I have a client that wanted an easier way for his team members to build/update pages on their site, their site is heavily customized with a lot of JavaScript. The issues is that when a team member wanted to add a new section to the page they had consult a dev person to hard code in the desired features. So we decided to create customizable web parts of those features making the site more self-serviceable.
When I first started I found some documentation that said to use visual studios to build the web part using sandbox code, upload it to the site and then they would just need to activate it to deploy it on the site. Buuut unbeknownst to me code based sandbox solutions are no longer supported in Sharepoint and therefore the web parts we built could not be deployed. I was then told that I needed to build it as an Add-in, but as I started building the add-ins I found that the customizable field properties (i.e. ability to change background color, text style/color and banner color) that I want are not implementable as a add-ins.
So now I’m back at square one and I don’t know if it’s even possible to build a web part as a add-in or do I need to go a different route?
Any thoughts or links to sources you can provide would be HUGELY appreciated!
Thanks
Terek
In SharePoint 2016 things have changed a lot from the traditional model which was the classic way of building web parts. The way you worked before is called "classic", the new way is called "modern", and the way to get your dev environment is the following (brace yourself, it is a long answer):
1) In SP2016/Online you will need to configure your dev machine with the following environment, installing the following:
NodeJS Long Term Support version
Yeoman (which will be used to create web parts)
GULP (which will play the role of virtual web server)
Once the three components above are installed, you will install the Yeoman SharePoint Generator to create the SharePoint Web Parts, Yeoman simplifies the process of creating things by delivering templates ready to use and making all the configurations standard, you gonna love this guy!
To configure your machine see the following link:
https://dev.office.com/sharepoint/docs/spfx/set-up-your-development-environment
2) In SP2016/SP Online, you will develop for SPFx (SharePoint Framework), Microsoft has made significant efforts to address the changes and help developers to embark on this new journey by publishing training and educational material at GitHub, YouTube, and on its official website (I will add link below), but for the purpose of helping you, please follow this tutorial, it helped me to learn how to develop Modern Web Parts for SP 2016/Online:
https://dev.office.com/sharepoint/docs/spfx/web-parts/get-started/build-a-hello-world-web-part
3) From the tutorial above, you will get a fully functional Modern Web Part that can be deployed to SP2016/Online, you will see the new modern architecture allows you that old experience of "sandboxing" web parts in a faster way without, thus solving your problem of constant updating/refactoring components in a live production environment. This way now allows you to constantly update the code and see the results in real-time , you will be able to see results on your dev environment by calling: https://localhost:4321/temp/workbench.html and at same time on your SP environment. for example: http://portal.company.com/_layouts/workbench.aspx
Links:
YouTube "SharePoint Framework Tutorials" - it is the step by step tutorial video showing the whole process of creating a web part:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR9nK3mnD-OXvSWvS2zglCzz4iplhVrKq
GitHub repository with the full documentation, samples and extras for the SPFx and PnP (this is another story for another time):
https://github.com/SharePoint
I hope it helps you!
Related
Hi to all Cool developers.
I am here for a helping guide that able to make me start my first Hybrid web+mobile application.
My Project:
I am going to build my final Project in Computer Science. The project i choose is a website that will serve as a platform for all Educational related info like Universites, Admissions, Scholarships, Carrers, Free Courses, Instituite recommednder e.t.c. Reference website: http://www.eduvision.edu.pk/
Technologies I have in mind to work on:
My main focus is to built it in using Node, express and Mongodb(Mongoose).
My Confusions:
As my website is heavily database oriented, what is best way to built it?
How to make it interactive and easily navigate?
How can I make it Hybrid? I know React native is used for this. But what's the procedure? Will I have to keep this in mind while developing my web application?
What frameworks and libraries I should use?
It would be a huge help.
