Life on Planet Groove

Gotchas Registering a Company for a Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Account

Adam Toth — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:31:49 +0000

Registering my company for a Windows Phone 7 App Hub Marketplace account was not an easy or obvious process. One of the big problems is the use of Windows Live ID as the authentication mechanism. Live ID is a system designed for individual users, which in the App Hub is being unrealistically stretched to apply to companies as well.

Here are the steps I took, and some mistakes I made during the process. Hopefully you can spare yourself from wasting precious minutes of your life like I did.

Step 1 – Create a Generic Windows Live ID

Any company that signs up for a service wants to be able to use a generic account to login with. People change jobs all the time, and you don’t want that account locked out or inaccessible because someone left the company, or their personal email address doesn’t work anymore.

My first step was to create a generic Windows Live ID account for Blue Rooster Inc. I started at the App Hub membership site and clicked the link to Join Now:

Then I clicked the link to Sign Up Now:

Next, I chose the option that says "Yes, use my email address".

At this point, I already had a generic company email alias working (something like apphub@mycompany.com), so I entered that and filled in the other information. Make sure to test this email address first, because otherwise you’ll be stuck if it can’t receive mail.

GOTCHA #1: The secret question options are all geared towards personal pieces of data. The only generic one I could use was Favorite Historical Person. I chose someone that made sense for our company, and wrote it down, along with the password.

GOTCHA #2: If you wait too long on this screen, it’ll kick you back to the previous screen.

GOTCHA #3: The CAPTCHA is hard to read. Took me a couple times to get it right.

Next I entered my profile data. Since this was a generic account, many of the fields on here were not applicable (Gender, Marital status, etc.). I entered what I thought was best. For birthdate, the company was founded in 2004, so I just put January 1 2004 as the birthdate.

WRONG!!!

GOTCHA #4 MAJOR! – Make sure your Birthdate is a valid legal age!

By specifying 2004 as the birth year, the Live ID system thought I was a minor, and wouldn’t let me proceed unless I got a parent to approve this and validate their own identity via credit card. This was a DEAD END, and I had to cancel this account and start over.

Next, I validated my email address.

Then I had to check my email address and validate the account by clicking the link in the email.

GOTHCA #5: This will open a new browser window. You will not be taken back to the App Hub after this (it takes you to www.msn.com), and will have to navigate back yourself.

Step 2 – Really Register at the Marketplace

Once you have your generic Live ID working, you can go back to the App Hub and start over. This time I signed in with my new Live ID. I filled out my country, selected Company as the account type, and accepted the terms of use:

On the next screen, I really screwed up, but didn’t know it for a while. When you enter your account details, there are two sections, Personal Details, and Company Details. I didn’t want to enter myself or another personal contact in the Personal Details section, as I didn’t know if that would show up in the marketplace when someone viewed one of our applications. I wanted the profile to be generic as well, so I entered "Blue" for the first name, "Rooster" for the last name, and used the Windows Live ID generic email as the email address.

Notice the arrow pointing to the message regarding the email address. I figured I was totally fine here, since my generic account can receive email successfully. Also, there is an Approver section at the bottom of the Company Details section that looked like the right place to put my own personal information.

WRONG!!!

GOTCHA #6: If you put generic information in the Personal Details section, GeoTrust will not be able to verify your identity.

Of course they won’t tell you this, and your account will be pending Tax ID Verification indefinitely, and you won’t be able to developer unlock your phone until someone gets back to you. I had to log a support ticket and harass until someone finally emailed me that my account was still pending because of this. I got an email from GeoTrust shortly after, which had a link to a Live Chat session. A gentleman at GeoTrust took my order ID, and changed my contact information, and a couple hours later my marketplace account was fully verified. This whole thing delayed me an entire week.

After this step, you are directed to fill out your profile. This is where you choose your XBox Live Gamer tag (another thing that really does not make sense if you are a generic company account), and setup some default information.

GOTCHA #7: I had a hard time finding a non-used XBox Live gamer tag. I tried "Blue Rooster", "BlueRooster", "Blue Rooster Marketing", and finally had to settle for "Blue Rooster, Inc.".

Unfortunately I’m missing screen shots of the next steps in the process, but I’ll note the process and some gotchas that I can remember.

After filling out the profile details, it was time to provide payment.

GOTCHA #8: The payment system had a hard time with a corporate AMEX card. It was really finicky about the Suite number in the address.

