I've created a custom list & also added a column in the Announcement List. Question is, how can I include those newly created items when I create a fresh Web Application (like a script, feature or something)?
Additional Info: It's like when you're to deploy from your development machine to a staging or production server. I'd like to have a script or something to update my production server to have the new column i've added to the Announcement List. Just like SQL Server's ALTER TABLE command to update a SQL Server Table.
Is there an equivalent in Sharepoint Lists?
TIA!
Regarding the new custom list, this can be done using features. See How to: Create a Custom List Definition for more information. The Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint (VS2005 / VS2008) will help you to extract the list definition if you've created it through the SharePoint UI. If you are fortunate enough to be using a custom site definition and don't have any webs created yet, you can set your site definition to create the custom list using feature stapling.
If you are attempting to apply these changes to webs that already exist, you can still use a feature to define your custom list. It will just appear as a type of list that can be created. Then to have the custom list automatically created for existing webs or to modify existing lists such as the Announcements list, you can use a feature receiver. This allows you to run any custom code when the feature is activated. See the MSDN article Feature Events for more information.
Alternatively, you could not use features at all as they can be difficult, time consuming and painful. In fact, this blog post has a good argument against the idea. You could try the tool mentioned on that page or other applications such as DocAve Content Manager and SharePoint Site Migration Manager.
Your question is not very clear but I think you may want to look at Application Templates.
Microsoft provide 40 pre-built templates in the link below and the same technology is available to you. Links from this page should lead you to information showing you how you can crate your own.
Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb407286.aspx
Related
I am trying every option to show List data on a web part and web user control, but I am not finding any code examples on this. What namespace should I import?
I am using WSS 3.0 and I will later upgrade to MOSS 2007. I am aware of the SmartPart project and I can use it in my environment.
Thank you very much for your help.
You should first look at the Data View Web Part (DVWP) to see if that will fit your needs. With some XLST/JavaScript you can get very creative with this.
Data View Web Part Basics
Otherwise you need to understand two things :-
Creating a Basic web part
This is for VS2010/SharePoint 2010 but you will find similar walkthroughs for other versions such as :-
http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/.net/net_asp/webforms/article.php/c12293/
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/kmcgrath/Creating-a-Web-Part-for-SharePoint-by-Using-a-Designer/
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/Generic_Webparts.aspx
Accessing SharePoint List data
Then once you've got your basic web part you need to know how to use the object model to open a list and iterate through the items in a list to display the data in whatever funky way you want.
Accessing list items
I have been adding lists and sites to sites when they have been created with feature stapling. Now I want to add a web part when a site is created but it seems like it is to early to do that in FeatureActivated() when I am using feature stapling.
It is working when I activate a feature for an already created site but when I try to do it with feature stapling a get an exception that the object is not created.
Do you know any why to accomplish this when the site is created?
Make sure you use the SPLimitedWebPartManager to perform this work, or you will have trouble.
I've been looking at Microsoft's own early example of how to build solutions - the GroupBoard Workspace solution (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb848080.aspx)
In this case they actually have two solutions - one which creates the site and another which "updates" the site afterwards. The webparts are added by the second one.
More SharePoint questions from me again today! I thank everyone that has helped thus far!
Here is my situation:
I have to create a custom application inside of sharepoint. I am using a document library which hosts web part pages and i am using Web User Controls to do all the manipluating and displaying of data. Once I build the app the way i want, I am going to turn the doc lib into a template that way i can create the same thing on multiple sites (many customers using this app).
The issue that I am running into is that I need to know what happens/how do I update it so that my changes will apply itself to all sites that are referencing the template.
HELP! anyone who knows how to do this OR has a better idea for creating custom apps that multiple sites will be able to take advantage of would be SO helpful!
Thanks
Short answer is that you cannot accomplish this, even with a custom site/list definition.
Once a site or list is created from a site or list definition, it is basically on its own (layouts and master pages modifications, however, do get applied to all sites referencing them).
Once workaround would be to create a site feature that iterates through sites and performs whatever custom action you wish to do.
For requirement like this, you really should create custom list/site definition. NOT just save customized list into template.
Anything you have updated in list/site definition will be reflect to the sites that are referencing the definitions. Unfortunately this is not the case for Template. You will have to delete the old list you have on other sites, then re-create them again with new template.
how to create list definition - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms466023.aspx
for site definition please go - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287930.aspx
James
I am developing publishing site and it will have complex tree structure.
Is there any way to deploy site structure (multiple sub sites - SPWeb) using SharePoint solution?
I know I can create site tree programmatically.
I have been on a project with the same needs, but we didn't find the answer with the OOTB functionality of the feature framework. We also had to go through the object model and do the creation programmatically.
But instead of hard-coding the site structure, we took a different approach. Our solution was to implement a generic SiteCreation feature that takes an xml file as input. The xml defines the site structure and is read by the feature receiver which parses it and creates the specified sites.
I know that there is some coding involved in this solution, but I think the extra work is well spent, since the site structure will likely change numerous times before it reaches production.
The default publishing portal (and collaboration portal) site definitions use a portal provisioning class to build the site structure based on an xml file (this is all out of the box for a MOSS installation).
You can see how the provisioning class is referenced in the webtemp file for the portal site definitions (12\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\webtempsps.xml). An example of the actual xml documents that are used can be found in 12\TEMPLATES\SiteTemplates\WebManifest - it's a fairly straight forward schema.
If you are creating a custom site definition based on publishing portal then you can re-use the provisioning class and provide your own xml document to build your custom site structure.
My team is working on a project to migrate a .com site into SharePoint.
After all our look and feel assets, master pages, content types, and page layouts are created, we need to actually "move" the actual site pages into SharePoint.
I'm trying to come up with the most effective way to do this. Our topology consists of an Authoring and a Production environment. We plan to use SharePoint Content Deployment to populate Production from Authoring.
However, we obviously need to do some sort of initial population of the Authoring environment. I don't want to use Content Deployment to populate Authoring from a development environment because I don't want to initially create Authoring from a Blank Site definition.
Here are the options I came up with, would love some feedback on which you think would be the best approach:
Create the site content in a development environment and use a tool such as SPDeploy to migrate it into the Authoring environment
Create the content directly in the Authoring environment
Use a technique similar to how you can provision List Item instances in a feature. We would create and populate all of our content using Features
I'm not sure if this is actually doable, but got the idea because of how I know you can create List Item instances when provisioning a List in a feature. After all, our Pages library is a list of Pages - however there are multiple content types involved.
Thank you for your suggestions!
If it is just a matter of migrating files, you could actually use the content migration framework. The core classes of this framework are the SPExport and SPImport classes in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment namespace. You can with fairly little code export individual files to disk and import them again to a new location. Alternatively, try the SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard on CodePlex here: http://www.codeplex.com/SPDeploymentWizard. It will save you the coding.
Backup and restore the content DB.
Can you clarify on why you don't want to use content deployment to create your initial Authoring site? Why do you not want to start with a blank site definition? It would get overwritten in the deployment process anyway. What about stsadm -export / -import?
I'm sorry, but I'm still not clear on the whole situation. You have a development environment (presumably where structure is created, but not any content destined for production), an authoring environment (which I understand as a locked down environment where content is entered and approved), and then a read-only production environment to which approved items are deployed. If this is the case, then I can say that I have a similar setup on one of my projects.
In my case, I initially developed the site structure in my dev environment, then backed up and restored to authoring and prod. Subsequent structural changes to both environments are made by hand. Authoring is structurally almost exactly the same as prod. Only the security is different. Several times per day content is deployed from authoring to prod. We make content changes directly in the authoring environment.