DevExpertise

I briefly went over my approach to creating a custom SharePoint theme in my previous post, and I even included a downloadable solution package that you can install on your farm (provided you have the .NET 3.5 Framework installed).  How did I accomplish this?  Pretty easily actually.  Unfortunately there isn’t much documentation or examples of this out there, so allow me to put an end to that!

SharePoint features and solutions are absolutely essential if you want to provide an easy and maintainable method of deploying custom artifacts to your SharePoint servers.  A theme is a perfect candidate for this, as everything is file-system based and located with the 12 directory.  The only odd thing that throws a monkey wrench in this seemingly simple process is the SPTHEMES.XML file, which must be updated to include an entry for your custom theme.  Here’s a portion of that file, with the custom theme I developed in my previous post highlighted:

Now, you could by all means include the SPTHEMES.XML file in your solution and have it overwrite the existing file, but what if you have other themes defined in your file?  That approach will overwrite it, and you’ll have to reenter everything.  The recommended approach to this is to create a feature receiver that fires when the feature is installed and modifies the SPTHEMES.XML.  When the feature is installed, a custom <Templates> section is added for the custom theme, and when it’s uninstalled it’s removed.

NOTE: A feature is “installed” when you run the STSADM –o installfeature command, or when a feature is contained in a solution package and that solution package is deployed.

One important thing to mention is that this feature is scoped for the farm, not an individual site-collection or site, as the files deployed to the file system are used by the entire farm.  Let’s first take a look at the feature.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Feature xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
         Id="2D965A22-73A9-4e00-A530-06F2AF6EC89F"
         Title="DevExpertise Vista Theme"
         Description="Adds the DevExpertise Vista Theme"
         Scope="Farm"
         Version="1.0.0.0"
         ImageUrl="DevExpertise\devexpertiseLogo.png"
         ReceiverAssembly="DevExpertise.SharePoint.Themes, Version=1.0.0.0,
                           Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=d39eedb6cff9b1c8"
         ReceiverClass ="DevExpertise.SharePoint.Themes.FeatureReceiver">
</Feature>

As you can see, it is executing a custom FeatureReceiver class.  At a high-level, the receiver looks like this:

[UPDATED 5/27/2009]

I received a couple comments that let me know that if this feature is activated on a farm with multiple front-ends, then the FeatureActivated event only gets fired on a single web front-end.  This is absolutely TRUE, and an oversight on my part (thanks guys!).  The solution is extremely simple – put your code in the FeatureInstalled and FeatureUninstalling events instead, as these get fired on EVERY web front-end in your farm!!  I’ve modified the code to reflect this:

public class FeatureReceiver: SPFeatureReceiver {

    private enum ModificationType { Add, Remove }

    public override void FeatureInstalled(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) {
        ModifySPTheme(ModificationType.Add);

        // if necessary, loop through all sites and set theme
    }

    public override void FeatureUninstalling(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) {
        ModifySPTheme(ModificationType.Remove);

        // if necessary, loop through all sites and reset theme
    }

    public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) {
        // do nothing
    }

    public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) {
        // do nothing
    }
}

For the sake of simplicity, I’m not including code to set the theme on any sites.  Since this is a farm feature, it doesn’t make sense to set the theme for a particular site here, but by all means if you wanted to you could.  Basically this feature receiver is only for modifying the SPTHEMES.XML file.

Let’s take a look at the ModifySPTheme() method.  It uses LINQ to XML to open and parse the file, add the necessary elements when the feature is installed, and remove it when the feature is uninstalling:

private void ModifySPTheme(ModificationType type) {
    XDocument doc = null;
    XNamespace ns = "http://tempuri.org/SPThemes.xsd";

    // path to the SPTHEMES.XML file
    string spthemePath = Path.Combine(SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath(@"TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033"), "SPTHEMES.XML");
    string contents = string.Empty;

    // read the contents of the SPTHEMES.XML file
    using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(spthemePath)) {
        contents = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
        streamReader.Close();
    }

    using (StringReader stringReader = new StringReader(contents.Trim())) {
        // create a new XDocument from the contents of the file
        doc = XDocument.Load(stringReader);