GOTCHA #9: If you want a receipt of the purchase, print the screen that shows the amount. There is no place in the marketplace afterwards to get a receipt, or to view the transaction.

Once you are done with the payment process, you’ll be taken to your App Hub dashboard. You’ll also soon get an email from GeoTrust. If you’ve done this right (and didn’t run into GOTCHA #6), then your email will contain contact information for an individual, not for a generic company account.

*** NOTE: This email was automatically generated from an unmonitored mailbox. ***
 
Dear Approver:
 
The person identified below requested a Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace developer account on behalf of Blue Rooster. GeoTrust, a Microsoft partner, needs more details to complete Marketplace registration. 
 
Applicant information:
 
  Name:   Blue Rooster
  Email:  xxx@xxx.com
  Phone:  xxxxxxxxxx
 
Successful Marketplace registration generates a code signing certificate that will identify Blue Rooster as the responsible publisher.
 
Blue Rooster identified you as someone who can authorize this request on behalf of Blue Rooster.  If you do not have this capability, then please notify Blue Rooster, then access the URL below and click "I Do Not Approve". 
 
***Note that canceling this account will require the requesting individual to create a new Marketplace account using a different Windows Live ID and pay an additional registration fee.*** 
 
Please follow the URL below to approve or not approve this request:
 
     https://products.geotrust.com/orders/Approval.do?pin=xxxxxxxxxxxx
 
If you have any questions, please consult the requestor, Blue Rooster, or contact GeoTrust Customer Support at:
 
     https://knowledge.geotrust.com/support/knowledge-base/index?page=content&id=SO14669&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US
 
Thank you.
 
GeoTrust Customer Support
http://www.geotrust.com/support
Hours of Operation: Mon - Fri 05:00 - 17:00 (PST)
Email:     cs-orders@geotrust.com
Web:       http://www.geotrust.com
Phone:     1-866-436-8787 or 1-678-366-8399 option 2
Live Chat: http://www.geotrust.com/support
 
 

After clicking the link, you’ll be taken to a simple page that basically lets you Accept or Cancel the verification process. After finishing this, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief and wait for the verification process to complete.

WRONG!!!

GOTCHA #10: You MUST navigate to the PAYEE DETAILS screen in the App Hub Dashboard, and fill in your bank account and Tax ID information in order to have your tax ID and identity validated. The process never took me there on its own, and there was no email or other communication that told me that I needed to do this.

That’s pretty much it, and much harder than I think it needed to be.

Fixing WordPress and Windows LiveWriter xmlrpc errors

Adam Toth — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:48:14 +0000

I recently had my blog moved to a different server at my web host, and after the move, I couldn’t connect Windows LiveWriter with my blog anymore. I would get an error "Invalid Server Reponse – The response to the blogger.getUserBlogs method received from the blog server was invalid." I found this post which was exactly my problem:

http://coding-paparazzi.sylvainlafontaine.com/2010/02/solving-connection-problems-wlw.html

I was able to fix it by editing my wp-config.php in notepad and saving with ANSI encoding instead of UTF-8 and re-uploading to my site. That stripped out the byte order mark at the beginning, and fixed my connection issues.

2010 Riesling

Adam Toth — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:01:39 +0000

We are making Riesling this year. There were a bunch of grapes still left on the vines, and it was just too tempting to pick them. The bunches came off easily – we didn’t need clippers, just a good tug.

So I don’t forget it, here are the details about our 2010 Riesling:

Picked on 11/13/10.
17 crates, about 30 pounds/crate.
Crushed on 11/13/10 late afternoon.
Pressed on 11/14/10 late morning.
Yield – 25 gallons

Some additional info on sugar content:

Started out with Brix of 20,
Added 10 cups of corn sugar which brought the brix up to 22
Added 20 teaspoons of Yeast Nutrient
and the starter yeast was Lalvin, kv1-1116 a good all around white wine yeast.

Creating a Custom Welcome Menu for SharePoint Server 2010 – Part 3

Adam Toth — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 23:20:00 +0000

Part 3 – Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User

A project I am working on called for a custom implementation of the SharePoint Welcome menu control. The replacement control needed to provide the following:

Implement the look and behaviors that the designers created.
Exclude some default SharePoint menu items (such as My Regional Settings).
Reuse some existing SharePoint menu items (such as Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User).
Allow for the addition of other custom menu items in the future.
Display thumbnail of the user’s profile picture.

