1. Right click the short cut to VS2010 and select  ‘Properties’

2. From the properties window select the ‘Advanced’ button

3. Check the ‘Run as administrator’ checkbox – Your done

Simpler way using Power Shell

Using the ‘External Tools’ option within visual studio you can create a quick link, so from your solution just click the ‘Get 4-Part Name’ link and out pops the 4-part assembly name in you’re output window.

Resulting output window…

How to add a new External Tool

Select ‘External Tools…’ from the Tools menu in Visual Studio

TITLE : Give the tool a title. You can use an ‘&’ character which will act as a short cut i.e. ALT+G.

COMMAND : powershell.exe

Arguments: -command “[System.Reflection.AssemblyName]::GetAssemblyName(\”$(TargetPath)\”).FullName

3. Make sure you check ‘use output window’ to post the result in the VS output window.

Simple but a great time saver

Noticed a problem when trying to install SharePoint 2010 release candidate on win 2008 running as a DC.

Problem:

The setup was not prompting you for the server type ‘Single Server’, ‘New Farm’. Instead the install would install SharePoint and SQL server express. The configuration wizard would then setup SharePoint as a single server.

Workaround:

Copy the setup.exe to a local directory on the server eg : c:\SPSETUP then open a command prompt ‘as administrator’ and run the following

c:\SPSETUP\setup.exe /extract c:\SPSETUP

Then from the SPSETUP folder run the install with the following command

setup.exe /config c:\spsetup\File\SetupFarm\config,xml

The install shall run as normal, but this time when the configuration wizard is run you should get the prompts to specify the appropriate configuration database server.

If you are running as a single server and using SQL Server Express then I also noticed this problem…

Also noticed that the config. wizard fails at step 5 due to it timing out. Thanks to some other postings I discovered this was due to the Sharepoint Server Search 14 and later on the SharePoint Foundation Search V4 service was being restarted by the configuration wizard. When the service is restarted it was using the ‘Local Service’ account. You can see this happening if you watch the services while the config. wizard is running. If before running the wizard you change these to run with appropriate domain accounts these should start up ok.

So what do you get out of the box?

You enable RSS within your site collection/site via site settings. You also need to enable RSS on the specific list or document library. You do this via the list settings.

When enabled users see a new link from the list ‘Actions’ menu…

This link calls the page listfeed.aspx which you can find in the LAYOUTS folder within the 12 HIVE. It’s worth taking a look at the code behind for this page which is contained within the Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.dll which you can find in the _app_bin folder of any SharePoint site (And not the GAC). Using Reflector take a look at the class ListFeed and you will get an idea on how the RSS feed work.

There are a couple of query string fields which can be passed to this page. list and View the list is expecting the source list GUID and the view is looking for a lists view GUID. The thing I found odd was that even if you are in the a specific list view if you click the view RSS feed link you still only get of the an RSS feed back which is the default view i.e. the query string ‘View’ is not used? You can manually put this in an it works? Perhaps I’m missing something here?

The render method of this class calls the WriteRssMethod of the corresponding SPlist. This method is overloaded as follows

Building your own RSS generator

Anyway my requirements had to cater for

1. Return content which maps to specific content type fields

2. Return content from a specified view within a list – I used the view to filter and sort the content although I could have easily just done this in using SPQuery

I created a SharePoint solution with a new application page which would be mapped to the LAYOUTS  folder within the 12 Hive

The application page, called rssFeed.aspx contains the following mark-up

<%

@ Assembly Name=”chrisforbesblogs.RSSTest, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8e473a8929984006″ %>

<%

@ Page Language=”C#” Inherits=”chrisforbesblogs.RSSTest.rssFeed” %>

<%

@ OutputCache Duration=”300″ VaryByParam=”xsl;web;page;wp” VaryByCustom=”rights;feedresults”%>

In the same solution I created a class file called rssFeed.aspx.cs with the following inheritance from LayoutsPageBase

using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Text;using Microsoft.SharePoint;using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;using System.Web.UI.WebControls;using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;using System.Xml;using System.Globalization;

namespace chrisforbesblogs.RSSTest{    public class rssFeed :LayoutsPageBase    {

Fields to store relevant objects

protected SPList spList;protected SPWeb spWeb;protected SPView spView;protected string viewName;protected string listName;

protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e){    base.OnLoad(e);

   // System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();

    if (!Page.IsPostBack)    {

        try        {

           viewName = (base.Request.QueryString.GetValues("View")[0]);                             listName = (base.Request.QueryString.GetValues("List")[0]);

           spWeb = SPControl.GetContextWeb(this.Context);           spList = spWeb.Lists[listName];

           if (spList == null) throw new Exception("list not found");           spView = spList.Views[viewName];           if (spView == null) throw new Exception("View Not Found");

        }        catch (Exception ex)        {

            throw new SPException(ex.Message);        }

    }}

Then in the render method return the relevant xml using some SharePoint API to get the required records and a string builder to construct the XML. You can also create the xml file using System.XML.XMLDocument but I find this way easier to read the XML as I write it.

