bitVector

Deploy files on Azure Blob Storage, for a SharePoint Online project, in a repeatable process

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 8 Oct 2013 14:58:00 +0200

Note 1 - thanks to Gist you need to see the post's page to have a look at the code

When we work in a project we try to create an automatic deploy process closest to the 100% of the process itself; but we also know that is not possible to cover the entire 100% because we have some manual steps, these usually are around 15% and 30% of all the automatic process. So lets call this process: semi-automatic deploy process.

That perception can grow if we are working on SharePoint Online and we need to deploy some assets on Azure, because new issues are put in the middle of the process.....

full article: http://salvatoredifaziosharepoint.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/deploy-files-on-azure-blob-storage-for-a-sharepoint-online-project/

just remember to change this subscription with the new blog's address

How to retrieve the SPGroup Description

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0200

In this days I worked on a timer job that sync the groups from a site collection to another.
For the first time on my life, copy the description of the group to another was a software requirement.

My expectation was copy the description from the property Description of the SPGroup class:

and set the description of the new group by the same property after that I created it. But if you use it the description that is not show on the group page:

to do that we should work with the property SiteUserInfoList of SPWeb class:

var g = syncWeb.SPWeb.SiteGroups [ "Group Name" ];
var text = ( SPFieldMultiLineText )syncWeb.SPWeb.SiteUserInfoList.Fields [ SPBuiltInFieldId.Notes ];
SPListItem groupItem = syncWeb.SPWeb.SiteUserInfoList.GetItemById ( g.ID );
map.Description = text.GetFieldValueAsText ( groupItem [ text.InternalName ] );

into map.Description we will have the html for the About me column, but we can use it when we need have to create a new group as:

SPWeb.SiteGroups.Add ( group.Name, adm, adm,
                   string.Format ( "{0} {1}", group.Description, Constants.GROUP_SYNC_DESC ) );

enjoy

My London SUGUK event’s slides and code examples (18 July 2013)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 15:41:00 +0200

Hi guys,
at this link: http://www.slideshare.net/Salvodif/java-script-for-the-c-developer
you can find the slides from my SUGUK session. For the code examples please take a look here: https://github.com/Salvodif/suguk18july
enjoy,
.S

SPWeb and the adventure with the property bag

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200

Sometimes working with SharePoint it feels like you had 10 Jägerbombs in a row last night.
Chronologically speaking the last funny thing was about the SPWeb Property Bag.
First of all in SPWeb object we can find:

and

According to MSDN the Properties property:
This property returns only a subset of the metadata for a website. To get all the metadata, use the AllProperties property.

Basically this property is still there for backward compatibility, so now it’s better to use the AllProperties property.
That’s ok but let me talk about an issue that I got. If you are working with the property bag and you want to remove a key/value from it an easy and normal way seem to be:

if ( web.AllProperties.ContainsKey ( property.Key.ToString ( ) ) )
{
    web.AllProperties.Remove ( property.Key.ToString ( ) );
}
web.Update ( );

but that way doesn’t work and neither does setting the value to null before calling the Remove method (as many suggest around the web).

The only useful way that I've found is to do this:

if ( web.AllProperties.ContainsKey ( property.Key.ToString ( ) ) )
{
    web.DeleteProperty ( property.Key.ToString ( ) );
}

From MSDN: This method deletes a property from the AllProperties property that is a key/value pair.

Taking a look inside the Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll about the DeleteProperty method seems it calls the Remove method of the HashTable as I wrote above:

and that is what is inside that method:

Maybe a little bit more scouting would make the idea clearer.
enjoy
.S

Print Properties of an Object

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200

This is a note for me just in case to forget how to print all the properties of an object in powershell.
Let think about this, you wanna print all the properties in a SPWeb property bag. To do that you can write a script like this:

$site = Get-SPSite -Identity https://mySPSite
$site.RootWeb.AllProperties | % {$_ | Format-Table | Out-String)}

If you want can show the Properties Table as a List just changing the Format-Table command with Format-List

see ya!

First SUGUK session: JavaScript for the C# Developer

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 2 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200

I’m happy to invite you at my first SUGUK session about JavaScript.

During this session I’ll focus about why JavaScript is so important for the SharePoint developer and how we can write more efficient and maintainable script code with a few simple rules.

Is it just fancy 2? (JavaScript Patterns)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:48:00 +0200

In my last articles I forgot to share a nice post of Sahil Malik where he shows us the problems that you can have when you use global variable in JavaScript:

http://blah.winsmarts.com/2013-5-SharePoint_2013_-_JavaScript_-and-amp;_jQuery_big_booboo_to_watch_out_for.aspx

The example is very nice because you can see how many problem you can have just with the $ global variable when you use JQuery in SharePoint.

Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern, Pattern

Is it just fancy?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:55:00 +0200

On the 18th of May I held a session about JavaScript Patterns during the first SharePoint Saturday in Milan. I felt that the session was great but you know what the speakers think is always wrong.
When I got feedback I realized that the topic of the session was ok but the attendees didn’t understand why they should write good JavaScript code.

