Web parts

Revisiting the People Picker (PeopleEditor) Control

MOSSLover — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:28:05 GMT

I was working with the People Editor Control and realized there are a couple weird things you need to do before you can read values into the control and save values into a list. Here are a few samples related to saving multiple items into a list and reading multiple items from a list into the control.

Updating an Item from a PeopleEditor Control:

string[] UsersSeperated = peUserEditor.CommaSeparatedAccounts.Split(',');
                    SPFieldUserValueCollection UserCollection= new SPFieldUserValueCollection();
                    foreach (string UserSeperated in UserSeperated)
                    {
                        SPUser User = Web.SiteUsers[“UserField”];
                        SPFieldUserValue UserName = new SPFieldUserValue(Web, User.ID, User.LoginName);
                        UserCollection.Add(UserName);
                    }
Item["UserField"] = UserCollection

Notice that we have to separate the users, because it is comma delimited. You have to split the string, then you cast the string in an SPUser, so that you can get the User Guid and User Login for and SPFieldUserValue and add it to the SPFieldUserValue Collection. My field is a People and Groups field, so it requires an SPFieldUserValueCollection.

Reading an SPFieldUserValueCollection into a PeopleEditor Control:

SPFieldUserValueCollection Users = new SPFieldUserValueCollection(Web, Item["UserField"].ToString());
                    string UsersCommaDelimited = "";
                    foreach (SPFieldUserValue User in Users)
                    {
                        if (UsersCommaDelimited == "")
                            UsersCommaDelimited = User.User.LoginName;
                        else
                            UsersCommaDelimited += "," + User.User.LoginName;
                    }
peUserEditor.CommaSeparatedAccounts = UsersCommaDelimited;

In this piece of code notice that we pull the value into an SPFieldUserValueCollection, then we loop through the login name and add them to a string using commas. Then we can go ahead and save the string into the PeopleEditor’s CommaSeperatedAccounts Function for displaying on a form.

This control is incredibly simple to use, obviously you would not need to loop through and add the commas if you set the MultiSelect value to false. It is a little different for multiple users, so I chose to write about that instead of adding a single user value. If anyone has comments or questions let me know. Later guys.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SharePoint,PeoplEditor,People Picker

Why is my CSS not working...

MOSSLover — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:25:36 GMT

So I had the recent privilege to work with a bunch of InputFormTextboxes and KWIZ Tagging Controls. None of them would inherit my styles using the CSSClass tags for some reason. So I shoved a couple spans around the controls in the RenderContents method and finally the links inherited everything I needed. Morale of the story: <span></span> is your friend.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SharePoint,CSS,Webparts

The Lazy Web Parts

MOSSLover — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:10:49 GMT

I was doing some documentation today on this site that is part of a collection of customized sites. It has JavaScript (yuck) and web parts galore. I get to this site that deals with Affiliated Items for this particular site and I notice that there are 5 web parts. I am wondering why do you need 5 web parts when you take in a query string and provide a list of items. What you really only need is a Query String Web Part connected to another Web Part or a Web Part that reads the Query String. For some reason this person is used 3 web parts to do the work and it looks like there are two web parts that are sitting around looking pretty. There are at least 180 instances of this site, so there are 180 places where 5 web parts are residing, instead of the normal one or two and three of these instances on the 180 places are actually doing something of value. Think about the colossal waste of space in SharePoint. We were looking at our backup jobs and noticing how they are at 20.5 gb for the stsadm backups. The SQL Backups are only about 4.5 gb. Something is wrong inside SharePoint in a large way when you are seeing such a major inconsistency. I am going to post in the next week what I do to fix this problem. I will leave you all with a piece of advice. Try to create a solution in as few parts as possible with as much modularity as you can. This kind of programming is what they teach you at school. I'm not saying I am an excellant programmer, but I know there are some precautions that you can take when creating web parts or any type of solutions. Also, another note for you guys please remember to comment as much as possible. Honestly, I would rather see too many comments than too little comments on programs. I am dealing with too little comments on a lot of programs and web parts that I am working with right now. I hope that you all have a nice day and a nice relaxing night.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SharePoint 2007,WebParts

The DataGrid and His Enemy the Dataview

MOSSLover — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:33:36 GMT

I was working a SPDataGridView Webpart today. I was trying to get the grid to refresh and re-bind itself after a specific client was deleted in the web part. When I tried to clear the grid it would not clear at all. It would refresh with the exact same data, until I hit F5 on Internet Explorer. I finally thought to myself what if I get rid of the Dataview as a source and call the DataSet directly. Sure enough I change it and clear the DataSet, then rebind and grid and when I delete the client it refreshes without the deleted item. So what is the purpose of a DataView? I'm really not sure, but I will be finding out in the future. It seems a little bit extra to bind a grid to two separate objects when one will do.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SPGridView,WebParts,SharePoint 2007

Trouble with Solution Packages on a SharePoint Server Farm

MOSSLover — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:15:16 GMT

I mentioned a while back that we setup a server farm with a Query, Index, Application, and SQL Box. Well we deployed all the old web parts and we are having all kinds of crazy issues on this farm. I'm not sure exactly what nuttiness is occurring, but half the time the solution packages are failing to deploy or the feature isn't installing in the batch files. Unfortunately, I installed VS 2005 and VSEWSS 1.1 and Visual Source Safe. I tried implementing the solutions through Visual Studio and it will let me after I uninstall and reinstall the solution through command prompt. It will only let me deploy the solution once. I have tried turning on remote debugging and giving the main server with VS 2005 access to the 12 hive on Query and Test plus Inetpub. It is still acting incredibly wonky. I even tried creating a base "Hello World Webpart" and it's doing some crazy feature is not installed error messages...This is incredibly bizarre and frustrating. I wish I knew what was going on. If anyone has even the vaguest of ideas I'm all ears.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SharePoint 2007,Solution Packages