Code, Articles, Discussion on Microsoft Technologies

System.MissingMethodException: Method Not Found when running unit Tests

Madhur — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:54:00 GMT

Lately, I have been doing Test Driven development in my development projects. I have noticed a strange issue which occurs especially when the code coverage is enabled for the assemblies. The result is , unit tests works normally in Debug mode and do not...(read more)

Adding Client script to TreeNode Click Event

Madhur — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:55:00 GMT

Most of the ASP.NET 2.0 controls provide way to add client events to them. For example, TextBoxes, checkbox are simply rendered as <input> elements and can be easily hooked to JavaScript functions either programmatically or declaratively. However,...(read more)

Resolving Common issues while Applying Site Templates (.stp) on MOSS 2007

Madhur — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:21:00 GMT

Lately, I have been working a lot with site templates in MOSS 2007. I have seen common issues which keep occurring now and then. I am posting the resolution of those since you might also run across them frequently. File Cannot be found This one...(read more)

Use right tools for x64 machines

Madhur — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:36:00 GMT

If you are setting up a x64 server for MOSS, there are some things to be taken care of. I ran into couple of issues while setting up my development machine and had a hard time debugging it. While registering ASP.NET 2.0 framework with IIS, make sure to...(read more)

Managed Debugging and inspecting Jitted code With WinDbg

Madhur — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:34:43 GMT

WinDbg is a powerful tool to debug applications. Lately, its use has been extended to managed debugging as well through an extension called sos.dll (Son of Strike). Sos.dll is shipped with both .NET Framework 2.0 and .NET 1.1 Framework and is a WinDbg...(read more)

Resolving Very Slow Symbol Loading with VS 2008 during debugging

Madhur — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:47:27 GMT

Recently, I was encountering insanely slow project loading times during debugging in Visual Studio 2008. Interestingly, this only happened while loading the project only in debug mode. Also, during the slow symbol loading time, the status bar at Visual...(read more)

Showing Exchange Inbox in MOSS 2007

Madhur — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:05:22 GMT

Recently, I have seen a lot of discussions on forums about showing user's mailbox on a portal homepage. This is very similar to the case in My Site, but in this case the portal is not My Site and the requirement is to let each user view his/her mailbox using the My Inbox Web Part.

Interestingly, I have seen developers writing custom Web Part for this requirement. In-fact, this is available totally out of the box.

If you are using Exchange 2007, you can just fill in the Exchange Server field in your Outlook Web Parts for MOSS 2007 and the Web Part will pickup the current user's mailbox automatically.

If you have a Exchange 2003 and SharePoint in your organization, this is one of the strong reason alone for going into Exchange 2007 upgrade, along with other benefits which Exchange 2007 provides.

However, If you are using Exchange 2003 and want to achieve this functionality, its easy to write the custom Web Part which automatically assigns the current user and exchange server to Web Part programmatically. But there are limitations of this approach which I will outline at the end of this post. This is simple code for the Web Part which can be used to assign the username and server name.

using System;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls;

namespace SharePoint.Webparts
{
    public class MyInboxEx : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
    {
         protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {

//Create the instance of My Inbox Web Part
OWAInboxPart inbox = new OWAInboxPart();

                   //Get and Assign the server name from web.config
                    inbox.OWAServerAddressRoot = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["SERVER_NAME"];
                    string userName = Page.Request.ServerVariables["LOGON_USER"];
                    string mailboxName = userName;
                    int pos = userName.IndexOf("\\");
                    if (pos > -1)
                    {
                        mailboxName = userName.Substring(pos + 1);
                    }

//Assign the mailbox name

inbox.MailboxName = mailboxName;
Controls.Add(inbox);

}

}
}

In the above code, we can retrieve the server name of exchange server from any configuration store, I am using web.config <AppSettings> section here. Before using this code in any environment, its important to realize its limitations:

The Web Part makes the assumption that the name of the mailbox is same as the username. Although, this is true for most of Exchange deployments, this is not true for all. I have seen deployments, where FirstName.LastName is used as name of the mailbox while username is entirely different.
In large Exchange deployments, there are multiple servers being used, and user's mailbox is located to geographically closest server. The Web Part does not take into account of this as we are using single hard coded server name for all the users.

