How To: SharePoint and Silverlight 2.0 – Part 1

Author: [MVP] Tobias Zimmergren
Web: http://www.zimmergren.net

Prephase

I have previously written up a few articles on how you can get more from your SharePoint environment by enhancing it with AJAX, .NET 3.5 and Silverlight.

References to those articles can be found here:

My intention is to get a SharePoint / Silverlight article series going, and this is to be the first article in the series – How to get up and running!

Prerequisits

Must have:

WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007
Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Tools for Silverlight
Silverlight 2.0 SDK
A .xap file you want to use in your Web Part
Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for SharePoint

Note: I’m not going to describe how you create a .xap file – you’ll find plenty of resources for that on the net. Just go google! (Live.com, yeah!)

Nice to have:

Expression Blend 2 (Designtool for Silverlight and WPF applications)
- With SP1
Silverlight Toolkit

Part 1 – Step by step to configure your SharePoint environment for Silverlight 2.0

First of all, if you don’t want to do the manual .NET 3.5 settings in your web.config – there’s a great feature to take care of this on CodePlex which can be found under the Features project.

Step 1: Download, install and deploy the .NET 3.5 Web Config feature

Download the .NET 3.5 web.config feature from here
Install the .wsp into your SharePoint environment
Deploy the .wsp into your SharePoint environment to the appropriate Web Application
Activate the feature for your Web Application (the one you deployed to)
(This is done from Central Administration – Application Management – Manage Web Application Features)

Now we’re all set with the pre-configurations of the web.config – though there’s one more thing we need to manually do.

Step 2: Adding the final touches to web.config manually

Since the features project doesn’t include Silverlight by default (except for the Beta 2 version, which we’re not interested in..) you should now open up your web.config manually and

add the following line to <system.web> <compilation> <assemblies>:

<add assembly="System.Web.Silverlight,
    Version=2.0.5.0,
    Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />

It should look something like this:

Step 3: Add System.Web.Silverlight.dll to the GAC (Global Assembly Cache)

Add the System.Web.Silverlight.dll to the Global Assembly Cache (either drag’n’drop it into C:\Windows\assembly or use Gacutil.exe or use the default .NET Configuration Tool)

You’ll find the System.Web.Silverlight.dll assembly in the Silverlight 2.0 SDK folder, located here:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Libraries\Server\

Step 4: Set the correct MIME-type for the Silverlight .xap filetype

Go to your IIS management console (Start – Run - “inetmgr” without the quotes)

Select your Web Application from the list, and select properties:
Choose “HTTP Headers” and then “MIME Types…”
Add the MIME-type for Silverlight 2.0 Applications as shown:
Okay, Okay, Okay (Press the buttons..)
Close the IIS manager as we will not need it anymore for the time being!

Now when all those fancy-pancy things are done – let’s get rolling with creating a simple Hello World Web Part using Silverlight 2.0, shall we?

Part 2 – Creating a first Web Part to host a Silverlight application

If you’ve read this far you should now be set up properly to create a Silverlight Web Part (Really, a Web part that loads the silverlight application and renders in the browser)

Step 1: Visual Studio 2008 time!

First of all, make sure you’ve got the .xap file in handy, then launch Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

Create a new Web Part project in your desired fashion – I’m using the WSS Extensions for ease:
Add a reference to the System.Web.Silverlight assembly and to the System.Web.Extensions assembly, it should look something like this:
Add the following using statements:
Note: I’ve stripped down the default using statements, as they’re overkill for this – this is what you should need

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.SilverlightControls;

Make an override on the OnInit method (We will dynamically add a ScriptManager to the current page, if there’s not one already):

protected override void OnInit(System.EventArgs e)
{
    base.OnInit(e);
    var sm = ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page);
    if(sm == null)
    {
        var scriptManager = new ScriptManager();
        scriptManager.EnablePartialRendering = true;
        Page.Form.Controls.AddAt(0,scriptManager);
    }
}
Write the following very simple code to load a Silverlight class into the Web Part, set it’s source to our .xap file and simply add it to the controls collection:

private Silverlight mySLControl;
protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
    base.CreateChildControls();
    mySLControl = new Silverlight
    {
        ID = "HelloSilverlightControl",
        Width = new Unit(367),
        Height = new Unit(150),
        Source = @"/_layouts/ZimmerLight/Hello/Hello.xap"
    };
    Controls.Add(mySLControl);
}
Build and deploy the Web Part, and cross your fingers!
(Using the WSS Extensions for Visual Studio, just rightclick the project and choose Deploy)

Step 2: Add the Web Part to a page

I’ve put my Web Part in a “Silverlight Web Parts” group – simply choose it and click add.
Voila, a fully functional Silverlight 2.0 Web Part rendered inside SharePoint – without any trouble!

Summary and Download

As you’ve seen in this article, it isn’t too hard to get up and running with Silverlight 2.0 (and .NET 3.5 of course) and get our first Silverlight 2.0 Web Part spinning in SharePoint.