        // retrieve all elements with a TemplateID of 'VISTA'.  At most, there should only be one
        var element = from b in doc.Element(ns + "SPThemes").Elements(ns + "Templates")
                      where b.Element(ns + "TemplateID").Value == "VISTA"
                      select b;

        // determine if the VISTA theme element already exists
        bool exists = (element != null && element.Count() > 0);

        if (type == ModificationType.Add) {
            if (!exists) {
                // create an XElement that defines our custom VISTA theme
                XElement xml =
                    new XElement(ns + "Templates",
                        new XElement(ns + "TemplateID", "VISTA"),
                        new XElement(ns + "DisplayName", "DevExpertise Vista Theme"),
                        new XElement(ns + "Description", "A Vista-like Theme"),
                        new XElement(ns + "Thumbnail", "images/DevExpertise.SharePoint.Themes/VISTA/thVISTA.gif"),
                        new XElement(ns + "Preview", "images/DevExpertise.SharePoint.Themes/VISTA/thVISTA.gif"));

                // add the element to the file and save
                doc.Element(ns + "SPThemes").Add(xml);
                doc.Save(spthemePath);
            }
        }
        else {
            if (exists) {
                // if the element exists, remove it and save
                element.Remove();
                doc.Save(spthemePath);
            }
        }

        stringReader.Close();
    }
}

Pretty slick, huh? Now, keep in mind that this only modifies the SPTHEMES.XML file – it does NOT set the theme for any site.  It will still be up to the user or site admins to set the theme for a given site.  Also, if this theme is already applied to a site and the feature is deactivated, it won’t reset the theme – it will only remove the entry from the theme settings page in Site Settings.  Finally, if a site has this theme installed and the solution package is uninstalled and/or removed, your site’s theme will be messed up because the source files are gone.  It is probably beneficial to at least loop through all the sites and reset the theme to something else if and when the feature is deactivated, but I’ll leave that to you. Enjoy!

There are plenty of resources for learning how to create themes for SharePoint.  A theme is a pre-packaged set of styles and images that make your SharePoint site look a little less…well…”SharePoint-y”.  Themes are limited in the respect that they don’t really modify the layout and positioning of your pages, but rather change the colors and background images applied to elements.  You can still get pretty fancy with just a theme, but recognize that it’s not enough to completely eliminate the default look and feel.

That said, let’s take a look at theme I put together for the purposes of this blog.  It is loosely based on Vista’s black and aqua stylings, and is aptly named “Vista Theme”.  Before I get into the details about how I approach theme development (since it’s probably not the way you’re used to), let’s take a look at some screenshots of what the finished theme looks like.  In addition, I’m feeling extra generous today and have provided my completed theme for your enjoyment

Home Page:

Calendar:

Reports Subsite:

Document Library:

Search Center:

Site Actions Menu:

Theme Development 
Ok…now that I’ve [hopefully] gotten your attention, let me discuss what it took to develop this theme.  As you probably know, themes are stored in the following SharePoint directory:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\THEMES\

In here you’ll find all of the themes that ship with SharePoint out of the box, including GRANITE, SIMPLE, JET, etc..  To create your own theme, the easiest way is to start with a theme you like, copy the folder, and rename it something unique.  In my case, I named it VISTA.  Once you have created your custom folder, it’s imperative you locate the .INF file inside your theme folder, and rename to the name of the folder.  Again, in my case, VISTA.INF.  Next, open it up and change every occurrence of the previous theme’s name, and update it with the name of yours:

The next part is a little unorthodox, and I originally saw this approach described by Heather Solomon, and it has proven extremely useful and efficient.  The idea is to separate the actual theme artifact files (CSS and images) from the theme definition.  The theme definition, which includes every file in the theme folder, is cached whenever the theme is applied to the site.  This means that the only way you can make changes and see them appear is by updating the files in the file system, setting the site’s theme to another theme other than your own, and finally applying your theme again.  Trust me, this is nowhere near ideal when it comes to CSS, as I guarantee you’ll have to try something, test, try something, test, and so on.  The other option is to use SharePoint Designer and modify the cached files, in which case you must remember to update the actual file system files before it gets cached again. The beauty of Heather’s approach is that a single CSS file is cached, and the only thing it contains is a link to a file and the images on the file system in another location which aren’t cached.  This will allow you to make changes directly to the files on the file system and immediately see your changes.

