Probably the first thing you play with in the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint is to create a web part. The default project naming can take a little to get used to however. Here's the common path that leads to confusion:
- Create your first WebPart project in Visual Studio - default project name WebPart1 and you get a Web Part project item template called WebPart1 also as the name of the WebPart feature. You can deploy and debug this web part to your local SharePoint Server.
- Create your second WebPart project in Visual Studio - default project name WebPart2 and you get a Web Part project item template called WebPart1 as the name of the WebPart feature. This is often not what you want, because the WebPart1 name will already be used on your SharePoint Server as an existing feature. So this project will fail to deploy unless you retract the previous WebPart1. Feature names on SharePoint must be unique.
The takeaway from this is that for each Visual Studio project template the default feature names start at 1 and unique feature names are required in SharePoint. Hence if you want to reuse the name WebPart1 on your SharePoint server, you have to deactivate and uninstall the previous one. You could use the SETUP.BAT from the first project for this, or you could use STSADM to remove it.
A better option would be to create Visual Studio projects using the Empty Project template (instead of the WebPart project) and then manually add your Web Part and give your Web Part a unique name yourself. It's unlikely that you would want to only have one WebPart in a SharePoint Visual Studio project anyway.
Joe Rodgers keeps a blog identifying the latest updates available for SharePoint. The
October 2008 hotfix package is the latest set of updates now. The KB articles have good descriptions of the included patches.
My talk today in Barcelona was a walkthrough building a SharePoint solution with the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint. The bits for the solution are available
here.
We announced a new developer tool today which is planned for release during the North American Winter. Read about SPDisposeCheck on the SharePoint team blog.
I’m here at TechEd EMEA in Barcelona, Spain and Jason Zander (General Manager for Visual Studio) has just finished presenting the keynote. In the keynote he announced and did a demo of the Visual Studio 2010 tools for SharePoint. Here’s a quick summary of the new tooling for SharePoint that he showed:
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Server Explorer for SharePoint viewing Lists and other artifacts in SharePoint directly inside of Visual Studio
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Windows SharePoint Services Project (WSP file) Import to create a new solution
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Added a new web part project item and showed the Visual web part designer which loads a user control as a web part for SharePoint
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Showed adding an event receiver for SharePoint and using the wizard to choose the event receiver and to just create a source file with that event receiver.
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Added an ASPX workflow initiation form to a workflow project and showed how this workflow initiation form has designer capability
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Showed the packaging explorer and the packaging editor which lets you structure the SharePoint features and WSP file that is created
More on http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Visual+Studio+2010/
Visual Studio 2010 home page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/cc948977.aspx
Lots of work has gone into the new Patterns and Practices SharePoint Guidance. I'm very excited to see this content released and recommend it as required reading for all SharePoint Developers. Read Blaines announcement here. And read the guidance documents on MSDN here.
Also yesterday Chris Johnson published his PDC session demo. The talk was packed, as was the overflow room. It's a great demo and borrows branding from the Patterns and Practices SharePoint Guidance. Get the demo bits here.
If you build SharePoint Developer Tools, you should investigate the Visual Studio Industry Partner Program. There is lots of value in the program for Developer Tools vendors and SharePoint Developer Tools vendors can be part of it.
Also, if you build a SharePoint Developer Tool that can be used with or in conjunction with Visual Studio go ahead and add it to the Visual Studio Gallery.
I have added the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint there. Be the first person to write a review of it or rate it.
I'll be at the Microsoft PDC 2008 and I hope to see you there. if you're going, please come to some of our SharePoint talks. In fact, go and add them to your My Sessions now and make us more popular.
There will be a Hands on Lab you can try at the show for your first experience developing with SharePoint. The PDC 2008 Hard Drives will have a SharePoint VPC containing 10 SharePoint Developer Hands on Labs. And we will have a SharePoint booth in the Pavilion with Mike Ammerlaan, Alex Malek, Chris Johnson, Steve Fox just to name a few.