protected override void  Render(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer){     base.Render(writer);

     if (spList != null)     {

         base.Response.AppendHeader("ETag"             , spList.CurrentChangeToken.ToString());         base.Response.AppendHeader("Last-Modified"             , spList.LastItemModifiedDate.ToString("r"             , CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));         base.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";

         if (spView != null)         {             base.Response.ContentEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;

             string channelTitle = "The RSS Channel title";             string channelDescription = "The RSS Description";

             string channelLink = "http://www.chrisforbesblogs.net";             string language = "en-us";             int timeToLive = 60;             string copyright = "Copyright 2009 - "                  + DateTime.Now.Year + " ChrisForbesBlogs.net";

             StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();             sb.Append(                 "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\r\n");             sb.Append("<rss version=\"2.0\">\r\n");             sb.Append("<channel>\r\n");

             sb.AppendFormat("<title>{0}</title>\r\n"                 , channelTitle);             sb.AppendFormat("<link>{0}</link>\r\n"                 , channelLink);             sb.AppendFormat("<description>{0}</description>\r\n"                 , channelDescription);             sb.AppendFormat("<language>{0}</language>\r\n"                 , language);             sb.AppendFormat("<ttl>{0}</ttl>\r\n", timeToLive);             sb.AppendFormat("<copyright>{0}</copyright>\r\n"                 , copyright);

             string spTitle = "";             string spDescription = "";             string spDate = "";             string spAuthor = "Chris Forbes";

             sb.AppendFormat(                "<lastBuildDate>{0}</lastBuildDate>\r\n"                 , DateTime.Now.Date.ToShortDateString());

             SPListItemCollection items = spList.GetItems(spView);             foreach (SPListItem item in items)             {                 //Make sure you are pulling back valid                 //SharePoint fields which are listed in the view                 if (item["Title"] != null)                     spTitle = item["Title"].ToString();

                 if (item["Description"] != null)                     spTitle = item["Description"].ToString();

                 if (item["PageDate"] != null)                     spTitle = item["PageDate"].ToString();

                 sb.AppendFormat("<item>\r\n");                 sb.AppendFormat("<title>{0}</title>", spTitle);                 sb.AppendFormat("<link><![CDATA[{0}]]></link>\r\n"                     , item.Url);                 sb.AppendFormat(                     "<description><![CDATA[{0}]]></description>\r\n"                     , spDescription);                 sb.AppendFormat("<author>{0}</author>\r\n"                    , spAuthor);                 sb.AppendFormat("<pubDate>{0}</pubDate>\r\n"                    , spDate);                 sb.AppendFormat("</item>\r\n");

             }

             sb.AppendFormat("</channel>\r\n");             sb.AppendFormat("</rss>\r\n");

             base.Response.Write(sb.ToString());         }

     }}

I wrapped the returned field values in <![CDATA[]]> to ensure any illegal characters are ignored by the XML.

As I mentioned earlier you could easily extend this code to use SPQuery instead of relying on an existing view. You could also access a number of lists and aggregate the content into a single feed.

If your publishing this to an anonymous access site then you will have to add some additional methods to prevent an authentication challenge. If you look back the out of the box class file you can see some additional methods which handle this.

protected override bool AllowAnonymousAccess

{

get

{

return true;

}

}

protected override bool RequireDefaultLayoutsRights

{

get

{

return false;

}

}

protected override SPBasePermissions RightsRequired

{

get

{

return (SPBasePermissions.EmptyMask | SPBasePermissions.Open);

}

}

Anyway hope the above is of some help to you, happy coding

Click for larger image

You receive the following error…

The Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or Managed Metadata Web Service may not have been started, Contact your Administrator.

Click for larger image

So, obviously I checked the Managed Metadata Service and this was indeed started. So after much troubleshooting and several term store recreations I double checked the SharePoint 2010 Installation guides and spotted that there is now a required WCF hot fix.

After installing this the problem is resolved

You can get the hot fix ‘KB976462 – SharePoint Shared Services Roll-ip’ at

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB976462/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3571

User Profile Application’s connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or User Profile Service may not have been started. Please contact your administrator”.

I found the following blog posting from Travis Nielsen who had also received this message and his posting worked for me.

To avoid repeating what Travis has to say read…

http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/nielsen_travis/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=30

Travis talked about commenting out  the allowinsecuretransport attribute This is what the commented out section of the client.config file looked like for me. Note there are two references to this, so I commented out both.

 

After you have made the change remember to do an IISRESET.

