dwinter's [MSFT] WebLog

Important info about SharePoint 2007 SP2

dwinter — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:46:00 GMT

If you haven't already seen this yet--please read this announcement from Jeff Teper, Corp VP of SharePoint: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx

December Cumulative Update for SharePoint has released

dwinter — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:48:00 GMT

On the SharePoint team blog, you can find a more detailed post announcing the release of the December CU and providing detail on a new package that we are shipping from this point forward:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/12/17/announcing-december-cumulative-update-for-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx

While the packages are physically large, they do include everything. It doesn't hurt you if you don't have something installed, it is simply skipped. We believe that this will greatly reduce the complexity of managing the patching of your systems. We are continuing to work to update content in general in this area and will specifically be making an update to the deployment documents in January to reflect this new methodology.

I found my new cheese

dwinter — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:32:00 GMT

Of course that is referring to Who moved my cheese?, but the reality behind the analogy is still the same. I no longer am working in Product Support (CSS) as a Senior EE. I am now working as a PM (Program Manager) within the MOSS Product Group in Redmond (I have moved from Texas to Redmond). Specifically I am working with a group of people known as the CAT team (Customer Advisory Team). In this new adventure I am challenged with many things oriented around making the SharePoint offerings better for our customers through various avenues ranging from changes to upcoming products, tools for existing products, or even documentation/whitepapers to fill customer needs. One of my initial challenges is in the areas of Patching and Upgrade, which some of you know I am rather passionate about. As much of my work is internal, I won't be able to share as much here as I have in the past with one exception. When whitepapers or other public documentation are released that I had a hand in, I will be putting notes here with perhaps some additional thoughts around the content. Beyond that, I look forward to seeing you at various conferences/etc and working with you in the Beta programs.

August Cumulative Update guidance provided

dwinter — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:16:00 GMT

The SharePoint Product Group has provided us with some further guidance on what is currently needed to build a server up so that it is running the most up-to-date code. To get the details, read:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/09/29/announcing-august-cumulative-update-for-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx

Senior Dan...

dwinter — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:11:00 GMT

Some of you may have noticed that in August my title changed to Senior Escalation Engineer. As I look back over the past four years as an Escalation Engineer for SharePoint, I can't say that I disagree... I certainly am old enough in this product to start getting some discounts at lunch :). More seriously though, it is an honor to get this kind of title, and I wanted to point out a few other folks out in the blogosphere from my team that you may also know who also earned this distinction:
Steve Sheppard (author of the WebDav whitepaper and the fantastic series on overlapped recycling configuration of SharePoint)
Mike McIntyre (creator and maintainer of the SPSReports tool that so many of us use to get information about our environments)

There certainly are other quality engineers who I would love to mention here, but as of yet--do not have a presense in the blog-o-sphere, so I'll keep them anonymous at this point. None-the-less, know that with this new title comes some interesting responsibilities where we are enabled to make changes internally in a number of different areas that not only effect SharePoint, but other products as well. So, exciting times, and congrats to Steve and Mike!

SharePoint on virtualization

dwinter — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:04:00 GMT

You may have noticed the post on the SharePoint Team blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/08/18/update-on-virtualization-support-for-sharepoint-products-and-technologies.aspx) announcing support for Hyper-V based virtualization. There are however many things to know about the extent of what is supported. Obviously we will be supporting our own Hyper-V solution, but beyond that, we will also be supporting SharePoint running within SVVP certified solutions. As of the time of writing this, we only have one partner that is SVVP certified, Novell, Inc. The list is maintained at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944987. We do have a number of vendors who are working on becoming certified though, currently:
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   Citrix Systems, Inc.
   Sun Microsystems
   Unisys Corp.
   Virtual Iron Software
   VMware, Inc.

If things go well, we will see more of these vendors go from one list to the other--which will provide you with more options to suit your needs. None-the-less, this is an exciting time for virtualization and SharePoint, and only paves the way for bigger things.

As I mentioned before, there definitely are some things you should be aware of about running SharePoint in a Hyper-V environment. From a technical perspective there are two large ones. First, you need to be on SP1. There's not much interpretation there--for support and licensing to line up, we are requiring that. The second point is that you cannot take a snapshot of the Hyper-V environment. This largely has to do with how a farm could get out of sync in many areas and not be able to be guaranteed to come back online properly if this was done. In time my hope is that we can change this support stance and allow for more flexibility in this area, but for now, don't snapshot.

