CorasWorks: Growing with the deployment

Robert Bogue October 31, 2005 No Comments

I typically don’t make a big deal out of the software I use on a daily basis because I figure that people have their own unique needs and we all get bludgeoned nearly to death by constant bombardment with new tools, techniques, and processes that are going to save the world.

However, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with CorasWorks lately and there were a few observations I wanted to make about the product suite that I don’t think is being well portrayed in the market. To be clear, I’ve already shared the essence of this post with them in a candid conversation at CorasWorks University last week.

What I’ve found with SharePoint is that it’s really about getting together a set of very flexible and very fundamental tools and building creative things with them. So much has been made of the content editor web part – and what it does is so simple … it emits HTML code. How sophisticated do you have to be to write a web part that emits the HTML that is provided to it.

Some of my clients view CorasWorks in a similar way … how hard is it to roll up a few lists? Frankly, not that hard. However, that’s focusing on the tactical problem without taking a step back. Rolling up a few lists is trivially simple. Creating a framework for managing that rolled up data, providing a complete set of views, providing support, etc. is where it gets hard.

The navigational components that are provided with CorasWork’s suite are fundamental and perhaps even some what trivial – however, they are – for the most part – a good set of tools that do provide great flexibility and most of the fundamentals that you need.

In fact, the biggest complaint I have about the navigational components is that the current released version doesn’t support relative paths. This is eating me alive at my current client as we try desperately not to bind in any environment specific configuration into out site definitions and other files. Although it’s an up-hill challenge, I’m hoping that they will add relative path support to their Special Site Navigation component. (I’d love to hear your comments if you’re struggling with the same issue.)

Their other navigation tools, Workplace View Advanced, and the SPS cousin are more sophisticated but are limited to the two dimensional movement through a site or area hierarchy. It’s useful for site-to-site navigation but doesn’t help when you need to link applications within a portal together.

I mentioned that they are fundamental building blocks. What I have been most impressed about as I’m installing CorasWorks into my third large scale implementation is it’s ability to grow with the environment. Through the use of some undocumented properties (that I’ll likely blog about soon) it’s possible to gain very fine-level control of how things appear. This means that tools that may originally fill a specific niche around roll ups may grow up into a set of tools that continue to drive the core of the portal for years to come.

So if you’re researching CorasWorks and wonder if it will get a few users or many users – think along the side of many users. When you learn all of the advanced tricks it’s really amazing what you can do with the tool – including very customized menus and spectacular roll ups. I’ll start posting on how to do a few of these things in the coming weeks. For now, just know that there are plenty of undocumented or under-documented features just waiting to be unleashed. Know that these features aren’t being discussed much in the market — they’re seen as an entry level tool which is useful to get started, however, the amount of “runway” that you have with CorasWorks is pretty substantial.

A few quick how-to documents

Robert Bogue October 31, 2005 No Comments

I needed to do some simple how-to documents for some developers I’m working with so I thought I would share with everyone these step-by-step guides for doing some SharePoint (and .NET) fundamentals.

I hope they’re helpful.

Code Snipit Management Tools — Why?

Robert Bogue October 31, 2005 No Comments

Perhaps it’s because it’s late while I’m writing this … perhaps I’ve missed some big revolution in software development but I don’t understand…

Why do we need code snipit tools? Shouldn’t we have classes and methods (even if they’re static) rather than fancy tools to do the same copy-paste routine we’ve been telling developers not to do for 30 years?

Why can’t we all make an effort to put our code in reusable “chunks”?

How to Copy a Web Part

Robert Bogue October 28, 2005 No Comments

This how to describes the process for copying a web part.

Open a SharePoint site.
Make sure you’re in Shared Mode.
Enter design mode
On the web part to copy, click the down arrow on the right and select export.
Save the file on your system
Go to the site where you want the control added
Enter Shared Mode
Select Add Web Parts-Import
Browse to the file and click import
Drop the web part on the page.

You’ve now copied a web part from one web page to another. Note that this won’t work for ListViewWebParts or ListFormWebParts.

How to Strong Name a Web Part

Robert Bogue October 28, 2005 No Comments

Strong Naming web parts helps to make sure that they can not be tampered with – just like signing any .NET assembly does. However, because of the nature of SharePoint, there are a few additional steps that are required after the assembly is strong named to ensure that the web part can be deployed and correctly loaded.

The process involves two major steps: Strong Naming the Assembly, Changing the DWP file(s).

Strong Naming the Assembly

Strong naming the assembly is covered in a separate document. Signing the web part assembly itself is no different than any other .NET assembly. See How to Strong Name an Assembly

Changing the DWP File(s)

The DWP file that Visual Studio creates uses the name of the assembly without a strong name. The fully identified assembly name must be used to load all strong named assemblies, so if the DWP file is not modified it will fail to load the assembly – and you’ll get an error message that the control is not marked as safe.

The quickest way to get the correct assembly definition in the DWP file is to use GACUtil – which installs the DLL into the GAC. The process for getting the full assembly name and adding it into the DWP appears below:

Open a command prompt and navigate to the project’s bin\debug directory.
Type GACUTIL /I MyAssembly.dll where MyAssembly.DLL is the name of the assembly for the project. You’ll see a message that the Assembly was successfully added to the cache.
Type GACUTIL /u MyAssembly where MyAssembly is the name of the assembly for the project – without the DLL extension. You will see a set of messages which show the full name of the assembly including it’s publickeytoken.
Copy the Uninstalled line, including any additional information that appears on the next line to the clip board.
Go to Visual Studio and open the DWP file.
Paste the copied text between the and tags replacing what was there.