Thanks
this look similar to me.hi anyways!you wanna choose is a website that will serve as a platform for all Educational related info like Universites, Admissions, Scholarships, Carrers, Free Courses by using mean stack ok its a new user friendly technology.to be honest you can build a website called (college management system).
where in this the students in the college will be a part of this website and all the details of the students will be in database when they register.and with this application it is helpful for the students to view their attendence and updates which were given by the college management.by using a framework like bootstrap,material design you can interact and easily navigate.as coming to the main question that you want to choose a website that will serve as a platform for all Educational related info like Universites, Admissions, Scholarships, Carrers, Free Courses.this is perfectly applicable.where universities can post Admissions,Scholarships can be posted in this website which is useful for the students.and also they will be aware of the attendence.which can be viewed by them daily and their will be no bluffing in it.and universites which can also update their information if any emergency required.to let the students know immediately.
as i already mention bootstarp and material design are the best framework to use and additionaly i am advising you to use visual code (IDE) for developing the project.because it is easy to use and user friendly.and you can also refer library called Quackit which gives best experience for you.and it is the best project for you to build in final year.
I'm planning to learn about Nodejs and try to make a website for upload image or embed video from other site for my class.
It likes a public social network with just a just a few blog features for administrator only.
Cause of the limited of myself and the time, I decide to use an open source Nodejs CMS which has almost those function and contribute it to became my class's website.
Please give me some suggestion, are there any CMS like that?
I tried once Relax CMS, it's really powerful.
From GitHub
Relax is a powerful new generation CMS on top of React and Node.js which aims for a better way of building websites.
It features a live page builder based on components and a smart and easy way of binding dynamic data to them.
It's almost ready for production, but you can check the demo out, and the project page https://github.com/relax/relax.
Did you take a look at Strapi (https://github.com/strapi/strapi)?
Halfway between a Node.js Framework and a Headless CMS, it saves weeks of API development time.
Thanks to its extensible plugin system, it provides a large set of built-in features:
Extensible Admin Panel
Authentication & Permissions management
File management
Content Management
API Generator
GraphQL support
Let me know if you have any question.
VS2013 update 5, MVC5 using Areas
I have a stand-alone function programmed for a website. The functionality is a specific user interface to collect survey responses in a particular way. It has several controllers, a model and a group of views. The functionality is completely contained in an Area of the project, except for the Shared _Layout file that provides the main menu for consistency.
'Is it possible for me to' / 'how do I' compile this Area into a single or set of .dll file(s) that I could then add conveniently to other websites? I'm assuming creating something for transfer/download is very standard functionality. For example, I used Elmah.MVC for this site. What I want to do is pretty much create a package that can be downloaded in a similar way to how we integrate Elmah.MVC into a site. (Be certain I'm not talking about creating error logging software, I'm only using Elmah.MVC as an example of software that is easily integrated into other website applications.)
I've never compiled any website functionality into a .dll(s) for use elsewhere and would appreciate either some specific guidance, or perhaps what would be easier is to provide a link with a good step by step tutorial or explanation for how to do this. Most of what I've found on the web describes bits and pieces of doing this, but it's not enough for me to feel confident with it.
It seems to me there are a lot of 'moving parts' to taking a particular piece of an MVC application and turning it into something that is easily added to other projects.
A particular issue I don't quite grasp is the difference in downloaded packages between getting code and getting just the .dll(s). For instance, when I download an MVC5 site, I get controllers, models and views, but when I download Elmah I get a .dll and no code files. Also, I do understand the concept of transforms, but I'm just struggling right now with even getting from my programmed application into a 'package' regardless of the transforms that make it easy to integrate into another website.
These are just some of my questions I have about how to perform this particular process in developing deliverable and/or shareable software.
What you are looking to do is create a portable MVC Area project. A Portable Area is a set of reusable multi page functionality can be dropped into an application to provide rich functionality without having to custom build functionality that is literally the same in every application. An MVC Portable Area is really just a dll that contains the views, controllers, scripts, etc… needed to use in a website that is either a Web Forms website or an MVC website. A developer can use them for a reusable widget or a complete engine. I have actually used them for both. Here is a link with some basic info to get started. http://elegantcode.com/2012/04/06/mvc-portable-areas/
What is your approach for creating your own set of controls aka own Extensions Library? After a few years of Xpages development we have a huge set of controls that are general purpose for building UI, some web services etc. (Probably as most other developers.) When we start a new project now we have to copy the entire stuff from one database to new one which involves controls, jars, css, images, JAVA code ... and then you completely loose control to maintain some central version of this controls & codes, everything is scattered among several projects/databases and things get messy fast.