Patching Presentation video is now available for download

dwinter — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:08:00 GMT

We got the video of my patching presentation posted from the SharePoint 2008 conference. There truely is a lot of great information here, and this download will be referenced from many Microsoft locations as a must see when it comes to patching SharePoint.

Here are the links:

News Story - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc706878(TechNet.10).aspx

Download Link - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121946&clcid=0x409

Enjoy!

AAM issue with Infrastructure Update

dwinter — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:18:00 GMT

Please notice that the Infrastructure Update KB has been updated to include the following:

Known issues discovered after release of this update

   Installing the Infrastructure Update in a SharePoint farm that uses Alternate Access Mapping with a
   reverse proxy or a network load balancer, such as in an extranet deployment, may cause some
   public URLs to become unresponsive.

   Microsoft is aware of this issue and is developing a solution. Before installing the Infrastructure Update,
customers who use this configuration should use a test environment to verify that public URLs remain
   accessible after the update is installed.

Major SharePoint 2007 update released...

dwinter — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:55:00 GMT

It was just announced over on the SharePoint Team blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/07/15/announcing-availability-of-infrastructure-updates.aspx

This is an important update and is publically downloadable using the links on the SharePoint team's blog entry. We are recommending that all customers apply these updates. Please schedule a time to test them in your test enviornments, and also time for production upgrades. As with any upgrade, you will need go through an upgrade on all of your content. So the more content you have, the longer it will take. We do recommend that if you have MOSS that you apply both the WSS and MOSS packages and not just WSS or MOSS. The MOSS package (build 6322.5000) contains both the Global and Localized patches for MOSS (you should see 42 MSPs). The WSS package (build 6320.5000) contains only the Global patch (there is 1 MSP). It is recommended that you look to see if you need the latest WSS Localized patches (6309.5000) as well--which at the time of writing this post is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953484

Migrating Wiki Pages Remotely – Part 10

dwinter — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:55:00 GMT

Note, this series starts at http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-01.aspx

Here is the full project from this effort:
http://www.codeplex.com/WikiMigrator

Migrating Wiki Pages Remotely – Part 09

dwinter — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:53:00 GMT

Note, this series starts at http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-01.aspx

One of the final touches was to take care of the “but this data here is out of place”, or “this string still has the old server”, etc type complaints. You may have noticed this, but I wanted to point it out separately (since this works out to be a fall back plan in the code). When I do the link fix-up button (yet another reason for separating the operations into two different buttons), I looked to see if the Adv Repl (advanced replace) was checked and processed those values—in case you missed it, it was here:

if (chk_AdvRepl.Checked)

{

modifiedData = modifiedData.Replace(txt_Repl1.Text, txt_Repl2.Text);

}

This was significant because it allows the admin to have a search and replace style tweak. Ideally this kind of code should never be placed in the hands of an end user—but if you polished it up a bit, it could become an effective tool in allowing folks to make bulk search/replace type changes across wikis. Dangerous—but hey, that’s up to the implementer to control (that’s you! J).

Another thing that may be of interest was the:

// Kill the linefeeds and \\ because they will be literal since we have to use CDATA.

modifiedData = modifiedData.Replace(@"\r\n", "");

I found that when built up the CDATA for use in UpdateListItems from lists.asmx here:

string strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='Update'>" +

"<Field Name='ID'>" + item.Attributes["ows_ID"].Value + "</Field>" +

"<Field Name='WikiField'><![CDATA[" + modifiedData + "]]></Field>" +

"<Field Name='_CopySource'></Field></Method>";

That the call to UpdateListItems would suceed, but I would have massive numbers of \r\n littered throughout the wiki pages. The replace I was doing there was to counter that and could possibly be destructive, but generally, I did not find it to be.

Well that’s all of my thoughts for now. I hope this wasn’t too excessively long. It is a new style for me that I wanted to try out—if it is well received I will try it again sometime. If you’d prefer smaller nuggets—I can try for that to. I am open to suggestions.

Thanks for reading! You can find the information about the source in Part 10.

