SharePoint Designer and the Infernal Checkmark

Probably my biggest pet peeve with SharePoint Designer, other than the occasional lock up and crash, is that frequently it will show files as being checked out when they are actually not.  This is particularily annoying, because you will have to pull up the site in a browser and check it out from there to do any edits on the file.   I still have not figured out a good reason for this, other than that the “value” for this appears to come from the user cache, rather than from the server.  Kind of a poor implementation in my opinion.  Regardless, at least it is fairly easy to resolve.  Just browse to (from Windows 7):

C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache

Then find the site that is giving you grief and delete the associated files.  SharePoint Designer will rebuild them next time you pull up the site.

Display Page Content Based On Permissions Instead of Groups

There are instances where you want to keep certain portions of your masterpage hidden from certain types of users.  For instance, you may not want all of your users to see the “My Site” link.   Add the following wrapper to whatever you wish to trim permissions for.  Below is a list of all the different permission types.  Just plug in the values into the PermissionsString for the ones you want.

<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl PermissionsString=AddAndCustomizePages, ManageLists runat=server>
<%– some content here … %>
</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Other Variables:

List Permissions
ManageLists
CancelCheckout
AddListItems
EditListItems
DeleteListItems
ViewListItems
ApproveItems
OpenItems
ViewVersions
DeleteVersions
CreateAlerts
ViewFormPages

Site Permissions
ManagePermissions
ViewUsageData
ManageSubwebs
ManageWeb
AddAndCustomizePages
ApplyThemeAndBorder
ApplyStyleSheets
CreateGroups
BrowseDirectories
CreateSSCSite
ViewPages
EnumeratePermissions
BrowseUserInfo
ManageAlerts
UseRemoteAPIs
UseClientIntegration
Open
EditMyUserInfo

Personal Permissions
ManagePersonalViews
AddDelPrivateWebParts
UpdatePersonalWebParts

CAML Query By User

CAML can be rather hairy, and it took me some digging to find out how to query a list for items assigned to a user (of the “User” type).  It turns out the best method to do that is to query by the user profile id.  This will pull you back items for just that specific user.

<where>
<eq>
<fieldref name=”PersonFieldName” LookupId=”TRUE”/>
<value type=”int”>UserID</value>
</eq>
</where>

Moving A SharePoint Discussion To Another List

In SharePoint there is no easy way to copy over a discussion board thread over to another board.  So for instance, if there is a thread that is in the wrong place, and needs to be moved over to a different discussion board that is of a different topic, you are fresh out of luck.  The tradition copy items through the “Manage Site Content and Structure” just doesn’t work.  The only way I found to do this while maintaining all the information is to copy it over programmatically.

In this example I created a drop down list of the the discussion boards on a site:

            foreach (SPList l in web.Lists)
            {
                if (l.BaseTemplate == SPListTemplateType.DiscussionBoard)
                {
                    ListItem entry = new ListItem();
                    entry.Text = l.Title;
                    entry.Value = web.Url + "/" + l.RootFolder;
                    ddl.Items.Add(entry);
                }
            }

Then I created a method to copy the discussion over once the source board, discussion, and destination board were set.

            string site = this.Page.Request.Url.ToString();
            using (SPSite spsSite = new SPSite(site))
            {
                using (SPWeb web = spsSite.OpenWeb())
                {
                    web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

                    SPList splSource = web.GetList(ddlSourceList.SelectedItem.Value.ToString());
                    SPListItem spliDiscussion = web.GetListItem(ddlSourceDiscussion.SelectedItem.Value.ToString());
                    SPList splDestination = web.GetList(ddlDestinationList.SelectedItem.Value.ToString());