You should now be able to:

Configure your environment to use Silverlight 2.0
Hook up your Silverlight Application(s) in SharePoint
Enjoy the richness of Silverlight in SharePoint!

You can download the Visual Studio project from here

Comments and Feedback appreciated

Please leave your print in the comments, feedback is always nice :-)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint, Microsoft, Silverlight, WSS, MOSS 2007

Published: Dec-10-08 | 23 Comments | 0 Links to this post

SharePoint .NET 3.5 auto-configuration – escape the manual overhead!

I have previously talked about how you manually can configure your SharePoint environment to enable .NET 3.5. My approach were to always do this manually, but it seems that there’s a sweet feature for this purpose created, automating this process.

As a tip from Jeremy Thake, I’m posting the link to a CodePlex project called “Features” which obviously have a feature that deals with configuring your web application without any manual steps like modifying xml snippets in web.config.

Even though the manual steps I’ve provided in my blogpost only takes about 1-2 minutes to perform, this approach eliminates the human facor – which often is the cause to a lot of headaches!

Thanks for the tip Jeremy, and hope everyone else will find this interesting aswell!

How to: LINQ with SharePoint - .NET 3.5 Framework with SharePoint Part 2

Author:	Tobias Zimmergren
Blog:	http://www.zimmergren.net

Introduction

In my previous article title "How to: Get up and running with .NET 3.5 in your SharePoint environment" I talked about how you can manually set up your SharePoint environment for use with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

In this article I will talk about how you can incorporade some of the technologies used in .NET 3.5 to query a SharePoint list. More precisely, I will talk about how you easily can use LINQ from the .NET 3.5 framework to get started with .NET 3.5 in SharePoint.

A more in-depth article might be posted later, but this one is simply providing simple code instructions to what a Web Part that utilizes LINQ can look like!

Prerequisites

In order to follow along with this walkthrough, you should have the following bulletpoints checked:

.NET Framework 3.5 is installed
You've configured your SharePoint environment for use with .NET 3.5
- See this article for more information and help on this issue: How to: Get up and running with .NET 3.5 in your SharePoint environment

Creating a custom Web Part which utilizes .NET 3.5 in SharePoint

The code below will give you the heads up on how to fetch the SPListItem objects from an SPList object and sort them alphabetically. You can of course use the 'where'-clause with LINQ aswell to filter out which objects (SPListItem objects) to fetch from the SPList.

Example task list to fetch the data from:

Using the following code, I've used LINQ to retreive all the list items and sort them ascending by title!

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace Zimmergren.net35.LINQWebPartSample
{
    public class SPLINQ : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
    {
        protected override void Render(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer)
        {
            base.Render(writer);
            SPList taskList = SPContext.Current.Web.Lists["Tasks"];

            // Get items, order by title alphabetically and assign to taskListItems
            var taskListItems = from SPListItem tItem in taskList.Items
                                orderby tItem.Title
                                ascending select tItem;

            foreach (SPListItem taskItem in taskListItems)
                writer.WriteLine(taskItem.Title + "<br/>\n");
        }
    }
}

The bold text in the above code block is the LINQ statement to fetch all items in the SPList and order them ascending by Title. You can of course make much more complex queries using LINQ in order to fetch other objects based on different criteria.

This will produce a simple output like this, sorting the items alphabetically:

Summary and Download

This was a very (very) basic and simple example of how you can use any .NET 3.5 technology to get started with some new cool stuff.

I utilized a basic LINQ expression in this article which of course can be heavily modified if you want to retreive other things from your list(s). Perhaps a future article will take on some more advanced LINQ expressions in conjunction with SharePoint?! :-)

Anyway, you can download the sample project from here: Zimmergren.net35.LINQWebPart.zip

Thanks for tuning in and please leave a comment

As always, there's plenty of readers but few people showing their appreciation through the comments - please leave a comment :)

Hope it helps :-)

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, SharePoint, MOSS, WSS, LINQ, .NET, Integration

Published: Sep-28-08 | 17 Comments | 0 Links to this post

How to: Get up and running with .NET 3.5 in your SharePoint environment

Since I've been a bit on the lazy side when it comes to the blog (due to multiple reasons..), I'm thinking about writing up an article-series where I'll talk about .NET 3.5 and what it has to offer when used in conjunction with SharePoint. Any input is welcome, of course :)

Introduction

In this article I will try to get you up and running with the .NET 3.5 framework in your SharePoint environment, just like I've previously described how you can get AJAX and Silverlight 2.0 up and running:

I will now let .NET 3.5 be a part of some of my upcoming SharePoint projects, and because of that I thought it could be a good thing to blog about it if there's anyone out there looking to do the same!