Part 10:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-10.aspx

Migrating Wiki Pages Remotely – Part 08

dwinter — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:52:00 GMT

Note, this series starts at http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-01.aspx

So there are a lot of little things to think about here. Once you start playing with this—the next one that comes to mind is… what about the images? It is a good question. I found in practice that most images would end up in the same Document Library or Images Library for any given segment of Wiki data created by a single person. However, it can vary… so I worked in something to parse where images are being used and report it back so that the admin knows they need to copy the images as well. It would be doable to automatically take care of these, but it was out of spec for what I wanted since if told what Document Libraries to grab, I could easily copy everything through explorer view to a list with the same name on the other side. At the beginning of my copy method I declared:

System.Collections.Hashtable imageLibraries = new System.Collections.Hashtable();

Here’s my code for image detection in the wiki pages:

// Try to find image tags and note their lists

MatchCollection imageMatches = Regex.Matches(sourceWikiField, "<img.*src=\"(.*)\">", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

foreach (Match imageMatch in imageMatches)

{

MatchCollection srcMatches = Regex.Matches(sourceWikiField, "src=\"(.*)\"", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

foreach (Match srcMatch in srcMatches)

{

string imageUrl = srcMatch.Value.TrimStart("src=".ToCharArray()).TrimStart("\"".ToCharArray()).TrimEnd("\"".ToCharArray());

int lastSlash = imageUrl.LastIndexOf("/");

string imageParentUrl = string.Empty;

if (lastSlash > 0)

{

imageParentUrl = imageUrl.Substring(0, lastSlash - 1);

}

Trace.WriteLine("Found image: " + imageUrl);

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(imageParentUrl))

{

if (!imageLibraries.Contains(imageParentUrl))

{

imageLibraries.Add(imageParentUrl, string.Empty);

Trace.WriteLine("Added Library: " + imageParentUrl);

}

Then at the end I just loop through the imageLibraries collection and reported it back to the admin. I thought this was slick because I only would see a distinct list of libraries and not every image in use. Take a look here:

if (imageLibraries.Count > 0)

{

Trace.WriteLine("===============================================");

Trace.WriteLine("The following location(s) contain images used by the coppied wikis. They should be coppied manually to new locations matching the structure from:");

Trace.WriteLine("");

txt_Status.Text += "===============================================\r\nThe following location(s) contain wiki images to be coppied:\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

foreach (System.Collections.DictionaryEntry imageLibrary in imageLibraries)

{

Trace.WriteLine(imageLibrary.Key);

txt_Status.Text += imageLibrary.Key + "\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

}

Trace.WriteLine("");

txt_Status.Text += "\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

}

Part 09:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-09.aspx

Migrating Wiki Pages Remotely – Part 07

dwinter — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:48:00 GMT

Note, this series starts at http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-01.aspx

Now let us consider the next potential problem in using copy.asmx. There were some instances where I found that the copy.asmx would fail outright. One of these was when I would go between significant schema versions. In my case, I was going between a very early version of o14 and SharePoint 2007. The problem here was that copy.asmx grabs a binary copy of the current object which has all of the information embedded in it. This was a problem because I didn’t have the o14 assemblies (14.x.x.x instead of 12.x.x.x) on my destination server. I will preface the rest of this commentary with the thought that by the time we launch o14, this may not be a problem at all (no promises on what will or won't be in o14 will be comming from this blog--sorry). However, my approach in dealing with the problem is still valuable to share, and that is why I decided to put it here. Here is how I dealt with it: Going back to the initial code where we successfully got the data from the source server’s list.asmx, I did that again. However, for this special case scenario, I decided it was appropriate to make the destination a local OM destination. Then I could run the tool again and go web service to web service form my local server over to my actual destination. Yes, this is an extra set—but it still allowed me to not have to have access to either of the production servers locally. This code path is triggered in my code by the DestLocal checkbox. Here’s what that code looks like:

private bool manualLocalCopy(string sourceWikiField, string itemName, WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.FieldInformation[] myFieldInfoArray2, byte[] myByteArray, string[] copyDest, bool copySuccess)

{

bool manualSuccess = false;

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(sourceWikiField))

{

try

{

string modifiedData = sourceWikiField.Replace(@"\r\n", "");

modifiedData = modifiedData.Replace(@"\\", @"\");