That don’t really surprise me because I had some discussions about the same topic but with C# instead of JavaScript.
Indeed when you talk with a lazy C# dev he/she can understand why they should use polymorphism instead of having 10 unrelated classes with maybe
3 copies of the same function!?

Why!???!?!

And if in C# the mess is remedied by the language itself, because it needs namespaces and classes, in JavaScript you are totally without control.

If you are a SharePoint dev and you don’t like JavaScript I’m sorry for you because the future of SP is JavaScript and JavaScript is the presence of the web since 1994.
So maybe it’s time for you to change your job because you unable to write code for the Web and for the SP2013 Apps.

Microsoft is pushing JavaScript and Azure technology so we have to learn about it if you are not yet!!!!

What about JS is very useful for the future of devs?

IMHO you have to learn 3 JS patterns from scratch:

- Closure
- Class
- Module

Why?

Let me provide some examples:

1 - You need a business function. Usually you write code inside a page/app/web part:

        function MyBusinessFunc() {
            a = 5;

            a += 5;
            
            // do job
        }

and then you need the same function in another page/app/web part.
What do you do? Copy&Paste in the second page, off course!
But what is the problem in doing it in this way?

1 – if your business logic changes you have to change it in 2 or more scripts
2 – the function has a GLOBAL scope attached on the global ‘window’ object
3 – the variable ‘a’ has a GLOBAL scope

What solution can I apply?

One of the most important patterns that you have in JavaScript the Module Pattern.
The implementation of this pattern is easy. For example if we want our business function wrapped with this pattern we could write:

var SDF = SDF || {};

SDF.Utils = {
    MyBusinessFunc: function () {
        var a;

        a = 5;

        a += 5;

        // do job
    }
};

the first line says “if the global variable SDF doesn’t exist then create it otherwise use it”.
Then we extend our object with the property Utils where inside we have the method MyBusinessFunc.

Differences?
This is what our ‘window’ object looks like without a Module Patten:

and this is with the Module Pattern

and what if we need to keep some logics separated?

If we keep in mind to define our variable with the keyword var and we use the Module Pattern our JavaScript code can became: tidy, reusable, and maintainable.

If you don’t want start from scratch you can use these files: http://sdrv.ms/ZcWODQ

enjoy

SharePoint Saturday Slides and Examples

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:45:00 +0200

Hi guys,

Following you can find my slides and links to the JS Examples:

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/Salvodif/sharepoint-saturday-18-may-2013

1. Comparision: http://jsfiddle.net/Salvodif/d46LM/
2. Prototype: http://jsfiddle.net/Salvodif/ZqFUq/
3. Clouse Pattern: http://jsfiddle.net/Salvodif/xKL93/
4. Class Pattern: http://jsfiddle.net/Salvodif/me8pp/
5. Module Pattern: http://jsfiddle.net/Salvodif/qGBHS/
6. Chain Pattern: http://jsfiddle.net/Salvodif/V5KsY/
7. Decorator Pattern: http://jsfiddle.net/Salvodif/uFLNC/

Enjoy :)

SharePoint Saturday has landed in Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 7 May 2013 16:50:00 +0200

Hi all,

Finally in Italy we’ve got SharePoint Saturday thanks to Marco Rizzi.

SharePoint Saturday is a free event on SharePoint of course and for the first edition I’m going to present a session on JavaScript Patterns.

So this is the agenda: http://spsevents.org/worldwide/Milan/Pages/Agenda.aspx

These are the speakers: http://spsevents.org/worldwide/Milan/Pages/Speakers.aspx

This is the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SharepointSaturdayItaly

And if you want to book a ticket you can do so from this link: http://spsitaly-efbevent.eventbrite.it/

I’ll see you there!!!

How to debug a content for knockout

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0200

One of the most boring thing a developer have to do is debugging and it’s very painful when there are thousand of JavaScript library on your page. And if you are an user of Knockoutjs you could have problem to binding the data on your View.

A good way to see your object on your page, to understand if the data is correct and what could be the error, is print the object is a piece of HTML.

So in deeply it is not hard to understand, following is a piece of my view:

<div>
    Debug: <input type="checkbox" data-bind="checked: debug" /> <label data-bind="text: debugMsg"></label>
</div>

<table>
   <thead>
       <tr>
           <th>Name</th>
           <th>Color</th>
           <th>Product models</th>
           <th>List Price</th>
           <th>Qty</th>
           <th></th>
           <th></th>
           <!-- ko if: $root.debug -->
           <th></th>
           <!-- /ko -->
       </tr>
   </thead>

<!-- ..... -->



<!-- ko if: $root.debug -->
<td>
    <pre data-bind="text: ko.toJSON($data, null, 2)"></pre>
</td>
<!-- /ko -->

The label is not useful but I keep it just for DEMO purpose. To bind this two variables you need something like this:

self.debug = ko.observable(false);
self.debugMsg = ko.computed(function () {
    return self.debug() === true ? "We are in == DEBUG MODE ==" : "";
});

that’s it

Sharepoint 2013 – How to share contents between Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:30:00 +0100

Usually, in the previous versions of SharePoint, if you had to deploy 2 or more web parts to one or more servers you had to deploy the shared content to a shared container like the _layouts directory for each server. The same goes for 2 or more SharePoint Applications.
Let me draw an example:

Due to the new SharePoint 2013 model, if you have the same problem as before, you cannot deploy the contents in the _layouts directory if you want to release a 100% compliant Office 365 app.
So, for example, if I developed 4 apps in my DEV environment and I used a mixed solution like deploying a Farm WSP with all my shared contents in the _layouts directory these coming to be unusable on SharePoint online.
The best options to share your contents are to adopt one of the following two:

SharePoint Web Application
Azure
- ASP.NET Web Application
- Blob storage
  - CDN

So if you start to use one of those options you'll start to implement an architecture like this:

SharePoint Web Application
The idea behind is something that comes from the old versions of SharePoint. You could deploy a web application and have it in an assets library, anonymously accessible if you need, where the web parts or the apps can access to download them.

This solution is restricted because the boundary is the SharePoint farm where the SharePoint Web Application lives.
If you have an app installed outside your farm (and it should be the usually), you have to configure your farm to give the access from outside. That makes it hard to maintain, and also unsafe for your LAN.

Azure

ASP.NET Web Application
I picked up this idea from Chris O'Brien. He uses this solution as his choice.
The easy idea is to use a public web project on azure. So you should have a web site published on Azure:

and through VS 2012 you can deploy your assets:

Blob storage and CDN
Windows Azure Blob is a service for storing large amounts of unstructured data that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS.For more information about the blob storage you can read the following link: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/how-to-guides/blob-storage-v17/
The CDN is an option of the blob storage and that is a global solution for delivering high-bandwidth content by caching blobs and static content: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/common-tasks/cdn/
To upload the files on your blob storage you can develop your own client or you can use something that exists already, like this: http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/
You just have to create a blob container on your Azure, for this example I created the images container:
this is my blob service with the CDN option enabled:

and this is my images container:

cool eh!? :)
Ok now that your Share Content Environment is ready you can refer to it with code.

Some considerations
Sharing contents between apps shouldn't be usual but could be if you have to develop more than one app for a client project (same logos, same css, shared javascript!).
IMHO these are the best solutions you could implement.
If you have some other ideas, please let me know ;)

Blog mirroring

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:05:00 +0100

Due to some problems with blogger I’m going to create a mirror of this blog on Wordpress.

The link is that: http://salvatoredifazio.wordpress.com/

Maybe in the future I will keep only the wordpress one.

Thx

The KIT of the good consultant

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Following you can read the list of the things you need to be a good consultant:

multiple adapter
External Data Storage, capacity tend to infinity
High Speed External modem
mouse and mouse pad
USB HUB
bicycle
tonne of patience
stain remover
a stone
digestive
pajamas

;)

SharePoint 2013 meet Knockoutjs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 5 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Introduction
In these days I have been starting to write some application with Knockoutjs to understand how much I can use it on my SharePoint projects. With the new model of the SharePoint’s app, use Knockoutjs in an app, is quite similar to use it in a MVC project.
For this post I made a immersive full page app with the following SharePoint item:

App for SharePoint 2013 hosted in my SharePoint
One Content Type
One list that use the content type of above, with some static demo data

A quick introduction to the app catalog, app model and publish an app
<<In its most basic form, an app for SharePoint is a web application that is registered with SharePoint using an app manifest. An app manifest is an XML file that declares the basic properties of the app along with where the app will run and what to do when the app is started.>> (msdn par: What is an app for SharePoint?).
You have 3 options for hosting your apps in SharePoint:

Those can be combined.
When you use the SharePoint-hosted & autohosted options you don't need to register your app and everything is included in the .app paclage.

Once the app pkg has been published, it is available for users to install. In my case (SharePoint-hosted) the pkg contains all the resources required to deploy the app during the installation process.
You publish the app by uploading it to a special type of site known as an app catalog site. This is the option to use when you want to make the app available to a specific on-premises farm.
This site con a special type of document library that is used to upload and store app package files.
This is mine:

When you start to dev an app you have to decide which APIs to use. This choice is based on the kind of app tat you create, as a best practice use client APIs. But, not all server-side functionality is available from client APIs.

As you can see the Server OM APIs are related only with PowerShell and Timers job.
The new app model doesn't support running server-side code within the SharePoint host environment, so we cannot use the server-side API in apps, but we can use the client-side API.

For this example I used a App for SharePoint 2013:

SharePoint-hosted:

When you want publish your app you should only "deploy" it:

Pay attention, in the URL property of your project. It is the URL of the site to use for debugging! I have: https://dev.content.code/
Maybe this image can help you to understand:

My App
Very quickly following is the ingredients of my app.