I had to create a control that looked and behaved like the following:

The designers came up with some clean, semantic markup married with some jquery, for me to start from:

<div class="header">
    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />
    <div class="header-bar">
        <div class="profile_menu">
            <a href="#" class="profile_btn">
                <span class="image"><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px" />span>
                <span class="name">John Doespan>
                <span class="arrow">span>
            a>
            <div class="profile_dropdown">
                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
                    <ul>
                        <li>Edit Profileli> 
                        <li>My Siteli>
                        <li>Log Outli>                        
                        <li>Sign in as a Different Userli>
                    ul>
                div>
            div>
        div>
    div>
div>

This is part 3 of a three part series.

Building the Sign Out Links

The Sign Out and Sign in as a Different User menu items are rendered by the PersonalActions control, in two methods (from Reflector):

private void SetLoginAsDifferentUserMenuItemGoToPageUrl()
{
    MenuItemTemplate menuItem = base.GetMenuItem("ID_LoginAsDifferentUser");
    if (menuItem != null)
    {
        if (SPSecurity.AuthenticationMode == AuthenticationMode.None)
        {
            menuItem.Visible = false;
        }
        else
        {
            string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.Web.GetServerRelativeUrlFromUrl("_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true");
            menuItem.ClientOnClickScript = "javascript:LoginAsAnother('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "', 0)";
        }
    }
}
 
private void SetSignOutMenuItemGoToPageUrl()
{
    MenuItemTemplate menuItem = base.GetMenuItem("ID_Logout");
    if (menuItem != null)
    {
        if (SPSecurity.AuthenticationMode == AuthenticationMode.None)
        {
            menuItem.Visible = false;
        }
        else
        {
            menuItem.ClientOnClickNavigateUrl = this.Web.GetServerRelativeUrlFromUrl("_layouts/SignOut.aspx");
        }
    }
}
 
 
 

The “Sign Out” link points to “_layouts/SignOut.aspx”, and “Sign in as a Different User” points to “_layouts/closeConnection.aspx”.

To leverage this, I again adjusted the ASCX markup to include some PlaceHolder and LinkButton controls:

<div class="profile_dropdown">
<asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>
    <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
        <ul>
            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder> 
            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder>
            <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLogOut" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign Out">asp:LinkButton>li>                        
            <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign in as a Different User">asp:LinkButton>li>
        ul>
    div>
div>

And then here is some code-behind that re-creates the output from the PersonalActions control:

// Login as another user
string loginAsAnotherUserUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true");
linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser.OnClientClick = string.Format("LoginAsAnother('{0}', 0);return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(loginAsAnotherUserUrl));   
 
// Sign out
string signOutUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/SignOut.aspx");
linkButtonLogOut.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(signOutUrl) + "');return false;";

Summary

In this post, we deconstructed the PersonalActions control further to re-create the Sign Out and Sign in as a Different User menu items.

Our Final ASCX markup is:

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>
<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %> 
<%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomWelcomeMenuControl.ascx.cs" Inherits="CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu.CustomWelcomeMenuControl" %>
<div class="header">
    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />
    <div class="header-bar">
        <div class="profile_menu">
        <a href="#" class="profile_btn">
            <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" />span>
            <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>span>
            <span class="arrow">span>
        a>
            <div class="profile_dropdown">
                <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>
                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
                    <ul>
                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder> 
                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder>
                        <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLogOut" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign Out">asp:LinkButton>li>                        
                        <li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Sign in as a Different User">asp:LinkButton>li>
                    ul>
                div>
            div>
        div>
    div>
div>

Our Final ASCX code-behind is:

using System;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;
 
namespace CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu
{
    public partial class CustomWelcomeMenuControl : UserControl
    {
        protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {    
    
            // Username
            PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
            welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;
            placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);
 
            // Profile picture
            SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);
            SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);
            if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))
            {
                // Use default picture (or replace with another)
                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";
            }
            else
            {
                SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());
                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;
            }
 
                string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
            string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
    
            if (!Page.IsPostBack)
            {
                myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;
                mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;
            }
            else
            {
                myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;
                mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;
            }
    
    
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))
            {
                // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...
            placeHolderMySite.Visible = false;
 