How to Create a Deployment CAB project

Robert Bogue October 28, 2005 No Comments

Deployment of web parts is done through CAB files. These cab files contain a manifest.xml file that explains the contents of the CAB file, at least one DWP file which specifies the properties for a web part and normally one or more DLL files which are the executing code for a web part.

Visual Studio creates a template Manifest.xml and a sample DWP file for you when you create a new SharePoint project. This “how to” document will show you how to create a CAB file project in Visual Studio. Follow these steps to create the cab file project:

Right click the solution in Visual Studio and select Add-New Project.
In the Setup and Deployment Projects select Cab Project
Enter a name for the project. Ideally this is the name of the web part project followed by “CAB”.
Verify that the Location is the correct location.
Click the OK button
Right click the new cab project, Click Add-Project Output
In the project drop down in the dialog that appears select the project file of the web part – if necessary.
Click Primary Output and hold the control key down while clicking Content Files so that both are selected.
Click the OK button.

If you need to add additional DWP files to the project, make sure to set their build action to content. This can be done by selecting the DWP file, right clicking, selecting properties and setting build action to content.

How to Strong Name an Assembly

Robert Bogue October 28, 2005 No Comments

A strong name is a cryptographic public/private key pair that is applied to an assembly in order to prove that it has not been tampered with after compilation. The process of strong naming an assembly has three components: creating the key, adding the key to the project, and adding the key to the assembly. We’ll look at each part in turn.

Creating the Key

The process of creating the key is relatively straight forward as Visual Studio ships with a utility that creates the key for you. Follow these steps to create the key:

Start a Visual Studio Command prompt.
Navigate to the project directory for the project.
Enter the command ‘sn –k myproject.snk’ where myproject is the name of the project. The key that is created will have the name of myproject.snk.
Close the command prompt.

You now have a strong name key which can be added to the project.

Adding the Key to the Project

Now that you have the key, you need to add it to the project. This is done to ensure that Visual Studio will manage the check in and check out process for you. Follow these steps to add the key to the project:

Right click the project, select Add, Add an existing item
Change the Files of type drop down to All Files (*.*)
Select the myproject.snk file and Click the OK button. As before myproject should be replaced with your project name.
Select File-Save All from the menu.

You’ve now added the key to the project. It will be checked in and out when you select those commands in Visual Studio.

Adding the Key to the Assembly

The final step in the creation of a strong name is to add the key to the assemblyinfo.cs file. This file was already added to your project for you. Here’s how to add the key to the assembly:

Open the AssemblyInfo.cs file.
Locate the line [assembly: AssemblyKeyFile(“”)]
Swap the set of double quotes with @”..\..\myproject.snk” so that the line looks like [assembly: AssemblyKeyFile(@”..\..\myproject.snk”)]. As above, replace myproject with your project name. Note that the at sign says to C# that you don’t want to use escape characters. The pairs of periods are parent directory transitions. These are needed since the signing process takes place in either the bin\debug or bin\release directories – thus the key file, which is in the root of the project, is two levels above the assembly.
Save the file.

You’re successfully added a strong name to an assembly.

Article: Concrete Code for a Quick Configuration

Robert Bogue October 26, 2005 No Comments

In my last article, ” Caught Up in Code, or Quick Configuration”, I proposed that you build more configuration based software solutions and less software that is governed by the relatively rigid rules of code alone. That article focused on the concept of configuration-based development. In this article the focus is on using the patterns for implementing a configuration-based solution.

A Few Examples

Before we drop into the details of a code sample, here are a few quick examples of how you can apply the configuration based pattern in the code you’re writing.:

Factory Pattern – Using reflection, generics, interfaces, and a configuration file, you can create a strongly typed factory that can generate objects of any type. You wouldn’t have to worry about ever building another factory class.
Optional Display – User Interface trimming, in other words, removing items from a menu when the user doesn’t have access to them is a time consuming process. However, a control can be built uses a list to determine the menu options and performs the security check as a part of drawing the menu. You wouldn’t have to worry about trimming my UI because the control manages security automatically.

http://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/3558711

Unghosting — themes are not your friend

Robert Bogue October 24, 2005 No Comments

One of the things that I was reminded of today was that anytime you apply a theme to a SharePoint site the site gets unghosted. I can’t wait until this isn’t an issue…

Article: A Sensible Framework for SharePoint Intranet Navigation

Robert Bogue October 24, 2005 1 Comment

It’s never the first thing that I get asked on an engagement. It’s never the burning question in the minds of my customer as they seek out a consultant to help them with SharePoint. However, sooner or later it eventually comes to the topic of navigation. Although the fundamental concepts behind a sensible navigation framework are simple, they are not well understood by developers or designers. This article is designed for both audiences as they seek to make SharePoint usable.

Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds

Emerson (who said “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”) is a personal favorite author of mine;
however, he didn’t have to train hoards of users how to use a new interface. There’s definitely something to be
said for creating the kind of navigation that users are accustomed to. In the world of the Web that means
navigation belongs on the top and on the left.

Nearly every non-marketing Web site will follow a pattern with navigation on the top and on the left-hand side.
While what is on the top and left side differs, the fact that these spaces are reserved for navigation normally does
not. So if you’ve got a wild side, or feel like training scores of users, you can move the navigation — otherwise
we’re more or less stuck with the accepted norm.

Please enjoy a free copy of this article, also located on our Gifts page

Public Speaking

Strong Naming the Assembly

Changing the DWP File(s)

Creating the Key

Adding the Key to the Project

Adding the Key to the Assembly

A Few Examples

Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds

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