As you can see I have:

this new content type that I use to save my information

a list that use my content type

To have the App ready to go, I had inserted data in my list instance before the deploy:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
    <ListInstance Title="VideoInfoList" OnQuickLaunch="TRUE" TemplateType="10000" Url="Lists/VideoInfoList" Description="My List Instance">
        <Data>
            <Rows>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">The Shawshank Redemption</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">1994-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">5</Field>
                </Row>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">The Godfather</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">1972-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">5</Field>
                </Row>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">Pulp Fiction</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">1994-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">4</Field>
                </Row>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">The Dark Knight</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">2008-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">4</Field>
                </Row>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">1980-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">4</Field>
                </Row>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">Matrix</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">1999-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">4</Field>
                </Row>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">Jurassic Park</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">1993-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">3</Field>
                </Row>
                <Row>
                    <Field Name="Title">A Fistful of Dollars</Field>
                    <Field Name="DateCompleted">1964-12-30T21:00:00Z</Field>
                    <Field Name="AverageRating">3</Field>
                </Row>
            </Rows>
        </Data>
    </ListInstance>
</Elements>

To use Knockoutjs you should add it in your project. You should use NuGet version: http://nuget.org/packages/knockoutjs

App information
If you are familiar with the Facebook’s app developing the following information will be obvious for you. As I wrote before, every apps has an AppManifest.xml in this file you can find some information like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!--Created:cb85b80c-f585-40ff-8bfc-12ff4d0e34a9-->
<App xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/2012/app/manifest"
     Name="SDFVideos"
     ProductID="{07ff4877-f4cc-465b-bf16-cec326c22b81}"
     Version="1.0.0.0"
     SharePointMinVersion="15.0.0.0">
  <Properties>
    <Title>SDF.Videos</Title>
    <StartPage>~appWebUrl/Pages/Default.aspx?{StandardTokens}</StartPage>
  </Properties>

  <AppPrincipal>
    <Internal />
  </AppPrincipal>
  <AppPermissionRequests>
  </AppPermissionRequests>
</App>

If you open the AppManifest.xml through Visual Studio 2012 a window like this will be show:

You can see 5 tabs:

General
- Title: The title of the SharePoint App.
- Name: The name of the SharePoint App. Name is not localized, and is used in URLs that address App artifacts.
- Version: The app version.
- Icon: Specifics the URL of the image that is used to present the App.
- Start page: The URL of the page visited when the SharePoint App is launched.
- Query string: Specifics the query string to be added to the start page URL.

Permissions
- Like the Facebook’s app, the SharePoint apps needs to have the permission set if those needs to use resources; for ex: write access to profiles, read access to site collection, etc…
  in this example you don’t need to provide some permissions because we haven’t code behind. It’s become useful when you, for example, develop an app that access to resources.

Prerequisites
- is useful to specify the features and capabilities that your app depends on, like: Managed Metadata Web Service, Search Service, Secure Store Services, User Profile Service, etc
Supported Locales
- List of language culture combination that this app supports
Remote Endpoints
- You can use this page to set Remote Endpoints useful for your app

The CORE: Knockout
Now we can talk about the Knockoutjs experience. As you see in the picture about my project, I have a Default.aspx page into the Page folder. This is the most important markup lines of my page:

<%-- The markup and script in the following Content element will be placed in the <head> of the page --%>

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead" runat="server">
    <script type="text/javascript" src="../Scripts/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/sp.runtime.debug.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/sp.debug.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="../Scripts/knockout-2.2.1.js"></script>

    <!-- Add your CSS styles to the following file -->
    <link rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../Content/App.css" />

    <!-- Add your JavaScript to the following file -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="../Scripts/App.js" defer="defer"></script>

    <script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function () {
            ko.applyBindings(SDF.Views.DefaultPage);
        });
    </script>
    
</asp:Content>
<%-- The markup and script in the following Content element will be placed in the <body> of the page --%><asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderMain" runat="server">
    <button data-bind="click: loadItems">Load</button>
    <br />
    <br />
    <ul data-bind="foreach: items">
        <li><label data-bind="text: Title"></label> - <label data-bind="text: AverageRating"></label> - <label data-bind="text: DateCompleted"></label></li>
        <pre data-bind="text: ko.toJSON($data, null, 2)"></pre>
    </ul>
</asp:Content>

Obviously the app needs a reference to our knockout-2.2.1.js, next you have a reference to the App.js where all the JavaScript code take place, and 2 lines of jQuery code that execute the knockout binding. The applyBindings function is the method use by Knockout to activate the binding, in this example, to the DefaultPage view (this function is in the App.js file). Next you can see some html markup lines. The data-bind attribute isn’t native to HTML but it is perfectly OK, but since the browser doesn’t know what it means, knockout does well but you need to active it by the applyBindings method.
The foreach method duplicates a section of markup for each item in the items array, this is especially useful for rendering lists or tables. The text binding apply the text found in the current item to the DOM element associated instead the click binding adds an event handler to a JavaScript function that I wrote inside my DefaultPage.

Knockout: the App.js file
Inside that file you can find the MVVM structure used by Knockout to works with the Default.aspx page. The first method I want show you is just an utility method:

SDF.Utility = (function () {
    function QueryStringParser(paramToRetrieve) {
        var params, i, singleParam;

        params = window.document.URL.split("?")[1].split("&");
        for (i = 0; i < params.length; i = i + 1) {
            singleParam = params[i].split("=");
            if (singleParam[0] === paramToRetrieve) {
                return singleParam[1];
            }
        }

        return "";
    }

    return { getQueryStringParameter: QueryStringParser };
}());

The getQueryStringParameter is useful when you needs to get value from the query string. At least you need it to get two variables:

SPHostUrl=https://dev.content.code
SPAppWebUrl=https://App-5a060d47f59262/apps/code/SDFVideos

Those two variables are useful because tell us: SPHostUrl, where the app is hosted; SPAppWebUrl, where is into the Apps Catalog. You can use those two variables to, for ex, access to the SPSite properties by JavaScript or know the REST address.