            }
            else
            {
                // User has a MySite, show the link to it...
            placeHolderMySite.Visible = true;
            linkButtonMySite.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(mySiteHostUrl));
            }
    
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))
            {
            // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available
            PostCacheSubstitutionText pt = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
            pt.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;
            pt.PrefixHtml = "";
            placeHolderUserID.Controls.Add(pt);
                string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");
            linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";
            }
            else
            {
                // Use the MySite profile page...
            linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(myProfileUrl));
            }
 
            // Login as another user
            string loginAsAnotherUserUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/closeConnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true");
            linkButtonLoginAsDifferentUser.OnClientClick = string.Format("LoginAsAnother('{0}', 0);return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(loginAsAnotherUserUrl));
 
            // Sign out
            string signOutUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/SignOut.aspx");
            linkButtonLogOut.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(signOutUrl) + "');return false;";
 
        }
 
    }
}

Hopefully you find this useful, and can take it further if need be. Leave comments if you have any questions.

Creating a Custom Welcome Menu for SharePoint Server 2010 – Part 2

Adam Toth — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 23:10:00 +0000

Part 2 – Edit Profile and My Site links

A project I am working on called for a custom implementation of the SharePoint Welcome menu control. The replacement control needed to provide the following:

Implement the look and behaviors that the designers created.
Exclude some default SharePoint menu items (such as My Regional Settings).
Reuse some existing SharePoint menu items (such as Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User).
Allow for the addition of other custom menu items in the future.
Display thumbnail of the user’s profile picture.

I had to create a control that looked and behaved like the following:

The designers came up with some clean, semantic markup married with some jquery, for me to start from:

<div class="header">
    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />
    <div class="header-bar">
        <div class="profile_menu">
            <a href="#" class="profile_btn">
                <span class="image"><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px" />span>
                <span class="name">John Doespan>
                <span class="arrow">span>
            a>
            <div class="profile_dropdown">
                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
                    <ul>
                        <li>Edit Profileli>
                        <li>My Siteli>
                        <li>Log Outli>
                        <li>Sign in as a Different Userli>
                    ul>
                div>
            div>
        div>
    div>
div>

This is part 2 of a three part series.

Leveraging the SocialNavigationControl for My Site and My Profile links

The My Site and My Profile links are rendered by the SocialNavigationControl, and contain rendering logic that branches depending on whether a My Site host has been installed. I didn’t want to recreate this so I went digging with Reflector.

I found this code for the control’s OnInit method:

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
{
    base.OnInit(e);
 
    if (!base.IsPostBack && SocialControlHelper.CheckUserAccess)
    {
        this.ProfileURL = SocialControlHelper.ProfileURL;
        this.MySiteHostURL = SocialControlHelper.MySiteHostURL;
    }
}
 

Sweet! Everything I needed was right there, from the SocialControlHelper class.

Wait a minute, Doh! SocialControlHelper is marked as sealed, internal. Wonderful, don’t you love it when Microsoft does that?

Fortunately, upon looking at the code for SocialControlHelper, it runs once, and caches the two URLs it’s responsible for in the HttpContext.Items collection using the following string keys:

private const string FLD_MySiteHostURL = "SocialData$MySiteHostURL";
private const string FLD_ProfileURL = "SocialData$ProfileURL";
 

Perfect, anything can grab it from there. The SocialNavigationControl does its rendering of menu items in the OnPreRender event. This means that by including the control on a page, and setting it’s visibility to FALSE, it won’t render anything, and we can still leverage the items in SocialDataHelper by getting the urls from HttpContext.Items. We can add this to our ASCX markup at the top:

<asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderSocialData" runat="server"><SPSWC:SocialNavigationControl ID="socialNav" runat="server" Visible="false">SPSWC:SocialNavigationControl>asp:PlaceHolder>
 

Some ASCX code-behind:

string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
 
if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
    myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;
    mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;
}
else
{
    myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;
    mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;
}
 
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))
{
    // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...
}
else
{
    // User has a MySite, show the link to it...
}
 
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))
{
    // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available...        
}
else
{
    // Use the MySite profile page...
}

Notice that I am storing these URLs in ViewState as well. The SocialNavigationControl only fetches data on initial page load. If you have applications/web parts/user controls that will be present during postbacks, then you will want to persist these links somewhere like ViewState.