We have thought about creating our own extension library as described here
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/Master_Table_of_Contents_for_XPages_Extensibility_APIs_Developer_Guide but there is not enough documentation for this topic and the entire development process is quite complicated (at least seems to me. I tried two times based on docs above going through eclipse plugin project -> feature project -> update site and still having some bugs around)
What is your experience and approach for creating and maintaining shared Xpages controls in your Domino environment? Is there some hidden feature we miss here that can help us?
Take a look at the XSP Starter Kit on OpenNTF and the XPages SDK to setup an eclipse environment for plugin development. You'll also want Eclipse IDE for RCP and RAP Developers. Install the starter kit and SDK into eclipse and you should be all set.
The starter kit is a sample plugin with all kinds of examples of phase listeners, components, etc. Once you want to deploy your plugin, create an update site from within eclipse and use the Update Site NSF available on your server install to place your update site. Once that's done, you can replicate that NSF to any other servers that may need the plugin.
For more information about the starter kit, take a look at this slide deck. There is also a github project for the starter kit. Documentation for the XPages SDK can be found here. And a video for setting up the SDK is available on youtube. Lastly, here's the documentation for setting up the update site NSF.
While we haven't gotten to that yet in XPages, our model for regular Notes design elements is to have a central template that contains the elements that are shared, with those specific design elements marked to inherit from that template. Sometimes, a database inherits design elements from two different central templates.
That way, those centrally controlled design elements remain the same in all databases.
I would recommend looking at some example's on github for how they have library/components setup. One of the more simpler examples that has just a single component built into a Library is Steve Pridemore's App Layout Extension...https://github.com/DominoDev, Another good one is Nathan Freeman's Starterkit: https://github.com/the-ntf/xspstarterkit. Hopefully these will help you get the file structure down on which files you need and how they work.
I am a junior developer and I have just graduated from university this year. I am working private with some people and I have just been given a music website to develop using DotNetNuke. I have a some experience using DotNetNuke which I have gained making small modules that take care of certain functionality on a webpages but I have never taken on a whole website before. I would love it if some one would give me some guidence on how to approach this project and answer some of my questions.
What are the steps involved in developing a dotnetnuke website?
How different is it from a developers perspective to develop a dotnetnuke cms website from a cms website which was developed from scratch?
When it comes to the database do you add tables to the database incrementally as you develop new functionality or do you plan everything in advance and create tables and stored procedures at once?
What are the steps involved in developing a dotnetnuke website?
Pick your version (if you're starting now, pick 5.1.1)
Installation (use Source package locally, Install package everywhere else)
Settings Configuration (performance, security, user info, etc.)
Adding & configuring core/third party modules
Adding & configuring third party skins
Custom Extension (typically module or provider) Development
Custom Skin Development
How different is it from a developers
perspective to develop a dotnetnuke
cms website from a cms website which
was developed from scratch?
Very. When you're starting with an established CMS you're inheriting solutions to tons and tons of solved problems. In the case of DNN, you have a substantial framework at your disposal. The focus will be more on learning and leveraging the existing API/features. If you're starting from scratch you're providing that foundation yourself. Using an established CMS is not necessarily better than the other - it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you require fine-grained control over everything and you want a great learning experience, rolling your own may be the best way to go.
When it comes to the database do you
add tables to the database
incrementally as you develop new
functionality or do you plan
everything in advance and create
tables and stored procedures at once?
No matter what your project is, I'd suggest doing things as they are needed and not before. I think "doing everything in advance" would be impossible/horrible anyway. The heart of this question is really going to be defining your development process - I don't think this would necessarily be any different than in other projects. I like to define the features I want, organize them based on their relation to each other (which should come first due to dependencies, etc) and start implementing them one at a time and give each one the attention it needs.
You may also want to look into Lee Sykes' tutorials on module development using OpenWebStudio. However, I'm more on the design end, mainly just skinning, configuring, SE optimizing sites and matching client needs to our library of licensed 3rd party modules. However, the DNN community is VERY supportive and VERY helpful. There are some great resources out there, and I've found several blogs by the core development team to be essential for helping me wrap my head around the DNN framework.
Keep with it, and don't be scared to ask questions.
References:
www.dnncreative.com - Lee Sykes' Site, many tutorials on the how-tos of the DNN system. It's well worth the yearly subscription IMHO.
www.dotnetnuke.com - The main site for the DNN community
www.snowcovered.com - Central (AFAIK) site where many module developers sell their products, everything from skins to modules.