This is our view model:

SDF.Views = SDF.Views || {
  DefaultPage: (function () {

      function Item(data) {
          var self = this;
          self.Title = data.Title;
          self.AverageRating = ko.observable(data.AverageRating);
          self.DateCompleted = data.DateCompleted;
      }

      var appweburl = decodeURIComponent(SDF.Utility.getQueryStringParameter("SPAppWebUrl"));

      var doSuccess = function (items) {
        var buffer;

        buffer = $.map(items.d.results, function (item) { return new Item(item); });

        viewModel.items(buffer);
    };

      var doError = function () {
          alert("error");
      };
    
      var viewModel = {
          items: ko.observableArray([]),

          loadItems: function () {
              jQuery.ajax({
                  url: appweburl + "/_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('VideoInfoList')/items",
                  headers: { "Accept": "application/json; odata=verbose" },
                  success: doSuccess,
                  error: doError
              });
          },
      };

      return viewModel;
  }())
};

This is a very small and easy view model. The function Item identify our object in the items array. When you click the button Load the method loadItems is fire, the function associated will make a REST call to our List in SharePoint. If the call will end successful the method doSuccess will be call otherwise the method doError. The doSuccess method is the most interesting of the two. By the jQuery map method you can easily translate the JSON result in a new array of Item objects. When the array is ready you apply the change to the items object. In this case the items array change is status from a empty array to an array whit some elements. Knockout will know about this change because the items object isn’t a standard array, indeed it is an ko.observableArray. You have to use this object if you want to detect and respond to changes of a collection of things. This method tracks which objects are in the array, not the state of those objects.

If you deploy the app the result will be this:

before the click

after the click

Knockout: debug info
A very useful thing that I didn't explain before is this line:

<pre data-bind="text: ko.toJSON($data, null, 2)"></pre>

that is inside the foreach binding in the Default.aspx. That is a way that I use to debug my Knockout page to understand if the variable are bound well.

Knockout: performance issues
Let me tell you a last thing just to close well the post :). During my test I got the following performance problem:

As you can see knockoutjs got, in total, 23 secs to repaint all the page for a request of 100 items. Why? The page is very easy, that’s a piece of my page:

<tbody data-bind="foreach: filteredItems">
  <tr>
    <td>
      <!-- ko ifnot: edit -->
      <label  data-bind="text: name"></label>
      <!-- /ko -->
      <!-- ko if: edit -->
      <input type="text" data-bind="value: name" />
      <!-- /ko -->
    </td>
    <td>
      <!-- ko ifnot: edit -->
      <label data-bind="text: color"></label>
      <!-- /ko -->
      <!-- ko if: edit -->
      <select data-bind="options: $root.colors, value: color, optionsCaption: 'Choose...', enable: edit">
      </select>
      <!-- /ko -->
    </td>
    <td>
      <!-- ko ifnot: edit -->
      <label data-bind="text: model"></label>
      <!-- /ko -->
      <!-- ko if: edit -->
      <select data-bind="options: $root.productModels, value: model, optionsCaption: 'Choose...', enable: edit">
      </select>

      <!-- /ko -->
    </td>

Ok, it is not all the markup, but the rest of the page is not fascinating. The main differences with the page of before are the two select with the binding:

$root.productModels
$root.colors

the keyword $root is a pointer to the ViewModel object. Why you need to use it? Because you are inside the foreach binding but the colors and the productModels are properties of the ViewModel:

SDF.Views = SDF.Views || {
    IndexViewModel: function () {
        var self;
        self = this;

        self.items = ko.observableArray([]);
        self.colors = ko.observableArray([]);
        self.productModels = ko.observableArray([]);

But why knockoutjs has need 23 secs to repaint my page?
The problems are the two select because forearch item it needs to recreate the select tag and rebinding it.
But I want the two select because the user should have the ability to edit an item and change the properties. To accomplish with this task and have better performance the solution is: use the if binding.
The if binding causes a section of markup to appear in your document, it’s difference than his brother visible set to false, because with the visible attribute I only set if the data in visible or not even though it is in the DOM, otherwise the if binding doesn’t write the data inside the DOM.
This is what my page looks like know:

<tbody data-bind="foreach: filteredItems">
  <tr>
    <td>
      <!-- ko ifnot: edit –>
      <label  data-bind="text: name"></label>
      <!-- /ko -->
      <!-- ko if: edit -->
      <input type="text" data-bind="value: name" />
      <!-- /ko -->
    </td>
    <td>
      <!-- ko ifnot: edit -->
      <label data-bind="text: color"></label>
      <!-- /ko -->
      <!-- ko if: edit -->
      <select data-bind="options: $root.colors, value: color, optionsCaption: 'Choose...', enable: edit"></select>
      <!-- /ko -->
    </td>
    <td>
      <!-- ko ifnot: edit -->
      <label data-bind="text: model"></label>
      <!-- /ko -->
      <!-- ko if: edit -->
      <select data-bind="options: $root.productModels, value: model, optionsCaption: 'Choose...', enable: edit"></select>      <!-- /ko -->
    </td>

With this solution if you ask for 100 items the result is:

and you still edit your item.
In the next post I will show you how edit an item.