Standard Search Box

Custom delegate applied

The search box is rendered using a delegate control. If you look at the master page you will see the delegate …

<SharePoint:DelegateControl runat=”server” ControlId=” SmallSearchBox”>

You can alter the behaviour of a delegate control by specifying a delegate with a smaller sequence number. I created the following delegate control within a standard feature…

Feature…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

<

Control Id="SmallSearchInputBox" Sequence="10"

ControlClass="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SearchBoxEx" ControlAssembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c">
<Property Name="GoImageUrl">/_layouts/images/CFB/go.gif</Property>
<Property Name="GoImageUrlRTL">/_layouts/images/CFB/.gif</Property>
<Property Name="GoImageActiveUrl">/_layouts/images/CFB/go.gif</Property>
<Property Name="GoImageActiveUrlRTL">/_layouts/images/CFB/go.gif</Property>
<Property Name="UseSiteDefaults">true</Property>
<Property Name="FrameType">None</Property>

<Property Name="ShowAdvancedSearch">false</Property>
<Property Name="QueryPromptString">Search…</Property>
<Property Name="DropDownMode">HideDD_useDefaultScope</Property>

</Control>

</Elements>

Note the Sequence=”10” attribute of the Control element. WSS out of the box refers to a sequence number of 100 and MOSS overrides this with a sequence number of 50. So as long as your sequence number is lower than this then your settings will be applied.

The four changes I was concerned was

1. Remove the ‘advanced search’ link which is handled by  the ‘ShowAdvancedSearch’ property,

2.Add some default text to the search box which is handcled by  the QueryPromptString property

3. Remove the scope drop down field. The DropDownMode property with the enumuration value of HideDD_userDefaultScope sorts that one out.

4. Finally I changed the image to my own go.gif image. I also deployed this within the same feature to a sub directory called CFB within the 12 hive images folder.

For a complete listing of the available properties please refer to the following link on MSDN.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.portal.webcontrols.searchboxex_members.aspx

Well at last we get can get a glimpse into some of the features coming out in SharePoint 2010, due for main release in the first half of next year. (PS No NDAs broken here, this stuff is all publically available from the Microsoft Web site )

The Developer Dashboard

Check out the ‘Developer Dashboard’ where you can “review diagnostic information including detailed page request information such as timings, names and resources for all stored procedures calls, memory used and authenticated user, the number of SPRequests objects, any asserts and critical events and timings for web parts events for the page rendering” – and breath

LINQ for SharePoint

Use LINQ to access SharePoint lists,

joins and projections

Visual Studio 2010

Some amazing improvements to the development experience within Visual Studio. Life might just get a little simpler from now one?

SharePoint explorer

Cool, you no longer need to use SharePoint Manager 2007 (Although this is an excellent tool) You can now explore SharePoint directly from Visual Studio 2010

Visual Web Part Designer

You have to look at the visual web part designer. Design web parts just like web pages. Drag and drop those controls and away you go!

Business Connectivity Services – The new BDC!

So Read/Write capabilities are now included in the new BDC, that’s great and is going to be SO powerful!

…..check out the videos online here

A number of objects within the SharePoint object model implement the IDisposable interface. For the on-going performance of your SharePoint server you need to ensure you remember to correctly dispose of these objects within your code.  I guess this has always been important for any application you are building but its a bit more crucial in SharePoint as your building your solutions on a platform that isn’t just servicing your application but could be many.

So what’s the problem?

So what if you don’t dispose of your objects? Well your just using up memory that could have been released. So without recycling your application pool you run the risk of slowly degrading the performance of your SharePoint farm. In fact your application pools will automatically recycle when they hit a particular memory usage threshold, which could then result in slow page loads as pages are re-compiled by the JIT when requested.

How to spot the problem?

If your spotting your SharePoint server application pools recycling frequently or your servers performance degrades during heavy usage then this could be an indication that your custom\3rd party code\web parts are not correctly disposing their objects.

You can check the ULS logs at 12 hive \LOGS. Your looking for entries related to SPRequest. It might be complaining about the number of SPRequests objects exceeding a configurable threshold and so on. You can increase this threhold setting through the registry. But first, try and use this as an indicator that some of your code or indeed a 3rd partys code such as some web parts etc. are not correctly disposing the SPSite and SPWeb objects. So look at this first before cranking this level up.

If you do want to change the threshold then look for the following sub key in your registry using regedit…

 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\HeapSettings
 
LocalSPRequestWarnCount = <set to the level you want>

How to dispose your objects

Ok so that the problem, and how to determine if your getting the problem covered.  So how do you ensure your code isn’t leaving your SPSite and SPWeb objects ‘indisposed’. Well, as mentioned previously, both of these objects implement the IDisposable interface so you can go ahead and call the .Dispose method when your done with the object. Good practice would be to put this in a try, catch finally block…

SPSite site = null;

try{   site = new SPSite("http://litwaredemo");

   Console.WriteLine("got a handle on the site {0} : {1}", 

   site.Title. site.Url);

}

catch(Exception ex)

{ 

  //Catch exceptions here

}

finally

{  

 if (site != null) site.Dispose();

}

using (SPSite site = new SPSite(http://litwaredemo)

{

    Console.WriteLine("got a handle on the site {0} : {1},

    site.Title, site.Url);

}

SPSite site = SPContext.Site;Console.WriteLine("got a handle on {0} : {1}",

site.Title, site.Url);

//Don’t dispose site, leave this to SPContext to worry about.