Here is the structure of my Visual Studio solution.  NOTE: The VISTA folder is collapsed due to space, but inside it are all of my images and style sheets:

The next steps are typical – create an entry in the SPTHEMES.XML file that identifies your theme, reset IIS or recycle the application pool, and apply your theme.  If all was successful, you should see the following in your site’s theme settings page:

One thing I would like to explicitly explain – how to create custom web part headers.  If you pay close attention to the above screenshots, you’ll notice all of my web parts look like this:

This is achieve relatively easily as long as you can create decent-looking header images with your editor of choice (mine is Photoshop).  Basically you need 3 images: a background, a left side, and a right side. Zoomed in, my custom images look like the following:

wp-header-bg.gif:

wp-header-right.gif

wp-header-left.gif

The CSS styles are fairly simple:

/* Web Part Header Styles */
h3.ms-WPTitle {
    background: url('wp-header-left.gif') top left no-repeat;
    font-size: 8pt;
    padding: 3px 0px 4px 6px; }    

h3.ms-WPTitle, h3.ms-WPTitle a, h3.ms-WPTitle a:link,
h3.ms-WPTitle a:hover, h3.ms-WPTitle a:visited{
    color:#181818;}    

.ms-WPHeader TD {
    border-bottom:1px #297c95 solid;
    background: url('wp-header-bg.gif') top left repeat-x;
    padding-right: 0 !important; }        

.ms-WPHeader .ms-HoverCellInActive, .ms-WPHeader .ms-HoverCellActiveDark {
    background: url('wp-header-right.gif')  no-repeat right 0px;
    margin-top:0px;
    margin-right:0px; }

H3.ms-standardheader SPAN {
    color: #181818;}

/* Web Part Header Hover Image Styles */
.ms-HoverCellInActive, .ms-SpLinkButtonInActive{
    padding-right:5px;
    padding-top:2px;
    margin-bottom:0px; }

.ms-HoverCellActiveDark{
    border:none;
    padding-right:4px;
    padding-top:2px; }

.ms-HoverCellActiveDark img{
    border:1px black solid;
    background: #5E5E5E;}     

The only drawback to including these styles in a theme is these are applied to each and every web part in your site. It may not be appropriate to style all of the web parts, but rather web parts on a single page.  If you only want web parts on a single page to be styled, then you could add the CSS classes to a Content Editor Web Part, or link to the style sheet on the page’s page layout.  The important thing to note is that all web parts on a single page will by styled the same.  There’s no easy way to apply a style to one web part and not the other.  For simplicity sake, I’ve just included these styles in my theme.

You can download this theme and install it via the following farm-scoped feature.  NOTE:  The feature receiver I’m using relies on classes from the .NET 3.5 Framework (you’ll see why in my next post), but this will fail if you try to install it on a farm that doesn’t have 3.5.  If you’re just interested in the source files and style sheets, change the .WSP extension to .CAB and extract the stuff you want.  As I mentioned, I will be explaining how to install a theme via a feature in my next post.  Stay tuned!

I’ve done a little work in the recent months with Silverlight, specifically with leveraging Silverlight inside of SharePoint.  My first project involved a pulling in data from SharePoint via a WCF service, and while it worked, it took a long time to configure correctly and to add the necessary components to SharePoint in order for it to work.  Sahil Malik describes a method beginning here, and as you can see it’s definitely doable but not the simplest approach.

While creating a WCF will offer you the most power and flexibility when it comes to the data it can expose, as you can manipulate SharePoint data (or any data for that matter) any way you like.  In this post, I’m going to show you how to retrieve SharePoint list data in Silverlight the “old-fashioned” way – by using the out-of-the-box SharePoint web services, and executing an HttpWebRequest to get our data.