Due to the reasons cited above, the usage of this approach is very limited to small deployments. I have seen this approach being used in one of the deployment at a University :)

Cheers,

Madhur

Switch the sharepoint webpart page Display Mode into Edit Mode and Vice Versa

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:40:00 GMT

Recently one of my clients had a requirement to go into Edit mode of a sharepoint page using a manual link displayed in quick launch. He was lazy of going to Site Actions -> Edit Page and then again going somewhere else for Exit Edit Mode :)

To give some background for beginners, whenever we click Edit Page on Site Actions menu,
the pages switches into a different display mode called Design Mode. Its not a feature of
Sharepoint, but ASP.NET 2.0 Webparts Framework.

Background

According to the framework, the page can have 4 different modes:

BrowseDisplayMode : Represents the default display mode.
CatalogDisplayMode : Used for adding controls from a catalog of controls to a Web page
ConnectDisplayMode : Displays a special UI for users to manage connections between Web Part controls.
DesignDisplayMode : Used for changing the layout of Web pages containing Web Part controls.
EditDisplayMode : Displays a UI from which end users can edit and modify server controls

The WebPartManager control provides a programmatic interface, making it possible to switch the Web Part Page between browse, design, and edit display modes.

For example, to programmatically switch the current page into design mode, you can simply add a link control with an event handler that sets the DisplayMode property to DesignDisplayMode.


WebPartManager1.DisplayMode = WebPartManager.DesignDisplayMode;

Although this would work technically, but it would not give up the visible changes to page, like visibilty of Page Editing toolbar, webpart zones etc.

This visual magic is done by lot of Javascript which is executed when we click Edit Page on Site Actions menu.

To build this link control, we need to figure out the javascript code which causes this behaviour.

This would be present in default.master. If we open Site Actions menu and do the View Source on IE.
Here is the code of our interest :

<td class="ms-siteactionsmenu" id="siteactiontd">
<span><a href="javascript:MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode();">Edit Page</a><;/span>

As you must have figured out, its the MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode() function which does all the magic of turning the current page into Edit page. This javascript also calls the server side code which executes this statement

WebPartManager1.DisplayMode = WebPartManager.DesignDisplayMode;
//(This can also be demonstrated, but its beyond scope)

Building the Webcontrol

Armed with this knowledge, we can build a simple webcontrol which we will switch the page into Edit mode and vice versa.
Below is the code for the same. Its the simplest webcontrol you will see ever.


using System;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI;
namespace SPUtil
{
public class SPEditMode:System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl
{
  HtmlAnchor btnLink;

  protected override void CreateChildControls()
  {
      WebPartManager wp = WebPartManager.GetCurrentWebPartManager(Page);

      const string url="javascript:MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode();";

      btnLink = new HtmlAnchor();

      if (wp.DisplayMode == WebPartManager.BrowseDisplayMode)

          btnLink.InnerText = "Edit Page";
      else if (wp.DisplayMode == WebPartManager.DesignDisplayMode)
          btnLink.InnerText = "Exit Edit Mode";
      else
          btnLink.Visible = false;

      btnLink.HRef = url;

      Controls.Add(btnLink);
      base.CreateChildControls();
  }

}
}

I have used HtmlAnchor rather than LinkButton or SPLinkButton since its lightweight on the server and We are not performing any special processing which is present in server controls.

One point to be worth noting: This link would be visible to all including visitors. For used in practical scenarious, the control should be hidden for other than members and Administrators.

I was using this link in user's MySite and hence I did not have that case :)

Passing multiple filter values to EWA pivot table filter cell

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:39:00 GMT

Filter webparts in WSS are a great way to provide filtering in many different webparts like List View, Business Data Catalog, Excel Web Access etc.