Reconstructing the SocialNavigationControl’s Javascript

Now for the hard part, filling in the conditionals above. The Welcome menu is comprised of three different controls, so they don’t all render the same way. The primary control, PersonalActions, renders the core menu and the bulk of the menu items in HTML. The SocialNavigationControl, however, uses javascript to find the existing menu on the page and then append its own items to it. It’s pretty ugly and hacky (from Reflector):

private void SetMyProfileMenuJavascript()
{
    string key = this.ClientID + "_insertMyProfileMenu";
    DebugStringBuilder builder = new DebugStringBuilder();
    builder.AppendLine("function " + key + "() {");
    builder.AppendLine("    var menus = document.getElementsByTagName('menu');");
    builder.AppendLine("    if (menus == null)  return;");
    builder.AppendLine("    var menu = null;");
    builder.AppendLine("    for (var i=0, len=menus.length; i);
    builder.AppendLine("        if (menus[i].id.lastIndexOf('PersonalActionMenu') != -1) {");
    builder.AppendLine("\t\t       menu = menus[i]; break;");
    builder.AppendLine("        }");
    builder.AppendLine("    }");
    builder.AppendLine("    if (menu == null)   return;");
    bool flag = false;
    bool flag2 = false;
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ProfileURL))
    {
        flag = true;
        builder.AppendLine("    var elm = document.createElement('ie:menuitem');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('menugroupid', '50');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('description', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MyProfileMenu_description)) + "');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('text', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MyProfileMenu_text)) + "');");
        builder.AppendLine(@"    elm.setAttribute('onmenuclick', 'STSNavigate2(event,\'" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(this.ProfileURL) + @"\')');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm.setAttribute('id', 'ID_MySiteLinksMenu');");
    }
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.MySiteHostURL))
    {
        flag2 = true;
        builder.AppendLine("    var elm2 = document.createElement('ie:menuitem');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('menugroupid', '50');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('description', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MultPages_MySite_Description)) + "');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('text', '" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(StringResourceManager.GetString(LocStringId.MultPages_MySite_Label)) + "');");
        builder.AppendLine(@"    elm2.setAttribute('onmenuclick', 'STSNavigate2(event,\'" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(this.MySiteHostURL) + @"\')');");
        builder.AppendLine("    elm2.setAttribute('id', 'ID_MySiteMenu');");
    }
    builder.AppendLine("    var sep = null;");
    builder.AppendLine("    for (var i=0, len=menu.childNodes.length; i);
    builder.AppendLine("    \t   if (menu.childNodes[i].id == undefined || menu.childNodes[i].id == '') {");
    builder.AppendLine("            sep = menu.childNodes[i]; break;");
    builder.AppendLine("        }");
    builder.AppendLine("    }");
    if (flag)
    {
        builder.AppendLine("    if (sep != null)");
        builder.AppendLine("        menu.insertBefore(sep.cloneNode(true), menu.firstChild);");
        builder.AppendLine("    menu.insertBefore(elm, menu.firstChild);");
    }
    if (flag2)
    {
        builder.AppendLine("    if (sep != null)");
        builder.AppendLine("        menu.insertBefore(sep.cloneNode(true), menu.firstChild);");
        builder.AppendLine("    menu.insertBefore(elm2, menu.firstChild);");
    }
    builder.AppendLine("};");
    builder.AppendLine("_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('" + key + "');");
    this.Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(base.GetType(), key, builder.ToString(), true);
}
 

The OOB behavior for the Welcome menu will actually render two profile links if you have SharePoint Server installed:

My Profile (linking to the My Site Host profile page)
My Regional Settings (linking to userdisp.aspx, the SharePoint Foundation profile page)

The My Regional Settings link is added by the PersonalActions control (from Reflector):

PostCacheSubstitutionText text2 = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
text2.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;
text2.PrefixHtml = "";
this.Controls.Add(text2);
SPUser currentUser = this.Web.CurrentUser;
MenuItemTemplate menuItem = base.GetMenuItem("ID_PersonalInformation");
if (menuItem != null)
{
    if (currentUser == null)
    {
        menuItem.Visible = false;
    }
    else
    {
        string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.Web.GetServerRelativeUrlFromUrl("_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");
        menuItem.ClientOnClickScript = "javascript:GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";
    }
}

My design called for only displaying one “Edit Profile” link, which should be smart enough to combine these two approaches, and link to userdisp.aspx if SharePoint Foundation used, and to the My Site Host profile page if available.

