I am using Office JS to develop a Word addin.
Thanks to previous answers, I found that I can open a new document in Word by doing:
context.application.createDocument().open();
However, that seems to only work on the Desktop version of Office.
If I try that same addin in the online version, I get an error:
Sorry, this function isn’t available. Perform a runtime check on the Office add-in to find out whether the feature is supported by the host
How can I programatically find out if that function is available so that I can make the plugin default to a different behavior if it's not?
Also, is there some documentation on the createDocument function? (I googled and could not find anything).
In the general case, you should use the isSetSupported API check at runtime to be able to see whether a particular method is available. See https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/develop/office-js-versioning
In this particular case, you're running into the fact that createDocument is part of a not-yet-released (preview-only) WordApi 1.4 (PREVIEW) API set (you can see it in the IntelliSense, both in the d.ts file (TypeScript) and vsdoc (JavaScript in VS 2015 and earlier). For example, in https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js/blob/beta/dist/office.d.ts
Because it's Preview, this unfortunately means that isSetSupported will return "false" regardless... because it simply might not be reliably available anywhere yet (or at least, the team has not signed off on it being done and available). So for these Preview APIs, it's really meant just for your own dev testing, not anything you would use in production.
Related
I am building an outlook web add-in, and while I am developing I will be hitting a localhost url, but when I deploy I'll of course want to point to my production web server.
I found Specify value for ~remoteAppUrl in an Office add-in manifest which is related, but it seems to rely on using Visual Studio to replace a token in the manifest. I'm developing with Atom on a Mac, so that's not really an option for me. I'd rather not duplicate my entire manifest file if possible. I'm guessing that I'll need to create a find-and-replace script. Or is this already a solved problem and there's something out there I don't know about? :) Thanks!
There is no way to specify separate URLs in the manifest for development and production, and unfortunately no plans to add this in the near future. Find and replace (or a script that does so) is your best option currently.
I'm trying to find out if there's a way to get the MS Word version from the API? I see the version number visible in the UI so I'm guessing it's not hidden from users, but I'm not sure it's accessible through the API.
Also, is it anyhow possible to check, through the API, if the user is using Desktop or Online Word? Despite the API being the same, the experience is not the same on both platforms and knowing the difference would make development a lot easier.
I don't know when this started happening or if things have changed but the _host_Info param is not being passed by the framework to my Excel Add-In in Excel Online.
It passes an empty "et=" parameter which is OK in this case since I'm in dev mode. The Excel desktop client is still passing it.
This is required by my add-ins to switch functionality between Excel Online and Excel for Windows.
I've checked the docs and can't find that anything has changed.
To append to Sudhi's answer: with the official API coming as per the link in Sudhi's answer, we've gone ahead and also added a "shim" for the API in the OfficeJsHelpers library.
The shim still uses the workaround code that Sudhi mentions -- window.sessionStorage['hostInfoValue'] -- but it wraps it in an API very similar to what is coming in the official Office.js. Once the official API is available, we'll switch the shim code to make use of that instead. The beauty of this approach is that if you use OfficeJsHelpers via an NPM package, all you have to do is update your package dependency, and you'll suddenly go from an unofficial and potentially-fragile workaround to an API that relies on 100% officially-exposed properties -- all without changing your own code! Likewise, if at that time you decide to switch back to using the official Office.js version, the similarity of the APIs (essentially just namespace differences) should make it trivial to switch over the implementations.
The helper APIs are OfficeHelpers.Utilities.host (which will return WORD, EXCEL, etc.) and OfficeHelpers.Utilities.platform (which will return IOS, PC, OFFICE_ONLINE, or MAC). The constants are defined in OfficeHelpers.HostType and OfficeHelpers.PlatformType.