They are also great way to provide data view personalization when used with Excel services coupled with Analysis Services of SQL server.

This is described in detail on Excel Team blog here

In this post, we will see how to create a simple filter webart which provides values to pivot table filter cell.

I am mentioning pivot table filter cell exclusively because the filter webpart examples on MSDN has to be slightly modified to provide values
to filter cell.

Basically, we are building a filter provider which

Implements the ITransformableFilterValues interface.
The interface required few properties to be overridden, the most important of them is public virtual ReadOnlyCollection<string> ParameterValues.
This parameter contains read only collection of strings which are passed to the consumer webpart.
The webpart returns the instance of itself through a public method SetConnectionInterface()


using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using aspnetwebparts = System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using wsswebparts = Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;

namespace ExcelFilters
{
public class ExcelFilters : aspnetwebparts.WebPart, wsswebparts.ITransformableFilterValues
{
CheckBoxList cblRegionList;
ListItem cbitemRegion;
string[] countries = new string[]
{ "Canada", "Central America", "Mexico", "South America", "United States",
 "Albania", "Andora", "Austria", "Aizerbejan", "Belarus", "belgium",
  "Bosnia and Hersegovina", "Bulgaria" };

public virtual bool AllowMultipleValues
{
   get
   {
       return false;
   }
}
public virtual bool AllowAllValue
{
   get
   {
       return true;
   }
}

public virtual bool AllowEmptyValue
{
   get
   {
       return false;
   }
}
public virtual string ParameterName
{
   get
   {
       return "Geography";
   }
}

public virtual ReadOnlyCollection ParameterValues
{
   get
   {
       string[] values = this.GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies();      
       List param=new List();

       foreach (string str in values)
       {
           if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str))
               param.Add(str);
       }
       return values == null ?null :new ReadOnlyCollection(param);
   }
}

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
   cblRegionList = new CheckBoxList();
   cblRegionList.AutoPostBack = true;
   Controls.Add(cblRegionList);

   foreach (string region in countries)
   {
       cbitemRegion = new ListItem();
       cbitemRegion.Text = region;
       cblRegionList.Items.Add(cbitemRegion);
       cbitemRegion = null;
   }

   base.CreateChildControls();
}

[aspnetwebparts.ConnectionProvider("Region Filter", "ITransformableFilterValues", AllowsMultipleConnections = true)]
public wsswebparts.ITransformableFilterValues SetConnectionInterface()
{
   return this;
}

public string[] GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies()
{
   String[] choices = new String[countries.Length];
   bool anythingSelected = false;

   for (int i = 0; i < cblRegionList.Items.Count; i++)            {                if (cblRegionList.Items[i].Selected)                {                    anythingSelected = true;                    choices[i] = cblRegionList.Items[i].Text;                }             }            if (!anythingSelected)                choices = null;             return choices;        }         protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output)        {            this.EnsureChildControls();            RenderChildren(output);         }    } }

Now, rather than explaining the simple webpart, which is already explained by Microsoft, I will point out key points which differentiates it from the examples at many places.

If we notice GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies() method, it returns the string array of selected geographies. However, the length of this string array is constant and is equal to number of selectable items, which causes the other items in string array to become null.

In the MSDN example here the string array is directly passed by converting it to ReadOnlyCollection of strings. This will not work since it includes the null items
in the array as well.

string[] values = this.GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies();
return values == null ?null :new ReadOnlyCollection(values);

Pivot table Report filter cell, expects a Collection of values only which are selected. Thus we need to modify the code as follows

string[] values = this.GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies();      
List param=new List();
foreach (string str in values)
{
 if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str))
 param.Add(str);
}
return values == null ? null :new ReadOnlyCollection(param);

This code snippets, creates a new List which includes all the string objects except the null items from the original string array which is returned by GetCurrentlySelectedGeographies()

RSS Reader webpart with tab support and asynchronous periodic data refresh using AJAX

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:38:00 GMT

I have recently written my first article on Codeproject.

