From Code

2006-07-26T00:00:00

One of the nicest things InfoPath can do for a developer is aggregate Web Services and transparently present their functionality to use as secondary data sources. These data sources are great for binding drop down lists and populating repeating controls. However, they are not so great when we want to store the data they return and manipulate it later.

InfoPathology - Part 8 - Auto Populating Data From ASP.NET Pages

2006-07-25T00:00:00

Although SharePoint Form Libraries are the natural home for published InfoPath forms, they are not the only home. As long as the form is located in a routable location on a web server, we can directly link to them from an ASP.NET Web Form and populate them with user data.

InfoPathology - Part 7 - Popup Error Validation

2006-07-24T00:00:00

One of the nicest things about InfoPath is that it adds some pizzazz to otherwise boring controls. It'll outline textboxes as you mouse over them, shade sections and tables, and a host of other "pretty" things that set InfoPath apart form Win Form and Web Apps. One of the nicest of these nice-to-haves is the implicit runtime form validation formatting. This is pretty much a build-in implementation of the Win Form's error provider, without all the configuration.

InfoPathology - Part 6 - File Attachments & Clean Forms

2006-07-23T00:00:00

File Attachments

InfoPathology - Part 5 - Win Forms & Popup Message Boxes

2006-07-20T00:00:00

Win Forms

InfoPathology - Part 4 - Populating Repeating Tables

2006-07-19T00:00:00

Repeating tables are beautiful things. It is the most elegant implementation of dynamic data inputting I've ever seen. However, the beauty quickly fades after going from the UI to the code behind. To start, simply enumerating a table is onerous enough. This entails getting into the InfoPath DOM, and literally looping through the auto-generated XML using an XPath query.

InfoPathology - Part 3 - Managed Code Tips And Tricks

2006-07-18T00:00:00

If code-behind is the chosen path for your solution, you have in your arsenal all of the big guns the .NET Framework provides. But before going into some of the tips and tricks I use to push the envelope on InfoPath, there is one important realization to needs to be made: having code-behind doesn’t mean that InfoPath rules and web services will not be used.

InfoPathology - Part 2 - The Code-Behind Conundrum

2006-07-17T00:00:00

One of my favorite aspects of writing Windows applications is the sheer bliss of security ignorance. Now, of course, we have to prepare for situations when users do not have certain rights on their workstations, but for the most part, we are free to code without fear of permission denials, code access security errors, and login screens popping up with every button click. However, unlike ASP.NET, users have to do a little bit more than simply browse to a URL and scribble in their password to get to the application.

InfoPathology - Part 1 - Introduction

2006-07-16T00:00:00

InfoPathology is, literally, the study of InfoPath. Now although I made this word up, it defines exactly what this series of blogs intends to do: help people understand InfoPath, and study it in different ways. Part 1 is an introduction to the technology, and the niche it fills in the development world. But before I begin, I have a bit of a disclaimer.