You can find the NPM package at https://www.npmjs.com/package/#microsoft/office-js-helpers, and either install it via NPM, or use a CDN like Unpkg to quickly try it out: https://unpkg.com/#microsoft/office-js-helpers#0.4.2/dist/office.helpers.min.js
console.log(OfficeHelpers.Utilities.host);
console.log(OfficeHelpers.Utilities.platform);
if (OfficeHelpers.Utilities.platform === OfficeHelpers.PlatformType.OFFICE_ONLINE) {
console.log("Yep, I'm on the web client");
}
I hope you find the above helpful as an interim measure, and we'll be sure to update this StackOverflow thread (and the OfficeJsHelpers code) once the official API is released.
Jim and others who may be affected by this change: it is unfortunate that an unrelated change meant to improve the add-in experience caused the query string parameter in online platform to be removed. Note that URL query parameters and session storage settings are used to launch and setup the add-in environment and are not meant for developer consumption. However, we understand the importance of this to the developers as described in this thread.
Hence, we are adding formal APIs to make this information available. Please see the specs that describes upcoming APIs: https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js-docs/tree/ContextAdditions_OpenSpec
Until the APIs become available (should be very soon), you could use the following temporary workaround. The same query host_info_ parameter value is available in the following variable: window.sessionStorage.hostInfoValue. Please note that this should be considered a temporary measure and you should switch to using the formal API as soon as they are made available. I'll update the this thread when the API is released, which should be available for all supported Office versions.
If you have any comments, please leave your comments on the specs directly in Github specification branch using the links provided.
UPDATE:
Please see my answer above, instead (https://stackoverflow.com/a/40963500/678505), as the scenario is now possible.
[Old response:]
Jim, could you describe your scenario more? Why is it that you need to distinguish between Online and Desktop?
For the disappearance of host_info_: you won't find it in the docs, because host_info_ was never in the docs. Anything not documented is an internal API, which might change as needed by the internal workings of Office.js. We take back-compat very seriously, but only for actual official documented APIs.
Without an API, there's not much you can do to tell the two apart (or rather, not without relying on other bits of internal workings which might also change over time). We've discussed this internally before, but found it surprisingly difficult to point to a particular scenario where the platform information was necessary and legitimate ("legitimate" in the sense that if you're using platform information to check whether an API is available, for example, that's precisely what we don't want you to do; we want you to use Office.context.requirements.isSetSupported instead).
If you can share your scenario details, I might be able to advise an alternate way of determining whatever you need, or have a solid scenario to bring back to the team.
I'm going to need to push and pull files from a SharePoint site that is not hosted by my company (it is external). I'm only going to get a few days (if that) to get this working so I don't have much time to experiment.
To add to my requirements/headaches, I'm going to have to implement this with VBScript. .Net would be preferred for me but for reasons beyond my control I have to use VBScript. I don't have direct access to my VBScript web server, so I won't be able to implement this in .NET and use that object from VBScript.
I'm looking for anything that would help me accomplish this goal quickly and effectively. I found this post and am wondering if the PUT/GET method used here would work for me?
http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2004/06/06/149673.aspx (I got this link from: Sharepoint API - How to Upload files to Sharepoint Doc Library from ASP.NET Web Application)
To top all of this off, I've never done any programming or administration of a SharePoint site. My knowledge of SharePoint is that of a user. I'm aware that there is an API from the few Google searches I did. However, my readings make me believe that my code would need to run on or in proximity to the SharePoint server. I don't believe I have the proximity I need to use the API.
Sincere thank yous!
Regards,
Frank
Progress Update: I'm still researching this. Tom pointed out that the example I had posted is probably from an old SharePoint version. His recommendation to use .Net to develop a prototype on Web Services is good but I'm hoping for more detailed answers.
I'm now wondering if I can accomplish what I need to accomplish using HTTP PUT and GETs. At my company, for a specific project we do use HTTP PUT and GETs to do something like this. We have files that are stored on an HTTP server and this is how we post and retrieve them.
Would this work over SharePoint or would SharePoint require special handling? Basically, do I have to use Web Services?