To achieve this, the first step is to adjust the ASCX markup to include some PlaceHolder controls that can be customized in code-behind:

<div class="profile_dropdown">
<asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>
    <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
        <ul>
            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder>
            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder>
            <li>Log Outli>
            <li>Sign in as a Different Userli>
        ul>
    div>
div>

Here is the code-behind I used that combines the output from the PersonalActions control and SocialNavigationControl:

string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
 
if (!Page.IsPostBack)
{
    myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;
    mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
    ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;
}
else
{
    myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;
    mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;
}
 
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))
{
    // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...
    placeHolderMySite.Visible = false;
}
else
{
    // User has a MySite, show the link to it...
    placeHolderMySite.Visible = true;
    linkButtonMySite.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(mySiteHostUrl));
}
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))
{
    // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available
    PostCacheSubstitutionText pt = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
    pt.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;
    pt.PrefixHtml = "";
    placeHolderUserID.Controls.Add(pt);
    string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");
    linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";
}
else
{
    // Use the MySite profile page...
    linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(myProfileUrl));
}

Summary

In this post, we deconstructed the SocialNavigationControl, and figured out how to render intelligent links to My Site and My Profile pages.

Our ASCX markup so far is:

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>
<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomWelcomeMenuControl.ascx.cs" Inherits="CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu.CustomWelcomeMenuControl" %>
<div class="header">
    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />
    <div class="header-bar">
        <div class="profile_menu">
        <a href="#" class="profile_btn">
            <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" />span>
            <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>span>
            <span class="arrow">span>
        a>
            <div class="profile_dropdown">
            <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderUserID" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>
                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
                    <ul>
                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderEditProfile" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonEditProfile" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="Edit Profile">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder>
                        <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderMySite" runat="server"><li><asp:LinkButton ID="linkButtonMySite" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" Text="My Site">asp:LinkButton>li>asp:PlaceHolder>
                        <li>Log Outli>
                        <li>Sign in as a Different Userli>
                    ul>
                div>
            div>
        div>
    div>
div>
 

Our ASCX code-behind so far is:

using System;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;
 
namespace CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu
{
    public partial class CustomWelcomeMenuControl : UserControl
    {
        protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {    
    
            // Username
            PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
            welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;
            placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);
 
            // Profile picture
            SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);
            SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);
            if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))
            {
                // Use default picture (or replace with another)
                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";
            }
            else
            {
                SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());
                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;
            }
 
                string myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
                string mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
    
            if (!Page.IsPostBack)
            {
                myProfileUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$ProfileURL"] as string;
                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] = myProfileUrl;
                mySiteHostUrl = Context.Items["SocialData$MySiteHostURL"] as string;
                ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] = mySiteHostUrl;
            }
            else
            {
                myProfileUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_PROFILE_URL] as string;
                mySiteHostUrl = ViewState[Constants.VIEWSTATE_MYSITE_URL] as string;
            }
    
    
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(mySiteHostUrl))
            {
                // No MySite host, or user does not have rights to view profile page...
                placeHolderMySite.Visible = false;
 
            }
            else
            {
                // User has a MySite, show the link to it...
                placeHolderMySite.Visible = true;
                linkButtonMySite.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(mySiteHostUrl));
            }
    
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myProfileUrl))
            {
                // Use the SharePoint foundation profile page, since the MySite host is not available
                PostCacheSubstitutionText pt = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
                pt.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserId;
                pt.PrefixHtml = "";
                placeHolderUserID.Controls.Add(pt);
                string serverRelativeUrlFromUrl = this.ResolveClientUrl("~/_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True&ID=");
                linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = "GoToPage('" + SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(serverRelativeUrlFromUrl) + "' + _spUserId);return false;";
            }
            else
            {
                // Use the MySite profile page...
                linkButtonEditProfile.OnClientClick = string.Format("STSNavigate2(event, '{0}');return false;", SPHttpUtility.EcmaScriptStringLiteralEncode(myProfileUrl));
            }
 
        }
    }
}

Next, check out Part 3, where we learn how to display links to Sign Out and Sign in as a Different User.

Creating a Custom Welcome Menu for SharePoint Server 2010 – Part 1

Adam Toth — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Part 1 – Overview, Profile Picture, and User Name

A project I am working on called for a custom implementation of the SharePoint Welcome menu control. The replacement control needed to provide the following:

Implement the look and behaviors that the designers created.
Exclude some default SharePoint menu items (such as My Regional Settings).
Reuse some existing SharePoint menu items (such as Sign Out/Sign in as a Different User).
Allow for the addition of other custom menu items in the future.
Display thumbnail of the user’s profile picture.