                    try
                    {
                        SPFolder fldrDiscussion = web.GetFolder(ddlSourceDiscussion.SelectedValue);
                        SPListItemCollection listCol = splDestination.Items;
                        SPListItem discussion = SPUtility.CreateNewDiscussion(listCol, spliDiscussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Title].ToString());
                        discussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Body] = spliDiscussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Body];
                        discussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Author] = spliDiscussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Author];
                        discussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Editor] = spliDiscussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Editor];
                        discussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Created] = spliDiscussion[SPBuiltInFieldId.Created];
                        discussion.Update();
                        CopyAttachments(spliDiscussion, discussion);
                        discussion.Update();
                        //copy replies
                        SPQuery q = new SPQuery();
                        q.Query = "<OrderBy><FieldRef Name='Title'/></OrderBy>";
                        q.Folder = fldrDiscussion;
                        SPListItemCollection flc = splSource.GetItems(q);
                        foreach (SPListItem li in flc)
                        {
                            SPListItem reply = SPUtility.CreateNewDiscussionReply(discussion);
                            reply[SPBuiltInFieldId.Body] = li[SPBuiltInFieldId.Body];
                            reply[SPBuiltInFieldId.Author] = li[SPBuiltInFieldId.Author];
                            reply[SPBuiltInFieldId.Editor] = li[SPBuiltInFieldId.Editor];
                            reply[SPBuiltInFieldId.Created] = li[SPBuiltInFieldId.Created];
                            reply.Update();
                            CopyAttachments(li, reply);
                            reply.Update();
                            discussion.Update();
                        }
                        //delete discussion
                        spliDiscussion.Delete();
                        this.Page.Response.Redirect(this.Page.Request.RawUrl);
                    }
                    catch { }
                    finally
                    {

                    }

                }
            }

Here is the method for copying the attachments over for the discussion as well:

        private void CopyAttachments(SPListItem spliDiscussion, SPListItem targetItem)
        {
            try
            {
                //get the folder with the attachments for the source item
                SPFolder fldrDiscAttachments = spliDiscussion.Web.Folders["Lists"].SubFolders[spliDiscussion.ParentList.Title].SubFolders["Attachments"].SubFolders[spliDiscussion.ID.ToString()];
                //Loop over the attachments, and add them to the target item
                foreach (SPFile file in fldrDiscAttachments.Files)
                {
                    byte[] binFile = file.OpenBinary();
                    targetItem.Attachments.AddNow(file.Name, binFile);
                }
            }
            catch { }
            finally
            {

            }
        }

There is one area where this is lacking, and that is the embedded content. (ie. if an image is attached, and then embedded with the full path URL, that will break, so you will either have to compensate for this in your code, or else just go into the posts and change the uploaded+embedded content manually.

Set Up – Web Config Changes For Customization

Alright, first post, but a rather necessary one. Every time I do a new SharePoint installation, I find myself constantly going straight to the web.config file to make a couple changes.  If you have spent any time with SharePoint you already know about these, but I find it’s always good for a reference.

I know that it’s not recommended, but I find creating an entry in the PageParserPath block to be invaluable for testing out some code against the API in a quick and dirty fashion. It beats having to pack up and deploy features every time I want to test a line of code.

1. First create a folder in your “Pages” directory (once you’ve turned publishing on)

2. Then, to add runnable ASP pages with custom code, modify the PageParserPaths block of the web config:

<PageParserPaths>
<PageParserPath VirtualPath=”/pages/asp/*” CompilationMode=”Always” AllowServerSideScript=”true” IncludeSubFolders=”true” />
</PageParserPaths>

The other thing I do right out of the gates is to change the error reporting over, so that I start getting valuable info, instead of the canned SharePoint error screens, which are seldomly informative.

<SafeMode MaxControls=“200“ CallStack=“false“…

to…

<SafeMode MaxControls=“200“ CallStack=“true“…

Also:

<customErrors mode=“On“/>

to….

<customErrors mode=“Off“/>

Deleting Erroring Web Parts

Have a web part on a page that is throwing an error, but unable to delete it using the “Edit Page” option?

Add:  ?contents=1 to the URL of the page. This will take you to a separate page, where it can be deleted.

Accessing SharePoint User Variables

string site = this.Page.Request.Url.ToString();
SPSite spsSite = new SPSite(site);
SPWeb spwWeb = spsSite.OpenWeb();string userEmail = spwWeb.CurrentUser.Email;
string userName = spwWeb.CurrentUser.Name;

etc.

Enabling SharePoint SRS2005 Report Builder For Access Via VPN

1. Make sure Reporting Services is up and running in Sharepoint Integration Mode
2. Enable Reporting Services for the site, test locally.
3. In IIS create a new Virtual Directory for the ReportBuilder at its default path (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\ISAPI\ReportBuilder).
4.  Click “Create” on the “Application Name” section.
5. Ensure anonymous access is checked for the application, and ensure that anonymous permissions have been granted on the folder. Unchecking “Integrated Windows Authentication” also may be a good idea.