Because there are a ton of different concepts I could elaborate on related to Silverlight and SharePoint, such as creating a web part host, configuring SharePoint for Silverlight, etc., for the sake of this post I’m going to keep it focused on the data retrieval only.  In future posts, I’ll dive into my approach for hosting a Silverlight app in SharePoint.  Also, take a look at this post from Karine Bosch – she has a very similar approach and hers is a lot prettier than mine!

First, I defined the “Widgets” list I want to retrieve data from. In addition to the Title field, it contains a Description field and an Image field:

Next, I created a new Silverlight application in Visual Studio, and defined a Widget class, which will serve as the representation of a Widget list item:

public class Widget {
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
    public string ImageUrl { get; set; }
}

I also added a few class-level variables in my Page.xaml.cs file, which I’ll use in my data methods:

private List<Widget> _widgets = null;
private Stream _body = null;
private string _responseString;

For the data retrieval, I’m going to be leveraging the out-of-the-box Lists.asmx web service to retrieve the list items, and build an HttpWebRequest object.  The BeginGetRequestStream method executes the request, and will asynchronously call the RequestCallback method when it finishes:

private void GetData() {
    try {
        Uri listUri = new Uri("http://server/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx", UriKind.Absolute);
        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(listUri);

        request.Method = "POST";
        request.ContentType = "application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8";
        request.Headers["ClientType"] = "Silverlight";
        request.BeginGetRequestStream(new AsyncCallback(RequestCallback), request);
    }
    catch (Exception ex) {
        HandleException(ex);
    }
}

Here’s where the real work needs to be done.  In our callback method, we need to build a SOAP envelope that will be passed to the web service in order to get a valid response.  If you’re uncertain where to find that envelope or are unsure if how it should be formatted, simply browse to the web service itself and click the method that you will be executing:

Once the SOAP envelope format is determined, simply add in the listName, viewName (if necessary), query, viewFields, and queryOptions, and you have your envelope.  The next step is to get the response by asynchronously executing the BeginGetResponse method and passing in the ResponseCallback callback method:

private void RequestCallback(IAsyncResult asyncResult) {
    try {
        string envelope =
            @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8""?>
                <soap12:Envelope
                 xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance""
                 xmlns:xsd=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema""
                 xmlns:soap12=""http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"">
                    <soap12:Body>
                        <GetListItems xmlns=""http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/"">
                            <listName>Widgets</listName>
                            <query>
                                <Query xmlns="""">
                                    <OrderBy>
                                        <FieldRef Name=""Title"" />
                                    </OrderBy>
                                </Query>
                            </query>
                            <viewFields>
                                <ViewFields xmlns="""">
                                    <FieldRef Name=""Title"" />
                                    <FieldRef Name=""Description"" />
                                    <FieldRef Name=""Image"" />
                                </ViewFields>
                            </viewFields>
                            <queryOptions>
                                <QueryOptions xmlns="""">
                                    <IncludeMandatoryColumns>False</IncludeMandatoryColumns>
                                </QueryOptions>
                            </queryOptions>
                        </GetListItems>
                    </soap12:Body>
                </soap12:Envelope>";

        UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)asyncResult.AsyncState;
        _body = request.EndGetRequestStream(asyncResult);
        envelope = string.Format(envelope, _listName);
        byte[] formBytes = encoding.GetBytes(envelope);

        _body.Write(formBytes, 0, formBytes.Length);
        _body.Close();

        request.BeginGetResponse(new AsyncCallback(ResponseCallback), request);
    }
    catch (WebException ex) {
        HandleException(ex);
    }
}

The ResponseCallback method is responsible for determining that the response is valid, and to get the data out of the response.  Once the data is retrieved from the response stream, the only step left is to process that data, and for that we call ProcessResponse.  We must use the BeginInvoke() method of the page’s Dispatcher object, because all of the data retrieval is done asynchronously on a different thread.  Since you can’t modify controls on a different thread than the one it was created on, we have to invoke it this way and let Silverlight handle the thread marshalling:

private void ResponseCallback(IAsyncResult asyncResult) {
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)asyncResult.AsyncState;
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.EndGetResponse(asyncResult);
    Stream content = response.GetResponseStream();

    if (request != null && response != null) {
        if (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK) {
            _widgets = new List<Widget>();

            using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(content)) {
                _responseString = reader.ReadToEnd();
                reader.Close();
            }

            try {

                this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(ProcessResponse);