I had to create a control that looked and behaved like the following:

The designers came up with some clean, semantic markup married with some jquery, for me to start from:

<div class="header">
    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />
    <div class="header-bar">
        <div class="profile_menu">
            <a href="#" class="profile_btn">
                <span class="image"><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px" />span>
                <span class="name">John Doespan>
                <span class="arrow">span>
            a>
            <div class="profile_dropdown">
                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
                    <ul>
                        <li>Edit Profileli> 
                        <li>My Siteli>
                        <li>Log Outli>                        
                        <li>Sign in as a Different Userli>
                    ul>
                div>
            div>
        div>
    div>
div>

This is part 1 of a three part series.

Overview of Approach

My general approach to solve this was to create a .NET User Control, installed in the _controltemplates directory. I could use code-behind and the API, and have the most control over display and formatting of the menu. This could all be deployed with a WSP package, using Visual Studio 2010. I could leave out any menu items I didn’t need, add any custom items necessary, and write code to recreate any SharePoint menu items that I wanted to keep.

I started out creating a new Empty SharePoint Project in Visual Studio 2010:

I then added a User Control to the project, and pasted the markup from the designers into the :

My next task was to figure out what I could reuse from SharePoint’s own menus, by looking into the OOB Welcome menu.

OOB Welcome Menu Controls

Before I started, I had to dissect the out-of-box Welcome menu control. If you look at the master pages in SharePoint, they usually include a reference to Welcome.ascx. It turns out that this isn’t just one control, it is a combination of three different controls that each interject their own menu items:

Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.PersonalActions – This is the primary control, responsible for most of the menu items and the menu core. Items 4-9 below (plus another item, “Request Access” that isn’t shown in the screen shot) are rendered by this control. The menu and its items are rendered as and nodes in the html.
Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.MUISelector – This is responsible for displaying language selections (item #3 below) if you’ve installed language packs.
Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SocialNavigationControl – This is responsible for displaying My Site and My Profile links (items 1 and 2 below, part of SharePoint Server).

Displaying the User’s Profile Picture

To display the profile picture, I first had to adjust the original markup from the designers to include a server Image control. Here is the original markup:

<a href="#" class="profile_btn">
    <span class="image><img src="" style="width:20px;height:20px;" />span>
    <span class="name">John Doespan>
    <span class="arrow">span>
a>

Here is the adjusted markup:

<a href="#" class="profile_btn">
    <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" />span>
    <span class="name">John Doespan>
    <span class="arrow">span>
a>

Once that was done, I was able to use the API to get at the user’s picture:

protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)
{    
    // Profile picture
    SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);
    SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);
    if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))
    {
        // Use default picture (or replace with another)
        imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";
    }
    else
    {
        SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());
        imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;
    }
}

Displaying the User’s Name

The user name is pretty easy to deconstruct. The PersonalActions menu uses the PostCacheSubstitutionText control to render the user name and insert it into the Welcome menu’s controls collection (code below from Reflector):

PostCacheSubstitutionText child = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
if (flag)
{
    child.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;
}
else
{
    child.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.WelcomeUser;
}
child.MaximumLength = maxChar;
base.MenuControl.UseShortId = true;
base.MenuControl.Controls.Add(child);

The PostCacheSubstitutionText control will prevent the username from being cached on the server as part of output cache settings, so that if a user uses the Sign in as a Different User menu item, they will always see the current username instead of a cached one. You can play with the PostCacheSubstitutionTextType to change how the username is displayed.

In order to insert this text into our menu, I added a PlaceHolder control into the ASCX markup, and then added the PostCacheSubstitutionText control to the PlaceHolder’s controls collection in code-behind. I replced the John Doe text in the markup with this:

<a href="#" class="profile_btn">
    <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" />span>
    <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>span>
    <span class="arrow">span>
a>

I then added the following lines to the PreRender event:

// Username
PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;
placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);
    

Summary

In this post, we deconstructed the OOB welcome menu control, figured out how to get the user’s profile picture, and got the user’s display name into the menu.

