Sridhar's Blog : SPS 2003

What permissions are behind the permission levels (roles) in SharePoint

sridhara — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:42:00 GMT

Recently, I was involved in a support request where I had to find out what SPBasePermissions are assigned behind permission level in SharePoint using SharePoint OM code. First some basics about permission level and base permissions. If you are in your...(read more)

"The security validation for this page is invalid" error when updating objects through SharePoint object model

sridhara — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:51:00 GMT

This error is often encountered when SharePoint OM is used to update site/web/list objects from within a web context. Some thing so basic as the code below could fail: using ( SPSite site = new SPSite ( "http://moss" )) { using ( SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())...(read more)

GetWebTemplate web method does not return & AddList web method does not recognize my custom list templates!

sridhara — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:01:00 GMT

When you use the “GetWebTemplate” web method provided through webs.asmx web service, you’ll notice that the custom list templates you might have created is not available in the collection returned. This is because the OM call that happens behind-the-wires,...(read more)

"Out of Memory" exception - when adding item to a list using SharePoint OM

sridhara — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:53:00 GMT

Here’s the scenario: A tool that’s designed to add log messages from an application to a SharePoint list. The log messages are themselves “strings”, which when put in a text file may vary anywhere between 1kb to 10mb in size. At a single time, this logging...(read more)

Starting note on Content Editor Web Part

sridhara — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:51:00 GMT

Recently, I worked a tricky and interesting case where a customer wanted to “silently” put a file in user’s computer. My buddy, Sowmyan bet me by blogging about it here . A job superbly done!! Watch out for enabling Initialize and script ActiveX controls...(read more)

Correct usage of SPFileCollection.Add() overloaded method in SPS 2003

sridhara — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 04:48:00 GMT

I was recently involved in a case involving SPFileCollection.Add() method. When we use one of the overloads of Add() method the “Created” & “Modified” dates weren’t correct (+5:30 hrs at my end & -7 hrs at the customer’s end – not exactly sure...(read more)

Make the "Overwrite existing file(s)" check box to be unselected by default in SPS 2003

sridhara — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:29:00 GMT

Following the post from Make the "Overwrite existing file" check box to be unselected by default in MOSS 2007 , this post is to show how to do the same trick in SPS 2003. Due to the structural change between SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007, it takes a bit more...(read more)

Getting Event Handlers developed in VS.NET 2005 to work with SharePoint V2

sridhara — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 02:03:00 GMT

Note: Just don’t bother to read further if you have a SharePoint server running on IIS that has ASP.NET 2.0 installed on it already.

Ok, so you have your SharePoint server running on IIS that has ASP.NET 1.1.xxxx installed on it and you have developed a cutting-edge event handler in .NET 2.0 and it wouldn’t work when you register the dll in the SharePoint site! Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to make the event handlers developed using .NET 2.0 work in the above said configuration, so you need to upgrade to ASP.NET 2.0.

Note: Once you’ve upgraded to .NET 2.0, switching back to ASP.NET 1.1.xxxx might cause some real weird issues.

Follow the below steps to upgrade your IIS and your SharePoint site to use ASP.NET 2.0.xxxxx

1. After running the .NET Framework 2.0 installer, open command prompt and type in the following commands to install ASP.NET 2.0.xxxxx onto the IIS and its virtual servers:

a. C:\>cd %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 [hit enter]

b. C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727>aspnet_regiis –i –enable [hit enter]

2. Now you’ve installed ASP.NET 2.0 on IIS. Open up “inetmgr” and edit the properties of the virtual server you want to use ASP.NET 2.0 on. Ensure ASP.NET tab has 2.0.xxxxx version selected. Do an iisreset.

3. Then you need to upgrade the SharePoint site to use ASP.NET 2.0.xxxxx as well. To do that, open command prompt and do the following:

a. C:\>cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN [hit enter]

b. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN>stsadm.exe –o upgrade –forceupgrade –url http://sharepointservername [hit enter]

4. That’ll upgrade your SharePoint server to use ASP.NET 2.0.xxxxx. Do an iisreset.

Now, you should be able to register the event handler dll developed using Visual Studio 2005 without any issues.

Changing Quota Template Names in SharePoint V2

sridhara — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 01:01:00 GMT

Quota Template is a nice feature that's very helpful for SharePoint administrators. It helps in managing your SharePoint server and having total control over how much your site grows.

There was a request to figure-out a way to change the Quota Template name. "Figure-out"?? Huh! what does that mean? Quite surprisingly, there isn't a direct way to change the quota template name in SharePoint. And that was the birth of the below hack!

SPGlobalAdmin globalAdmin = new SPGlobalAdmin();

SPGlobalConfig globalConfig = globalAdmin.Config;

SPQuotaTemplateCollection templates = globalConfig.QuotaTemplates;

foreach(SPQuotaTemplate template in templates)

{

if(template.Name == “Personal Site”)

{

template.Name = “Modified Personal Site”;

template.Add(template);

Console.WriteLine(“Quota Template name changed!!”);

break;

}

If you have a look at the above code carefully, it looks like I’ve added a new quota template, but it's actually not the case. However, if you try a direct template.Name = “somename” and then call the Update() method, it wouldn’t work. The break; statement is there to break off from the loop immediately after the change is done. Otherwise, you might see from exceptions thrown at your face J

Getting portal context

sridhara — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 23:39:00 GMT

In WebPart developement, many a times, we'd want to retrieve the context of the current site and do some operations based on it. A simple and most common scenario is retrieving the user information from the site context.

There are different ways to do this in SharePoint, but the below is kool since it doesn't require any hard coding and it works of all our portal, site and mysites.

string goodUrl = Page.Request.Url.ToString();

int startCount = 7;

/* this is to rip-off http:// unless you are using https:// in which case 7 needs to be 8 */

int index = goodUrl.IndexOf("/",startCount,goodUrl.Length-(startCount+1));

goodUrl = goodUrl.Substring(0,index);

SPSite site = new SPSite(goodUrl);

Guid guid = site.ID;

PortalContext portalContext = PortalApplication.GetContext(guid);

UserProfileManager profileManager = new UserProfileManager(portalContext);

UserProfile profile = profileManager.GetUserProfile(HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name);

Hope the above was helpful!