// You need a try-catch block because new SPSite(), OpenWeb(), and GetList() all throw on failure.

try

{

// open site, web, list, and file collection

SPSite site = new SPSite(txt_SiteName2.Text);

SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();

SPList list = web.Lists[txt_SelectedWiki2.Text];

SPFileCollection files = list.RootFolder.Files;

SPFile newFile = null;

try

{

// add new wiki page

newFile = files.Add(txt_SelectedWiki2.Text.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + itemName, SPTemplateFileType.WikiPage);

}

catch (Exception exc)

{

newFile = files[itemName];

}

// get the list item corresponding to the wiki page and update its content

SPListItem item = newFile.Item;

item["WikiField"] = sourceWikiField;

item.Update();

manualSuccess = true;

copySuccess = true;

}

catch (Exception exc)

{

if (exc.Message.Contains("-2147024816"))

{

Trace.WriteLine("File exists in target");

}

else

{

Trace.WriteLine("manualLocalCopy Exception: " + exc.Message);

}

catch (Exception exc)

{

Trace.WriteLine("***ERROR*** Manual copy failed " + exc.Message);

}

if (!manualSuccess)

{

Trace.WriteLine("Manual copy of " + itemName + " failed.");

txt_Status.Text += "Manual copy of " + itemName + " failed.\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

}

else

{

Trace.WriteLine("Coppied to " + txt_SiteName2.Text.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + txt_SelectedWiki2.Text.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + itemName);

txt_Status.Text += "Coppied to " + txt_SiteName2.Text.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + txt_SelectedWiki2.Text.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + itemName + "\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

copySuccess = true;

}

return copySuccess;
}

Part 08:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-08.aspx

Migrating Wiki Pages Remotely – Part 06

dwinter — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:47:00 GMT

Note, this series starts at http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-01.aspx

Now that that is done, it is time to consider some potential difficulties of this approach. First, when you use the copy.asmx, the destination file will automatically gain a property called _CopySource that points back to the source item—making a dependency. When you browse the new destination page, it will have a link at the top noting that it is a copy of the other Wiki Page and provide a link to it. In my scenario, I didn’t want this because my source server was going to be going away—and that is not something that would automatically have cleaned up. So, I had to add a step of cleaning _CopySource after the copy operation was complete. I found it was more logical to copy everything first and then fix up the links second with a separate button. The good news is that it works perfectly and will have no side effects. If you clear _CopySource—you are setting it to the same value that a normal Wiki Page would have, so it is as though the copy operation through the copy.asmx never happened and you just manually had created the content. Here is the code to clean up _CopySource:

if (txt_SelectedWiki2.Text.Length > 0)

{

Server2WS.Lists s2L = new WikiMigrator.Server2WS.Lists();

s2L.Url = txt_SiteName2.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/_vti_bin/lists.asmx";

s2L.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

try

{

XmlDocument xmlDocLI = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();

XmlNode ndQueryLI = xmlDocLI.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element,"Query","");

XmlNode ndViewFieldsLI = xmlDocLI.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element,"ViewFields","");

XmlNode ndQueryOptionsLI = xmlDocLI.CreateNode(XmlNodeType.Element,"QueryOptions","");

ndQueryOptionsLI.InnerXml = "<IncludeMandatoryColumns>FALSE</IncludeMandatoryColumns>" +

"<DateInUtc>TRUE</DateInUtc>";

ndViewFieldsLI.InnerXml = "<FieldRef Name='FileRef' />" +

"<FieldRef Name='WikiField' />" +

"<FieldRef Name='LinkFilename' />";

ndQueryLI.InnerXml = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='FileRef' />" +

"<Value Type='Text'>[server-relative URL of wiki page]</Value></Eq></Where>";

// Need to provide a large number or we will restrict at the default 100 items if null

XmlNode ndListItems = s2L.GetListItems(txt_SelectedWiki2.Text, null, null, ndViewFieldsLI, txtNumberRows.Text, null, null);

XmlNode ndListItemDetail = ndListItems.ChildNodes[1];

foreach (XmlNode item in ndListItemDetail.ChildNodes)

{

try

{

if (item.Attributes != null)

{

string itemName = item.Attributes["ows_LinkFilename"].Value;

Trace.WriteLine("Fixing: " + itemName);

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(itemName))