            }
            catch (WebException ex) {
                HandleException(ex);
            }
        }
    }
}

And finally, the ProcessResponse method that parses the response data and creates are Widgets collection, which is then set as the page’s DataContext:

private void ProcessResponse() {
    XDocument results = XDocument.Parse(_responseString);

    _widgets = (from item in results.Descendants(XName.Get("row", "#RowsetSchema"))
                select new Widget() {
                    Title = item.Attribute("ows_Title").Value,
                    Description = item.Attribute("ows_Description").Value
                    ImageUrl = FormatImageUrl(item.Attribute("ows_Image").Value),
                }).ToList();

    this.DataContext = _widgets;
}

private string FormatImageUrl(string value) {
    return value.Substring(0, value.IndexOf(','));
}

Now that we have our data, creating a snazzy Silverlight web part is only limited by your creativity and XAML-slinging skills.  Here’s a quick and dirty snippet to verify we’re actually getting data:

<UserControl x:Class="DevExpertise.Silverlight.App.Page"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" >
    <StackPanel>
        <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
            <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding}" VerticalAlignment="Stretch">
                <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
                    <DataTemplate>
                        <Grid>
                            <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
                                <Image Source="{Binding ImageUrl}" Height="40" />
                                <StackPanel>
                                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontWeight="Bold" />
                                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Description}" />
                                </StackPanel>
                            </StackPanel>
                        </Grid>
                    </DataTemplate>
                </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
            </ListBox>
        </Grid>
    </StackPanel>
</UserControl>

…and voila!  Silverlight in SharePoint consuming list data:

That’s all it takes to get data from SharePoint without using a custom web service or having to go through the hassle of building and deploying a WCF service.  In a future post, I’ll describe how to build a generic and reusable web part to host Silverlight applications.  Stay tuned!

Whether you’re building a custom site definition or building SharePoint features, you will probably need to get the ID of either a List Template or a Site Template.  Many others have blogged these as well, but I wanted a consolidated list of both list and site template IDs for quick access.

List Template IDs:

WSS Site Template IDs: 

MOSS Site Template IDs:

InfoPath and SharePoint make a great team when it comes to creating simple electronic forms.  It’s relatively simple to create a robust data-entry form, and is easy to submit an InfoPath form to a form library.  It’s even simple to pull in data that is stored in a SharePoint list.  However, what you may not realize is if a data connection is configured to retrieve SharePoint list items, it only retrieves the items from the first page of the default view.  What does that mean?  Let’s say you have a SharePoint list that contains 500 items, and your default view (the view that is loaded whenever you visit the list) is set to only show 100 items at a time (like it is by default).  When InfoPath executes its query to retrieve the list items, it will only retrieve 100 items.  More specifically, it will only retrieve the first 100 items.  So, if you happen to change the default view’s criteria or sort order, then InfoPath will be pulling in a different set of data! Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look…

To begin, I created a custom list in SharePoint named Widgets, and added 100 items to it.  Next, I created a new view named Sample View in the list, and set that as the list’s default view:

Next, I set the Item Limit to only 7 items per page:

After clicking OK and saving the view, whenever I access my list I’m presenting with the first 7 items in the list:

Now that I have a data source, I create my InfoPath form and set up a data connection to retrieve data from the Widgets list.  I added the results of the data source to a repeating table, and whenever I run my form, I am only presented with the first 7 items (told ya!):

Just to make sure this is the actual behavior and I’m not just hallucinating after a long day, I modified the view and changed the sort order to sort by Title in descending order, and changed the item limit to display 12 items at a time:
 

When I open the form again and the data connection is executed, it retrieves the first 12 items after the new sort has been applied!:

One would think that there would be some type of configuration option in the data connection wizard that asks to retrieve all items, or the results from a specific view, but there isn’t.  If you do need to retrieve all list items, it’s imperative that your list’s default view displays them all, or consider a different data retrieval method such as the built-in or custom web services.

There’s even a KB article that says this behavior is by design: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892954