Prerequisites before we get started

In order to follow along, I assume the following few bulletpoints are in place:

Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework is installed on the front-end server
You already have got a Web Application on which you want to do these changes

Add support for .NET 3.5 in SharePoint (WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 alike)

Here you will find a manual step by step instruction on what web.config values to set in order for .NET 3.5 to work properly with your SharePoint installation.

Note: I've added some linebreaks in order for the text to show up properly in my blog, you may remove them if you want your web.config to be pretty ;)

Note2: All additions to any elements in the web.config file should be added at the bottom/end of each element unless excplicitly stated otherwise.

1) Add the following snippet inside the <configSections> element

<sectionGroup name="system.web.extensions"
                type="System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebExtensionsSectionGroup,
                System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">
    <sectionGroup name="scripting"
                type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingSectionGroup,
                System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">
       <section name="scriptResourceHandler"
                type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection,
                System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false"
                allowDefinition="MachineToApplication"/>
       <sectionGroup name="webServices"
                    type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingWebServicesSectionGroup,
                    System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                    PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">
        <section name="jsonSerialization"
                type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingJsonSerializationSection,
                System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false"
                allowDefinition="Everywhere" />
        <section name="profileService"
                type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingProfileServiceSection,
                System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false"
                allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
        <section name="authenticationService"
                type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection,
                System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false"
                allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
        <section name="roleService"
                type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingRoleServiceSection,
                System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false"
                allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
      </sectionGroup>
    </sectionGroup>
</sectionGroup>

2) Add the following snippet inside the <pages> element

<controls>
<add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI"
        assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
        PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
<add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls"
        assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
        PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
</controls>

3) Add the following snippet inside the <assemblies> element

<add assembly="System.Core,
    Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>
<add assembly="System.Web.Extensions,
    Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
<add assembly="System.Data.DataSetExtensions,
    Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>
<add assembly="System.Xml.Linq,
    Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

4) Add the following snippet inside the <httpHandlers> element

<add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false"
    type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,
    System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
<add verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" validate="false"
    type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,
    System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
<add verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd"
    type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler,
    System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" validate="false"/>

5) Add the following snippet inside the <httpModules> element

<add name="ScriptModule"
    type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule,
    System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
    PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

6) Add the following snippet inside the <SafeControls> element

<SafeControl Assembly="System.Web.Silverlight,
            Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
            Namespace="System.Web.UI.SilverlightControls" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />
<SafeControl Assembly="System.Web.Extensions,
            Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
            Namespace="System.Web.UI" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />

7) Add the following snippet inside the <configuration> element

    <system.web.extensions>
      <scripting>
        <webServices>
        </webServices>
      </scripting>
    </system.web.extensions>
    <system.webServer>
      <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/>
      <modules>
        <add name="ScriptModule" preCondition="integratedMode"
            type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
      </modules>
      <handlers>
        <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated" />
        <add name="ScriptHandlerFactory" verb="*"
            path="*.asmx" preCondition="integratedMode"
            type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
        <add name="ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices" verb="*"
            path="*_AppService.axd" preCondition="integratedMode"
            type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
        <add name="ScriptResource" preCondition="integratedMode"
            verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd"
            type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />
      </handlers>
    </system.webServer>
    <system.webServer>
       <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/>
       <modules>
         <remove name="ScriptModule" />
         <add name="ScriptModule" preCondition="managedHandler"
            type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
       </modules>
       <handlers>
         <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated"/>
         <remove name="ScriptHandlerFactory" />
         <remove name="ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices" />
         <remove name="ScriptResource" />
         <add name="ScriptHandlerFactory" verb="*" path="*.asmx"
            preCondition="integratedMode"
            type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
         <add name="ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices" verb="*"
            path="*_AppService.axd"
            preCondition="integratedMode"
            type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
         <add name="ScriptResource" preCondition="integratedMode"
            verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd"
            type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler,
            System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
            PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
       </handlers>
    </system.webServer>

8) You're done

When you've added the needed tags, you're all set - you can now run your .NET 3.5 applications inside SharePoint (of course, this applies to the web application where you just added these settings.

To see that your site still works, do the following:

IISRESET
Launch your site where you've made the changes!
Cross your fingers

Cool, what's next?

Well, if you've managed to get your site up and running - you can now create webparts, features, controls or whatever you'd like to create and have them published to your site.

This article describes how you do these things manually, but what if you want to do these things automatically somehow? Is that possible?
- Yes, but that's going to be covered in an upcoming blogpost

Please leave some comments

As you might know, I like to get feedback and usually answers all mails/comments when I've got the time. Please leave any feedback, suggestions or opinions in the comments below or mail me/use the MSN gadget.

Thanks for tuning in, now I'm feeling the blog-flow again - cheers

Technorati-tags: MOSS 2007, SharePoint, WSS 3.0, Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, LINQ, Microsoft

Published: Sep-22-08 | 28 Comments | 0 Links to this post