Resources for Developing SharePoint Solutions with Silverlight

BobGerman — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:32:00 GMT

Many thanks to everyone who attended my talk at SPTechCon 2009 in Cambridge, MA! As promised, this posting will provide a pointer to the source code used in the demos, plus resources to help you get going with Silverlight in your SharePoint development projects.

All the code is on MSDN Code Gallery at http://code.msdn.com/SLParts. This includes:

Minimalist samples, one of which passes a text message to Silverlight for display, the other of which shows how to implement and call a custom web service in SharePoint from Silverlight
An image viewer web part to display an image library as a slide show. This web part shows how to pass SharePoint data to Silverlight in a hidden form field to avoid the need to make an extra round-trip to the server.
A mini-survey web part to ask a single question and show the results when it is answered. This web part shows how to update SharePoint using a custom web service, which piggybacks the latest results for rendering in Silverlight
A video field control that allows browsing SharePoint sites, libraries and documents to select a video in editing mode. This is an example of posting data back with the page (in a hidden form field), as is the expected behavior when editing a WCM page.

Here are some resources I found helpful in working with Silverlight and SharePoint:

Silverlight (General)

Get Started Building Silverlight Applications - http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
The Silverlight Geek Tutorials, Jesse Liberty - http://silverlight.net/learn/tutorials.aspx
.NET Framework Class Library for Silverlight, MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc838194(VS.95).aspx
Silverlight Learning Resources - http://silverlight.net/Learn/

Silverlight and SharePoint

Professional Microsoft SharePoint Development Using Microsoft Silverlight 2, Steve Fox and Paul Stubbs - http://www.amazon.com/Professional-SharePoint-Development-Silverlight-Programmer/dp/0470434007/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245520930&sr=8-1
(This book is an excellent resource, full of all the gems you need to make SharePoint and Silverlight work together!)
SharePoint Silverlight Demo - http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/silverlight.aspx
Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint - http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP

Programming with LINQ

LINQ - .Net Language-Integrated Query, Don Box and Anders Hejlsberg - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb308959.aspx
LINQ to XML Samples - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/bb688087.aspx
101 Linq Samples (C#), MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336746.aspx
101 Linq Samples (Visual Basic), MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/bb688088.aspx
(NOTE: The 101 samples are different for the two languages! You may find it useful to check them both out.)

Silverlight - HTML Bridge

HTML Bridge: Interaction Between HTML and Managed Code, MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645076(VS.95).aspx
Silverlight HTML Bridge FAQ, Erik Reitan - http://blogs.msdn.com/erikreitan/archive/2008/12/02/silverlight-html-bridge-faq.aspx

Silverlight Cross-Domain Access

Silverlight Cross-Domain Policy Helpers, Tim Heuer, http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/04/06/silverlight-cross-domain-policy-file-snippet-intellisense.aspx
Silverlight: Cross domain access blocked, use a server side proxy or XMLHttpRequest, Jon Galloway - http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2007/05/08/silverlight-cross-domain-access-blocked-use-a-server-side-proxy-or-xmlhttprequest.aspx
(NOTE: While using XMLHttpRequest will shift the issue from Silverlight to Javascript's cross-domain policy, be aware that the major browsers all disallow this by default and need their security settings to be dumbed-down, even in "trusted" mode, to make this work!)
Solving Cross-Domain Issues with Silverlight, Leonid Sorokin, http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/36119/Solving-cross-domain-issues-with-Silverlight-2.aspx

Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 1.3

Introducing VSeWSS 1.3 (Podcast series), Kirk Evans - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/kirke/SharePoint-for-Developers-Part-1-Introducing-VSeWSS-13/

Field Controls in SharePoint

How to: Create a Custom Field Control, MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa981226.aspx
How to Create a Custom SharePoint Field Control or Field Type, Clint Simon - http://consulting.ascentium.com/blog/sp/Post80.aspx
Field Rendering Templates, MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb862055.aspx

Web Services in SharePoint

Creating a Custom Web Service for SharePoint, S. S. Ahmed, http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/sharepoint-blog/creating-a-custom-web-service-for-sharepoint-13553
Walkthrough: Creating a Custom Web Service, MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms464040.aspx
SPDev: SharePoint Developer Utility, Mark Wagner - http://www.crsw.com/spdev/Wiki%20Pages/Home.aspx (Great command-line utility that modifies .wsdl and .disco files for easy deployment to SharePoint.)
SharePoint 2007 Web Services, Tony Testa - http://tonytestasworld.us/post/SharePoint-2007-Web-Services.aspx

Vantage Point - Bob German's WebLog : Silverlight