Introduction to the Minimal Download Strategy (MDS)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:58:00 +0100

Continuing the posts about the new improvements in SharePoint 2013 I can't avoid to write about the Minimal Download Strategy, for the friend MDS.

Introduction

SharePoint is based on ASP.NET Web Form and, as you know, this technology is based on a request-response approach whether you need to update the whole page or a portion of it, and a determinate Page Life Cycle will be start for any request from the client.

The following illustration shows some of the most important methods of the Page class:

If you like, you can find more information in the following link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178472(v=vs.100).aspx
In the last years, to avoid to reload whole information on the page, we’ve seen smart approaches using DHTML, JavaScript, AJAX, UpdatePanels, and so on. Off course this solution are focused to make a better UX and minimizing the amount of data downloaded for each user interaction and increase the performance.
Even though SharePoint did some improvements in this way, many times when a user interacted with a page, the entire page was downloaded to the client computer.
SharePoint 2013 is based on a very rich web interface that contains lots of moving parts and lots of customizable areas, maintain this approach would be disruptive.
For this reason, SharePoint 2013, comes with a new navigation framework that improves page load performance by only downloading those portions of the page that have changed. This is known as the Minimal Download Strategy.

How does it works?

It works with the AjaxDelta control that should be added to the head section of master pages. By default, the MDS feature is activated on the Team, Community, Wiki, Projects, App, and Blog site templates.
When the site uses MDS and a page is requested, the address bar of the browser displays a URL like this: http://address.domain/_layouts/15/start.aspx#/SitePages/Home.aspx
The start.aspx is responsible for loading pages, it contains a JavaScript object asyncDeltaMaganer defined in start.js file. Basically it parses the URL, looks for the sign #. Only the changed portions are downloaded to the client’s if the requested page contain the querystring parameter AjaxDelta=1.
The key class that is responsible to generate the full pages or just the deltas is the DeltaPage. The common pages are inheriting from this. When MDS is enabled it is responsible for creating the delta response and for handling exceptions.
There is also a control called PageRenderMode that can be used on a master page, web part page or page layout. This control accepts two values, Standard or MinimalDownload. If it is not presente or if it’s property is set to MinimalDownload it can participate in MDS rendering:

<SharePoint:PageRenderMode runat="server" RenderModeType="MinimalDownload" />

Custom control

You are able to make your own control (web parts, pages, etc.) that use MDS. There is the attribute MdsCompilantAttribute that you can set on a class of your control:

[MdsCompliant(true)]

you can add the attribute to the assembly too, in this way all of your classes will use MDS.

Some improvements from SP2013 - Distributed Cache Service

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 8 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +0100

Continuing the series of posts about the new improvements from SharePoint 2013 we should talk about the upgrade of the Cache Service.

Unlike SharePoint 2010, where the cache was a way to store information and each server had its own, in SharePoint 2013 had a mechanism of distributed caching that spread all the data in the farm.

This service is based on the Windows Server AppFabric 1.1 caching model (for more information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh351389.aspx ).

Off course use the Distributed Cache Service take some benefits for the following features:

Authentication: the service will stores the security token used by the Security Token Service for use by any web server in the server farm. In this way, every time a user ask to be authenticated in a web server, the web server will get the token from the cache cluster. In SharePoint 2010 was used a trick know as: sticky sessions
Socials: My Sites contain the new Microblog and Newsfeeds features. These features allow users to engage in short, public conversations, and keep up-to-date on activities from content and people in which they are interested. This feature take a strong use of DCS, usualy every update will register into the service and will may used. (for more information: http://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj219700(office.15).aspx)
OneNote Client Access
Security Trimming
Page Load Performance: SP 2013 include a new framework that improves page load performance by only downloading those portions of the page that have changed. The name of this feature is Minimal Download Strategy (MDS). It is by default enable on Team site, Community site and a few others site template. When it is enable all pages is rendered by the /_layouts/15/start.aspx page. I will write a post to explain how it works. For now I past to you what Microsoft wrote in the msdn: <he minimal download strategy will use a single .aspx file (start.aspx) for your pages, with the actual URLencoded in the text following the hashmark (‘#’). When navigating from page to page, only the changes between two compatible pages will be downloaded. Fewer bytes will be downloaded and the page will appear more quickly.>>
Search

The DCS can run in two modes:

Dedicated mode: This is Microsoft's recommended mode. All thse services are stopped on the server except DCS. Microsoft recommends that no more than 16 GB of memory should be allocated to the DCS.
Collocated mode: Microsoft does not recommend this mode and any of the following services or application should not run on the same server:

SQL Server 2008 or 2012
Search engine
Excel Services
Project Server services

Following the Windows PowerShell cmdlets that you can use to manage the DCS:

Add-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstanceOnLocalServer
Clear-SPDistributedCacheItem
Get-SPDistributedCacheClientSetting
Remove-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstanceOnLocalServer
Set-SPDistributedCacheClientSetting
Stop-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstanceGracefullyOnLocalServer
Set-CacheHostConfig

Some references:

bye

Some improvements from SP2013 - Shredded Storage - Database 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 2 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +0100

In my previous post I wrote about some information about the shredded storage. During this week I have read a lot of information about how this new feature works and which are the limitations.