Progress Update 2: This link is helpful... Upload a file to SharePoint through the built-in web services
But I am still looking for more information on this topic... Thanks all...
You'll need to use the sharepoint lists web service for metadata and get/put for uploads. That link looks to be for SharePoint 2001, so hopefully you can use the newer/simpler version.
I recommend building something in .net first to get the web service calls worked out - some of the parameters can be quite tricky to debug, and I wouldn't want to be doing that on a remote vbscript page.
Assuming there is no metadata required and the SharePoint library is being used like a file server you can do most of what you want with PUT/GET, but you will probably need a call to GetListItems to find the urls to download.
There's an example on my blog of a lower level call to that web service - it's javascript, but probably close enough.
http://tqcblog.com/2007/09/24/sharepoint-blog-content-rating-with-javascript-and-web-services
What setting up the .net version gets you is very quick set up of a connection to the server (just add a web service reference in visual studio) so you can get the query and queryoptions strings working to retrieve the items you want. Once that works you just have to put it all together as a string including the soap stuff for use without all the nice tools.
I'm a little unclear on the context of the implementation and the prerequisite of having to use VBScript. Are the files being moved from one server to another server or from a user's desktop to this SP server? or are they being accessed via software like Excel?
The first thing that sprang to my mind (this may sound crazy) was using the Office application to make the connection. Your script would call up Excel (just as an example) and pass it the vba needed to initiate the Open File, and then provide the full path to the file that needs to be retrieved. Then have it do a Save As to the location that needs the file. Do the same thing but in reverse for putting files on the SharePoint server.
The tricky part, obviously, is getting the script to interface with the Office app. I know this can be done with the Windows version of PHP, but I don't want to get into anything specific without knowing your situation.
I seriously wonder if you are going to be able to use VBScript to call the SharePoint web services. I haven't looked at the SharePoint web services for a while so I don't remember exactly how they are defined. I thought the web services were SOAP calls though which makes it trickier than
I'm not sure I tried to use Excel to call some web services with the MSSOAP.SoapClient and it seemed this component was unable to handle any WSDL types beyond the very simple strings. Anything with nested data would not work. Instead, you would need to create a COM object to process the conversion which is a major hassle. If you are able to use XMLHTTP component then it might be possible with VBScript, but I'm not sure if it will work with SharePoint web services.
I'm not sure what you mean, "I don't have direct access to my VBScript web server." Is your web server in VBScript (ASP)? Or did you mean SharePoint server?
You might consider C# Script (cs-script) as a scripted solution that uses .NET. I have had good success with it, although it does need to be installed on the computer that runs the script.
I'm integrating between two companies. According to this book, we should use AD FS to accomplish what I'm looking for.
I still don't actually have this working though so if someone has more information I will change the answer to this question.
http://books.google.com/books?id=-6Dw74If4N0C&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=sharing+sharepoint+sites+external+adfs&source=bl&ots=ojOlMP13tE&sig=FjsMmOHymCOMGo7il7vjWF_lagQ&hl=en&ei=ytqfStClO5mMtgejsfH0Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=&f=false
I never really received a answer to this that worked out but this is no longer an issue for me.
What we ended up doing is scraping the html. In effect, we put together our own ad-hoc web service processor where instead of SOAP, html is used to communicate. Then we execute GETs, POSTs, and etc to work with the web service.
We had done something similar in VBScript in for WebDAV -- we had a class and created a new one to work with SharePoint.
According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/883792 , MS can detect installed AV using either WMI or a manual method involving registry keys that MS knows about. Is there an API to access this functionality?
This Google search yields this MSDN documentation which appears to be what you're looking for, the Windows Security Center API. The documentation says Vista only, but I believe this API is also available through the Windows XP SP2 SDK.
If you can't find documentation for it and you want to do some manual digging, you can try executing Process Monitor from SysInternals and then launch the Security Center. It'll show you what keys are read, and what files are accessed.
You can use the Win32 Registry access APIs if you knew the keys.