The article describes the development of AJAX enabled webpart on MOSS 2007 SP1.

The cool thing about it is the that it also utilizes the AJAX Control Toolkit including programmatically adding and styling TabContainer and TabPanel controls which can be quite tricky for a beginner. The article can be found here:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/RssReaderAjax.aspx

Implementation of Logging and Instrumentation Application Block in MOSS 2007

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:38:00 GMT

Continuing the series of articles on Enterprise Library, I have written the first article
on the implementation of Logging Application Block in MOSS 2007. Due to inclusion of formatted code and images, I have directly uploaded this on Codeproject.

The article can be viewed here

Get RSS Url for a list or Document Library Programmatically

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:37:00 GMT

Recently I developed an RSS Reader webpart which would take the RSS URL of list to render its feeds. Very much same like the out of the box webpart with the exception that it was AJAX enabled. I would post the details of that part on the blog when I am finished.

An idea came to me that wouldn’t it be nice to also enable users to just give the list URL rather than RSS URL since would reduce the few steps on the user’s side. I thought it would be just a matter of accessing the RssUrl property of SPList object, but to my surprise it was not to be. There is no property such property in the API, so I decided to write my own function for it.

Let’s analyze the RSS URL of a list or a library. Whenever the user clicks on View RSS feed on a library, here is how SharePoint constructs the URL:

http://<server>/<site>/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=%7B14206B18%2DF68F%2D479B%2DBC84%2D15EE48D19D7D%7D

Listfeed.aspx is the inbuilt RSS viewer of sharepoint which accepts a parameter which is the GUID of the list. %2D tokens refer to ‘-‘characters which exist inside the GUID. Considering all this, it’s easy to write a function which will return the RSS URL. Here is the code for the same:

private string MakeRssUrl(string rawurl)

{

try

{

Uri url = new Uri(rawurl, UriKind.Absolute);

if (url.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Path).Contains(“_layouts/listfeed.aspx”))

{

return rawurl;

}

else

{

string rssurl;

using (SPWeb web = new SPSite(rawurl).OpenWeb())

{

SPList list = web.GetListFromUrl(rawurl);

rssurl = web.Url + "/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?list=" + list.ID;

return rssurl;

}

catch (UriFormatException e)

{

return string.Empty;

}

The code is pretty self explanatory. The argument to function is list URL or RSS url. We first check if the URL is RSS URL itself, and if it is we just return. Otherwise, if it’s a list URL, we create a SPList instance, grap the GUID and contatenate it with the site URL and listfeed.aspx.

Note that the function does not validate if the given URL was actually a valid list URL or not. The exception handling for that case should be left to the caller of the function.

Reveal Unknown Error on Sharepoint 2007 pages

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:35:00 GMT

How often you have encountered the infamous Unknown Error on Sharepoint 2007 pages. If you are a Sharepoint developer, chances are that innumerable times :)

However, if you are also seasoned ASP.NET developer as well, you also know the trick behind it to reveal them., which I am going to give it here.

The trick is that ASP.NET Framework wants to show the real error message, but its the sharepoint which abstracts the message from the user. This is good for production systems since those cryptic error message may not be user friendly. Or revealing those full stack trace could cause potential security concerns.

But for an experienced developer, this is almost must to turn them off. This is achieved by turning off custom errors in web.config

Find the web.config for the site you normally use as your development site. Locate this tag

<SafeMode ... CallStack="false" ...> and change it to CallStack="true"

Set <customErrors mode="On" /> to mode="Off"

Set <compilation batch="false" debug="false"> to <compilation batch="true" debug="true">

Now you will get the full stack trace as soon as the error is raised.

Unknown Error on Manage Form Templates Page (Manageformtemplates.aspx)

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:34:00 GMT

Getting Unknown Error on this page?.

No helpful clue in Sharepoint log or Event Viewer?

This can happen if database record in the list of published InfoPath forms had a null where it shouldn't be.