First of all I should write that we can use, the new feature shredded storage, for the binary files too.
So for file such as .doc, .ppt, and .xls shredded storage is accomplished by using a feature of Windows Server 2008: Remote Differential Compression. For the friends RDC.

However when you upgrade your system from SharePoint 2010 to 2013, your content databases do not automatically reduce in size. Shredded storage will only be used the next time the system needs to save a version.

So we can have a big slice of benefits if we have a lot of version of the same file, instead if we have one or two version of the same file we shouldn't take advantage of this feature.
Another example is if we save jpg file. Those files are already compressed so the delta from the original file and the version can be small.

There are some good articles around the web that explain the technology in depth:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/wbaer/archive/2012/11/12/introduction-to-shredded-storage-in-sharepoint-2013.aspx

http://www.docave.com/TeamBlog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=105

Some improvements from SP2013 - Database

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:08:00 +0100

With the new version of SharePoint the guys in Microsoft did a lot of improvements. One of these is the improvements about the database.

The new SharePoint 2013 taking advantage of MS SQL 2012 Server functionality and using shredded storage that reduces the size of content database and optimizes network traffic.

Off course you can use SP 2013 also with a MS SQL 2008 R2 SP1 database.

In Microsoft has remove a lot of redundant and unused table and they has simplify the database schema and optimized data access to improve the database performance. Take a look at the keynote video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLsIjvIyAxo at 1h 21m.

The shredded storage reduce the amount of data that is saved and reduces the amount of network traffic between the SP web servers and the SQL servers.

One of the most painful feature in SP2010 was the versioning feature. In SP2010 the versioning does not worried about the changes between the previous version and what you start to upload. It just get your new one document and put inside the database. So if the old document was 100-KB and the new one is 105-KB you will have 205-KB of documents inside the database.

In SP2013 by the MS-FSSHTTP protocol only the changes made while editing a file are stored in the content database. By the Office Document Cache, that was used in SP2010 too, the system is able to check the difference between your version and the version in the content database and send to you just the difference.

How to set the destination folder in OOB Upload page!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:39:00 +0100

During a sharepoint site customization, I made a web part that display the documents that the customer looking for. If the user has the permission to update the document an icon will be visible to accomplish this task; this icon call a javascript function that open the oob update page.

Problem:

For each document I can have an upload icon. Every of those documents are saved in a specific folder (don't ask me why!!!). The customer asked me that the upload page load automatically the folder where the file will be uploaded

In this way if the document is in the folder /FolderA/SubFolderB, I will press the icon and I will have /FolderA/SubFolderB in my Destaination Folder textbox.
I have looking around on the net if anyone got a similar problem, but I didn’t find a response.

Solution:

Armed with a good time and two of my friends: notepad2 and JetBrains dotPeek, I did a bit of analysis.
First of all I opened the page
%SHAREPOINTFOLDER%\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\upload.aspx
by the notepad2 to understand which is the dll of its code behind:
<%@ Page Language="C#" DynamicMasterPageFile="~masterurl/default.master" Inherits="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.UploadPage"%>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages" %>
you can find this dll in the folder _app_bin of your site (example: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\26295\_app_bin). I opened the file Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.dll with JetBrains dotPeek and I found what I was looking for:

protected virtual string CurrentFolderServerRelativeUrl
{
  get
  {
    if (this.m_folderUrl == null)
    {
      string str = this.Request.QueryString["RootFolder"];
      this.m_folderUrl = string.IsNullOrEmpty(str) ? this.CurrentList.RootFolderUrl : str;
    }
    return this.m_folderUrl;
  }
}

this property is used later for the following reason:

stringBuilder.Append("&RootFolder=");
stringBuilder.Append(SPHttpUtility.UrlKeyValueEncode(this.CurrentFolderServerRelativeUrl));
...
this.Destination.Text = SPHttpUtility.HtmlEncode(this.CurrentFolderServerRelativeUrl);
...
private SPFile UploadFile(out string leafName, out SPVirusCheckStatus checkStatus, out string virusMessage)
{
  HttpPostedFile postedFile = this.InputFile.PostedFile;
  leafName = UploadPage.GetLeafName(postedFile.FileName);
  SPFile file = this.Web.GetFile(this.CurrentFolderServerRelativeUrl + "/" + leafName);
  bool flag1 = false;

the variable Destination is an hidden field used by sharepoint and the key RootFolder is used to get which folder I want specify.
Okie dokie, so I need a javascript method like this:

function uploadDialog(folder) {
    var id = String(this.list.get_id());
    this.url = '/_layouts/Upload.aspx?List={' + id.toUpperCase() + '}&RootFolder=' + folder;

    optionProcedure = {
        width: 800,
        height: 500,
        url: this.url,
        title: 'Upload doc'
    };

    SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(optionProcedure);
}

where the id is the ListId loaded before and the RootFolder is where I want upload the new file. I will call this method in this way:

<a href="#" onclick="javascript:uploadDialog('/Lists/MyDocs/FolderA/SubFolderB'); return false;">
<img src="/_layouts/images/xxx.Intranet.WebParts/procedura_upload.png" title="Open form" alt="Open form" style="border: 0px;"></a>

in this way I will have the Folder of my Destination folder populated with /FolderA/SubFolderB

Retrieve document rating with Powershell

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0200

Hi everyone,

I will show you another piece of code that I use during development.

In this case I need to get the rating of a document. In C# the code looks like this:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("SharePoint site URL"))
{
  SPServiceContext context = SPServiceContext.GetContext(site);
  SocialRatingManager mySocialRatingManager = new SocialRatingManager(context);
  SocialRating aRating = mySocialRatingManager.GetRating(myUri);
  Console.WriteLine(aRating.Url + ": " + aRating.Rating);
}

(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff407954.aspx)

To do the same with powershell we must do some changes. I show to you:

$siteUrl = Read-Host "Site url"
$site = Get-SPSite $siteUrl
$uri = Read-Host "Uri document"

$serviceCtx = Get-SPServiceContext -Site $site
$socialRatingMgr = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.SocialData.SocialRatingManager($serviceCtx)
$rating = $socialRatingMgr.GetRating($uri)

$rating | Format-Table -AutoSize -Wrap

$site.Dispose()

I want remember that I’m not a powershell guy but I like it to use for my general purpose

How to add a custom value in the search core results

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0200

By the Search Core Results webpart you can show the results of your search in a custom page of your site.
The default behaviours of this web part is show the default columns but if you want to show a your custom column you need to do some little steps. I show you!

First of all open the SharePoint Central Administration –> Manage service applications –> Search Service Application and click on Manage –> Metadata Properties:

in this form click New Managed Property:

fill in the form:

then click ok and run the crawler:

then come back to you Search Core Result web part that you want customize and go to edit properties:

and fill in with the following xml:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" > 
  <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" /> 
  <xsl:template match="/"> 
    <xmp><xsl:copy-of select="*"/><xmp>
  <xsl:template> 
<xsl:stylesheet>

and the result will be:

now you are ready to modify the xslt: http://salvatoredifaziosharepoint.blogspot.it/2012/04/how-to-modify-sharepoints-result-page.html

How to print fields information using PowerShell

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:00:00 +0200

Many times we need to print fields information to understand, for example, which is the name of the fields we looking for. You know, SharePoint has a naming convention that is different from what we expect.

To be able to quickly obtain this information I use Powershell with the following script:

$url = Read-Host "Web address:"
$web = Get-SPWeb $url
$listname = Read-Host "List name:"
$list = $web.Lists[$listname]

$list.fields | select Title, InternalName, Hidden, DisplayName | sort title | ft -AutoSize

enjoy

Linq To Sharepoint–How to do a recursive and folder-scoped query

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 9 Jul 2012 13:00:00 +0200

Hi guys,

I working in a old-style-documents-archive-web-part-implementation that means I have a document library with folders and sub-folder.

I start to say you that I don’t like this solution and I think that use the Managed metada server is a better solution, but anyway if you need to do queries in a document library you have to ways.

If you use SPQuery you need to specify the properties ViewAttributes :

SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
///....
query.ViewAttributes = "Scope=\"RecursiveAll\"";

Instead if you use LinqToSharePoint you can use the property ScopeToFolder:

var q = dc.MyDocs.ScopeToFolder("", true).Where(p => p.DueDate < DateTime.Now.AddMonths(1));

In the MSDN page we can find the following parameters explanation:

public IQueryable<TEntity> ScopeToFolder( string folderUrl, bool recursive )

folderUrl –> The URL of the folder.
recursive –> true to include items in subfolders; false to exclude them.

enjoy

SharePoint 2010: Create a Content Type with Lookup Field by writing declarative XML

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 2 Jul 2012 13:00:00 +0200

Create a content type with a lookup field in the Elements.xml file is not easy how you can think.

To accomplish this task you need to:

define the new field
specify Name, DisplayName, StaticName
set at TRUE the Overwrite attribute
set at ~sitecollection the WebId attribute
set at TheLookupList the List attribute
set at http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3 the SourceID attribute

for example:

<!-- CT Sotto Reparto -->
<Field ID="{2AAD1044-89E9-4C88-8234-424A4B739C1C}" Name="LookupToList" DisplayName="LookupToList" StaticName="LookupToList"
       Type ="Lookup"
       Required="TRUE"
       Group="Custom Columns"
       Overwrite="TRUE"
       WebId="~sitecollection"
       EnforceUniqueValues="FALSE"
       List="Lists/MyList"
       SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3"
       ShowField="MyLookupField" />

bye!