{

string copySource = txt_SiteName.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + txt_SelectedWiki.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()).TrimStart("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + itemName;

string copyDest = txt_SiteName2.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + txt_SelectedWiki2.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()).TrimStart("/".ToCharArray()) + "/" + itemName;

string wikiData = item.Attributes["ows_WikiField"].Value;

string actualWikiData = string.Empty;

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(wikiData))

{

Trace.WriteLine("...using ows_MetaInfo instead of ows_WikiField");

string itemData = item.Attributes["ows_MetaInfo"].Value;

Regex metaProp = new Regex(@"( \w*:\w{2}\|)");

string[] regexData = metaProp.Split(itemData);

bool prepnextMatch = false;

foreach (string data in regexData)

{

try

{

if (data != string.Empty)

{

if (!prepnextMatch)

{

if (data == " WikiField:SW|")

{

prepnextMatch = true;

}

else if (prepnextMatch && actualWikiData == string.Empty)

{

actualWikiData = data;

break;

}

else

{

throw new System.Exception("E_FAIL");

}

catch {}

}

else

{

actualWikiData = wikiData;

}

// Locals for replacement operations

string sitename = txt_SiteName.Text.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray());

string destsite = txt_SiteName2.Text.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray());

string wiki1 = txt_SelectedWiki.Text.TrimStart("/".ToCharArray());

string wiki2 = txt_SelectedWiki2.Text.TrimStart("/".ToCharArray());

Uri sourceSiteUri = new Uri(sitename);

Uri destSiteUri = new Uri(destsite);

string sourceAbsolute = sourceSiteUri.AbsolutePath.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray());

string destAbsolute = destSiteUri.AbsolutePath.TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray());

// http://server1/site/library to http://server2/newsite/newlibrary

string modifiedData = Regex.Replace(actualWikiData, Regex.Escape(sitename + "/" + wiki1), Regex.Escape(destsite + "/" + wiki2), RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

// http://server1 to http://server2

modifiedData = Regex.Replace(modifiedData, Regex.Escape(sitename), Regex.Escape(destsite), RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

// /site/library to /newsite/newlibrary (+ Encoded)

modifiedData = Regex.Replace(modifiedData, Regex.Escape(sourceAbsolute + "/" + wiki1), Regex.Escape(destAbsolute + "/" + wiki2), RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

modifiedData = Regex.Replace(modifiedData, Regex.Escape(sourceAbsolute + "/" + Uri.EscapeDataString(wiki1)), Regex.Escape(destAbsolute + "/" + Uri.EscapeDataString(wiki2)), RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

// /site to /newsite

// This is very dangerous and is commented because of it...

// since source could be '/' and if it actually is, we would

// replace every / in the doc

//if (sourceSiteUri.AbsolutePath != "/")

//{

// modifiedData = modifiedData.Replace(sourceSiteUri.AbsolutePath, destSiteUri.AbsolutePath);

// modifiedData = Regex.Replace(modifiedData, Regex.Escape(), Regex.Escape(), RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

//}

// Kill the linefeeds and \\ because they will be literal since we have to use CDATA. This could flatten \\server\share links to \server\share in the text, but the links should still work. You could do something more elegant here to protect against that.

modifiedData = modifiedData.Replace(@"\r\n", "");

modifiedData = modifiedData.Replace(@"\\", @"\");

if (chk_AdvRepl.Checked)

{

modifiedData = modifiedData.Replace(txt_Repl1.Text, txt_Repl2.Text);

}

string strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='Update'>" +

"<Field Name='ID'>" + item.Attributes["ows_ID"].Value + "</Field>" +

"<Field Name='WikiField'><![CDATA[" + modifiedData + "]]></Field>" +

"<Field Name='_CopySource'></Field></Method>";

if (chkDebugFull.Checked)

{

Trace.WriteLine("***** " + itemName + " *****");

Trace.WriteLine(strBatch);

}

XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();

System.Xml.XmlElement elBatch = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Batch");

elBatch.SetAttribute("OnError", "Continue");

elBatch.SetAttribute("ListVersion", "1");

elBatch.InnerXml = strBatch;

s2L.UpdateListItems(txt_SelectedWiki2.Text, elBatch);