Here are the SharePoint talks and a bit more about each of them:
SharePoint 2007: Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio 2008
Speaker: Chris Johnson
Abstract: Learn how to use Microsoft Silverlight and SharePoint together. See us build a SharePoint application using the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint.
A bit more detail: For this talk Chris will be building a SharePoint site from scratch in Visual Studio 2008 using the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint. He will be adding branding to the site and the site will feature a list, event receivers, a wiki and a Silverlight web part. The Silverlight web part will include something new that is being announced at the PDC in a prior talk. You’ll be watching Chris code during the talk, but the SharePoint site he builds will give you ideas for your own coding and the completed sample will be available for download immediately after the talk.
SharePoint Online: Extending Your Service
Speaker: Troy Hopwood
Abstract: Learn how to access and manipulate SharePoint files and data remotely with Web Services, customize your design and layout, and create workflows using Office SharePoint Designer 2007. See these extensibility points for SharePoint Online and more as we show you how to improve collaboration without running any on-premises servers.
A bit more detail: Troy will be showing various options for programming against SharePoint Online. You can’t upload binary code to the SharePoint Online servers but there are many ways you can still extend this. This talk will explain these extensibility mechanisms and show them coded against SharePoint Online. This will include use of the SharePoint Online Web Services, customizing SharePoint online with SharePoint Designer, calling out from the Data View Web Part to web services, building Silverlight controls with .NET code that run on SharePoint Online.
SharePoint 2007: Advanced Asynchronous Workflow Messaging
Speaker: Alex Malek
Abstract: Learn how to build an employee on-boarding application that depends on a server located inside another company. We show how to use Microsoft Visual Studio to build the document workflow and have it asynchronously message a business service hosted behind another company's firewall.
A bit more detail: This talk will show SharePoint workflows making calls out to external systems. I don’t think you will have seen that before and it’s pretty advanced stuff.
FAST: Building Search-Driven Portals with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Silverlight
Speakers: Jan Helge Sageflåt, Stein Danielsen
Abstract: The combination of FAST ESP and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 allows for the development of powerful search-driven portals. Learn about the architecture and functionality of FAST ESP, and see how FAST ESP can complement and extend existing search features in MOSS 2007. Watch a demonstration that shows how to create search user interfaces by configuring and extending the FAST ESP Search Web Parts, including the use of Silverlight to deliver unique search experiences.
A bit more detail: Heard about FAST search? FAST search offers structured search, faceted search, search driven site navigation, and search beyond the search box. This talk will drill into the integration of FAST with SharePoint. Come and learn more.
My colleague Michael Washam posted a nice article about how to call a WCF web service from a SharePoint Web Part using Javascript.
How to call a WCF web service from SharePoint.
The introduction to SharePoint Development site has been up for four months now and we just posted an update to three of the downloads.
- Downloadable WSS Dev VPC Image - This has been updated to Visual Studio 2008 (previously Visual Studio 2005). It's also a smaller download at about 1.8Gb to download in 4 files now. The Virtual PC image includes:
- Windows Server 2003 (expires on 29th September 2009)
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1
- Visual Studio 2008
- Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services
- 10 Hands on Labs for learning SharePoint in C# and VB.NET
- SharePoint Developer Introductory Hands on Labs - These are all updated to Visual Studio 2008 and they are included on the VM image. They are also available for separate download from the site
- SharePoint Developer Introductory Web Cast PPTs and Demos - Previously two of these 10 webcast PPTs were missing transcripts, this has been corrected.
All three of these downloads, and the online MSDN Virtual Labs, are available at http://MSSHarePointDeveloper.com
I got quoted in
this article about SharePoint Development.
We've started a SharePoint Developer FAQ on the new MSDN Forums. Do you have questions and you can't find answers perhaps the FAQ will help.
http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/5834679b-482b-4924-b881-fa2146840d05
You can still get to the forums at this shortcut URL: http://MSSharePointForums.com
Looking for a good collection of SharePoint blogs. Here's one which list lots of them. Cool new service from Guy Kawasaki.