Thanks to this blog, there is small code snippet given here which will delete the culprit entry.

http://geekswithblogs.net/HammerTips/archive/2007/12/07/unable-to-manage-form-templates.aspx

But make sure that you run this script under the debugger and only execute the delete operation for the offending form, otherwise it will delete all the published forms in your farm.

Performing Operations on Infopath 2007 Contact Selector Control using Managed Code

Madhur — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:33:00 GMT

Infopath 2007 provides an out of the box contact selector control to select the user and validate against the Active Directory.

In this blog, We will see, how to get more out of this control. Performing some advanced functions using managed code.

For basic usage of this control, see this blog entry on infopath blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2007/02/28/using-the-contact-selector-control.aspx

To start with basics, this control has predefined schema, since it simultaneously stores the display name, account id and account type.

  user display name

  DOMAIN/user account

  user or group type

It is interesting to note that this control behaves like a repeating control, in a sense,

the user can select multiple users from the same control. Internally, the XML schema
shown above is repeated for multiple users.

2. Get the Display Names and Login Names for all users in contact Selector Control

To get the display names and login names, we just need to parse the generated XML
schema. We will store the names and login names as comma separated values.

Assuming that our control name is gpContactSelector, the code below extracts the
display names and login names.

XPathNavigator xNavMain = this.XmlFormView2.XmlForm.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();

XmlNamespaceManager xNameSpace = new XmlNamespaceManager(new NameTable());

xNameSpace.AddNamespace("my", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2007-11-20T20:01:12");

XPathNodeIterator[] nodes = new XPathNodeIterator[4];

nodes[0] = xNavMain.Select("/my:myFields/my:gpContactSelector/my:Person/my:DisplayName", xNameSpace);

nodes[1] = xNavMain.Select("/my:myFields/my:gpContactSelector/my:Person/my:AccountId", xNameSpace);

nodes[2] = xNavMain.Select("/my:myFields/my:gpContactSelector/my:Person/my:AccountType", xNameSpace);

string names=string.Empty;

string accid=string.Empty;

for (int j = 0; j <>

{

for (int i = 0; i <>

nodes[i].MoveNext();

if (nodes[2].Current.ToString() == "User")

{

names = names + nodes[0].Current.ToString()+";";

accid = accid + nodes[1].Current.ToString()+";";

}

The code above is pretty self explanatory. It parses the generated XML Schema
and stores the Names and login ids in two variables, names and accid as semicolon
separated values. Further operations can be then performed on these.

2. Sending Emails to All users selected in Contact Selector

To send emails, we obviously need email addresses of the contacts selected.
However, contact selector does not automatically grabs out the email addresses
of the contacts. To get the email addresses, we will first extract the login names
from the XML schema and then use the Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.GetFullNameandEmailfromLogin
class to get the email addresses.

The code below accepts the login names as semicolon separated values and builds
a string containing email addresses as semicolon separated values.

private string GetEmails(string final)

{

char[] a = { ';' };

string[] loginIds = final.Split(a, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

string[] emailids = new string[loginIds.Length];

for (int i = 0; i <>

{

Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPGlobalAdmin ga = new Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPGlobalAdmin();

string dispname, email;

Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.GetFullNameandEmailfromLogin(ga, loginIds[i], out dispname, out email);

emailids[i] = email;

}

string finalstring = string.Empty;

for (int i = 0; i <>

finalstring = finalstring + emailids[i] + ";";

return finalstring;

}

Now, we can use using System.Net.Mail namespace to send mails. This namespace
overrides the System.Web.Mail used in .NET 1.1. For those who are new to this
namespace, below is the sample code given to send mail.

private void SendMail()

{

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();

mail.From = new MailAddress("Admin@domain.com", "Administrator");

char[] a = { ';' };

string[] emailIds = to.Split(a, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

for (int i = 0; i < style="">

mail.To.Add(new MailAddress(emailIds[i]));

mail.Subject = "New Meeting Request";

mail.Priority = MailPriority.Normal;

mail.IsBodyHtml = true;

mail.Body = GetBody();

new SmtpClient("smtpserver").Send(mail);

}