Our ASCX markup so far is:

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>
<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %> 
<%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomWelcomeMenuControl.ascx.cs" Inherits="CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu.CustomWelcomeMenuControl" %>
<div class="header">
    <img class="header-logo" src="/images/header_logo.png" alt="" width="169" height="78" />
    <div class="header-bar">
        <div class="profile_menu">
        <a href="#" class="profile_btn">
            <span class="image"><asp:Image ID="imageProfilePicture" runat="server" Width="20px" Height="20px" />span>
            <span class="name"><asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeHolderWelcomeName" runat="server">asp:PlaceHolder>span>
            <span class="arrow">span>
        a>
            <div class="profile_dropdown">
                <div class="dropdown_bkgrd">
                    <ul>
                        <li>Edit Profileli> 
                        <li>My Siteli>
                        <li>Log Outli>                        
                        <li>Sign in as a Different Userli>
                    ul>
                div>
            div>
        div>
    div>
div>

Our ASCX code-behind so far is:

using System;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
 
namespace CustomWelcomeMenu.ControlTemplates.CustomWelcomeMenu
{
    public partial class CustomWelcomeMenuControl : UserControl
    {
        protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {    
 
    
            // Username
            PostCacheSubstitutionText welcomeText = new PostCacheSubstitutionText();
            welcomeText.TextType = PostCacheSubstitutionTextType.UserName;
            placeHolderWelcomeName.Controls.Add(welcomeText);
 
            // Profile picture
            SPList userInfoList = SPContext.Current.Web.GetCatalog(SPListTemplateType.UserInformation);
            SPListItem userProfileItem = userInfoList.GetItemById(SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.ID);
            if (userProfileItem["Picture"] == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString()))
            {
                // Use default picture (or replace with another)
                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/PERSON.GIF";
            }
            else
            {
                SPFieldUrlValue value = new SPFieldUrlValue(userProfileItem["Picture"].ToString());
                imageProfilePicture.ImageUrl = value.Url;
            }
        }
    }
}

Next, check out Part 2, where we learn how to display links to My Site and My Profile.

Adding and Deploying Generic Handlers (.ashx) to a SharePoint 2010 Visual Studio Project

Adam Toth — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:00:28 +0000

Generic Handlers (.ashx files) deployed to the _layouts directory are not directly supported by Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint projects like custom .aspx application pages are.

If you try to Add New Item… and select the Web or SharePoint categories in a VS 2010 SharePoint project, you won’t find Generic Handler anywhere.

You’ll find ASP.NET Handler, but this will require you to create entries in web.config to make your handler work. In order to add a new .ASHX generic handler and get it to deploy properly, you can use the following steps:

Right-click the project, and select Add New Item…
Choose the Application Page template.
In the name box, enter a name for your file, with an .ashx extension.
Open the .ashx file, delete the contents and replace with the following, changing your Class= attribute with your desired namespace and class name:
```
<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>
```
```
<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
```
```
<%@ WebHandler Language="C#" Class="MyNamespace.MyGenericHandler" %>
```
Note: If you want to reference other SharePoint assemblies in your code-behind, you will need to add an @ Assembly directive for each DLL.

Open the ashx.cs file.

Add a using statement for System.Web.
You probably don’t need the using statement for Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls, so remove it.
Change your namespace if necessary.
Change the class to inherit from IHttpHandler.

Implement the IHttpHandler interface. Your code should now look something like this:�

using System;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.Web;
 
namespace MyNamespace
{
    public partial class MyGenericHandler : IHttpHandler
    {
 
        #region IHttpHandler Members
 
        public bool IsReusable
        {
            get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
        }
 
        public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }
 
        #endregion
    }
}

In the Solution Explorer, delete the ashx.designer.cs file, it is not needed.
In the Solution Explorer, click the .ashx file, and in the Properties pane, set the Build Action to Content.
In the Solution Explorer, click the .ashx.cs file, and in the Properties pane, set the Build Action to Compile.
Make sure to enable Token replacement for .ashx extensions. This will replace the $SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$ token with the full strong name of your assembly, enabling you to reference other classes in your compiled assembly from the ashx code-behind.You can read more about token replacement here. To enable this for your Project, Unload your Project, Edit the .csproj file and add the following text to a PropertyGroup, and Reload your project:
```
<PropertyGroup>
```
```
  <TokenReplacementFileExtensions>ashxTokenReplacementFileExtensions>
```
```
PropertyGroup>
```