Trace.WriteLine("Updated: " + itemName);

txt_Status.Text += "Updated: " + itemName + "\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

}

catch {}

}

catch {}

Part 07:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-07.aspx

Migrating Wiki Pages Remotely – Part 05

dwinter — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:44:00 GMT

Note, this series starts at http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-01.aspx

Once you have gotten the source data in memory, the next step is to get it into the destination server. This is where most folks run into problems. In my exploration, I found a few different approaches—which can work better in different scenarios. If you try the obvious method of adding a new item, you may find some difficulty. Let’s walk through what some of the more obvious ways are and show what happens:

string strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='New'>" +

"<Field Name='ID'>New</Field>" +

"<Field Name='WikiField'><![CDATA[" + modifiedData + "]]></Field>" +

"</Method>";

if (chkDebugFull.Checked)

{

Trace.WriteLine("***** " + itemName + " ***** MANUAL COPY *****");

Trace.WriteLine(strBatch);

}

XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();

System.Xml.XmlElement elBatch = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Batch");

elBatch.SetAttribute("OnError", "Continue");

elBatch.InnerXml = strBatch;

XmlNode ndReturn = s2L.UpdateListItems(txt_SelectedWiki2.Text, elBatch);

if (ndReturn != null)

{

if (ndReturn.InnerText != "0x00000000")

{

Trace.WriteLine("ErrorCode - " + ndReturn.InnerText);

}

The problem is (and place where most people will find failure until they give up) is that you’ll fall into an error code (the 0x00000000 is a success) the moment you start adding other fields that would be necessary for a wiki. I can successfully create a batch that creates a new Wiki Page using UpdateListItems with the batch method above. However when I start adding other required fields like Title:

string strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='New'>" +

"<Field Name='ID'>New</Field>" +

"<Field Name='Title'>"+itemName.Split(".".ToCharArray())[0]+"</Field>" +

//"<Field Name='FileLeafRef'>"+itemName+"</Field>" +

"<Field Name='WikiField'><![CDATA[" + modifiedData + "]]></Field>" +

"</Method>";

I would experience nasty errors back from the web service every time. I did some exploring on existing fields on the source location that had the title/etc in them, and found that:

Content Type = won’t set
Title = won’t set
FileRef = won’t set
FileLeafRef = won’t set
LinkFilename = yes it will set
LinkFilenameNoMenu = yes it will set
WikiField = yes it will set

Again though, I was met with a problem—since I couldn’t get the title or any of the base fields containing the title or derivations of the title to set while creating the item—the new Wiki Pages would be something like <ID#>._ for the title/etc. Since the extension effectively was _, it wouldn’t be linked to the Wiki Pages content type or be recognized as an aspx/etc, so the resulting files are useless. I talked with some of the internal folks who were in charge of the codebase and they noted that if I wanted to create a Wiki Page from scratch like this through a web service, I would likely need to implement my own web service. That was out of spec for me. Needless to say, following a series of failures around that code I re-evaluated my initial approach. The first successful method I found of relocating Wiki Pages was using the copy.asmx Web Service instead of lists.asmx. That was actually the first time I played with the copy.asmx—even though I’ve already shown source above using it. It is quite simple to use, but it does pose a few difficulties which I will discuss later. Here is my code for using the copy.asmx to do the actual copy:

if ((txt_SelectedWiki.Text.Length > 0) && (txt_SelectedWiki2.Text.Length > 0))

{

Server1WS.Lists s1L = new WikiMigrator.Server1WS.Lists();

s1L.Url = txt_SiteName.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/_vti_bin/lists.asmx";

s1L.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

Server2WS.Lists s2L = new WikiMigrator.Server2WS.Lists();

s2L.Url = txt_SiteName2.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/_vti_bin/lists.asmx";

s2L.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

try

{

// Need to provide a large number or we will restrict at the default 100 items if null

XmlNode ndListItems = s1L.GetListItems(txt_SelectedWiki.Text, null, null, null, txtNumberRows.Text, null, null);

XmlNode ndListItemDetail = ndListItems.ChildNodes[1];

foreach (XmlNode item in ndListItemDetail.ChildNodes)

{

try

{

if (item.Attributes != null)

{

string itemName = item.Attributes["ows_LinkFilename"].Value;

Trace.WriteLine("Copying: " + itemName);

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(itemName))

{

Server1CopyWS.Copy myCopyService = new WikiMigrator.Server1CopyWS.Copy();

myCopyService.Url = txt_SiteName.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/_vti_bin/copy.asmx";

myCopyService.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

Server2CopyWS.Copy myCopyService2 = new WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.Copy();

myCopyService2.Url = txt_SiteName2.Text.Trim().TrimEnd("/".ToCharArray()) + "/_vti_bin/copy.asmx";

myCopyService2.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

string copySource = txt_SiteName.Text + "/" + txt_SelectedWiki.Text + "/" + itemName;

string[] copyDest = { txt_SiteName2.Text + "/" + txt_SelectedWiki2.Text + "/" + itemName };

WikiMigrator.Server1CopyWS.FieldInformation myFieldInfo = new WikiMigrator.Server1CopyWS.FieldInformation();

WikiMigrator.Server1CopyWS.FieldInformation[] myFieldInfoArray = { myFieldInfo };

byte[] myByteArray;

uint myGetUint = myCopyService.GetItem(copySource, out myFieldInfoArray, out myByteArray);

WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.FieldInformation[] myFieldInfoArray2 = new WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.FieldInformation[myFieldInfoArray.Length];

string sourceWikiField = string.Empty;

for (int x = 0; x < myFieldInfoArray.Length; x++)

{

if (myFieldInfoArray[x].InternalName == "WikiField")

{

sourceWikiField = myFieldInfoArray[x].Value;

}

if (chkDebugFull.Checked)

{

Trace.WriteLine("SourceProp: " + myFieldInfoArray[x].InternalName + " = " + myFieldInfoArray[x].Value);

}

WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.FieldInformation myFieldInfo2 = new WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.FieldInformation();

myFieldInfo2.DisplayName = myFieldInfoArray[x].DisplayName;

myFieldInfo2.Id = myFieldInfoArray[x].Id;

myFieldInfo2.InternalName = myFieldInfoArray[x].InternalName;

myFieldInfo2.Type = (Server2CopyWS.FieldType)myFieldInfoArray[x].Type;

myFieldInfo2.Value = myFieldInfoArray[x].Value;

myFieldInfoArray2[x] = myFieldInfo2;

}

// This wont work, and you can't cast the FieldInfo[] object between webservices--hence the above loop

//myFieldInfoArray.CopyTo(myFieldInfoArray2, 0);

// I do some image work here described later in detail

// Are we local OM or remote WS?

if (!chk_DestLocal.Checked)

{

WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.CopyResult myCopyResult1 = new WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.CopyResult();

WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.CopyResult myCopyResult2 = new WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.CopyResult();

WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.CopyResult[] myCopyResultArray = { myCopyResult1, myCopyResult2 };

try

{

uint myCopyUint = myCopyService2.CopyIntoItems(copySource, copyDest, myFieldInfoArray2, myByteArray, out myCopyResultArray);

if (myCopyUint == 0)

{

int idx = 0;

foreach (WikiMigrator.Server2CopyWS.CopyResult myCopyResult in myCopyResultArray)

{

string opString = (idx + 1).ToString();

if (myCopyResultArray[idx].ErrorMessage == null)

{

Trace.WriteLine("Copied to: " + myCopyResultArray[idx].DestinationUrl);

txt_Status.Text += "Copied to: " + myCopyResultArray[idx].DestinationUrl + "\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

copySuccess = true;

}

else

{

Trace.WriteLine("COPY SERVICE FAILURE--TRY LOCAL DEST INSTEAD");

Trace.WriteLine("ERROR: " + myCopyResultArray[idx].ErrorMessage);

txt_Status.Text += "Copy Operation Failure. Try Local Dest instead. Exception: " + myCopyResultArray[idx].ErrorMessage + "\r\n";

txt_Status.Select(txt_Status.Text.Length, 0);

txt_Status.ScrollToCaret();

}

idx++;

}

// In full code, this catch processes CopyResult

catch {}

}

else

{ // Local dest

copySuccess = manualLocalCopy(sourceWikiField, itemName, myFieldInfoArray2, myByteArray, copyDest, copySuccess);

}

catch {}

}

catch {}

}

Part 06:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2008/06/28/migrating-wiki-pages-remotely-part-06.aspx