Transcript Microsoft Patterns and Practices SharePoint Guidance

Microsoft Patterns and Practices
SharePoint Guidance
Robert L. Bogue
MS MVP, MCSE, MCSA: Security
[email protected]
Where are we today?
Where are we today (for real)?
• There are relatively few SharePoint Developers
today
• We have free training that MS provides at
http://mssharepointdeveloper.com
– Hands on labs
– Presentations
– Demos (code)
• … but we don’t have best practices
Who are the Patterns and Practices
Group at Microsoft?
The Scenario – Training Management
• Corporate Training is a big deal.
– It needs tracked for personnel reasons
– Budgeted for accounting reasons
How do we Deploy Solutions?
• SharePoint Solution (WSP)
• WSPs are to SharePoint like MSIs are to
Windows
• WSPs deploy correctly across the farm
• WSPs deliver assemblies, pages, and features
When should I create a Site Definition?
• When you need to distinguish a site for future
changes
• When you start so you can differentiate
between your sites and OOB sites
• See: How to Use Site Definitions in SharePoint
How should I make a Site Definition?
• Make it an empty shell
• Create all of the functionality for the Site
Definition as features
• Use Dependencies to have the features
activated when the site is created
• See: SharePoint 2007 Web Content
Management Development
How do I make changes to a Site
Definition?
• Design additional Features
• Feature staple the feature to the site
definition
What is Stapling?
• Allows you to specify a feature that must be
activated when a site is created with a
definition – without changing the definition
• What it doesn’t do … activate a feature on
existing sites so…
• Write a feature receiver to activate on the
existing sites.
When to use Site Templates?
• When you want to allow users to make
changes to the predefined content
• User interface can create them (no
development tools required)
• Can be globally deployed via STSADM
command
Lists Definition vs. Content Types
• List Definition
– Specify fields
– Specify forms
– Specify views
• Content Types
– Specify fields
– Specify forms
What do we do about branding?
• Themes
– Use Include
• Master Pages
– For core controls that must be on every page
• Web Part Page
– Layout of controls (web part zones)
• Page Layouts (MOSS Only)
– How the pages lay out content
Where do you store configuration?
• Web.Config?
– How do you manage across servers? SharePoint
API
– What do you do when the SharePoint Web.Config
modification API is flaky?
• SPPropertyBag is on ALL SPPersistedObjects
(SPFarm, SPWeb, etc.)
Creating Content Types
• Every Content type gets a unique ID
• The Unique ID has GUIDs in it…
• Creating Content Types from the UI causes
unique GUID
• Creating from the API creates new GUIDs
Modifying Content Types
• The product team says… don’t overlay the file,
use code to programmatically change
• I say… update your Content Type XML and use
a feature receiver to propagate
Managing Process: Event Receiver vs.
Workflow
SPList vs. Database Table
• SPList
– User controllable fields
– User controllable views
– Export to Excel
– Alerts
• Database
– High performance
– Large scalability
Custom ASPX pages
• Need to Inherit from a class (think ASP.NET
1.1)
• Need to have 5 part name (class + 4 part
assembly) for the class to inherit
RenderContents vs.
CreateChildControls
• Render/RenderContents = BAD
– ASP approach
– No events
– No multi-device support
• CreateChildControls
– ASP.NET Approach
– PostBack, ViewState, etc.
– Multi-device support
How do I manage Dev-Test-Prod?
• Code moves from DEV to TEST to PROD
• Content moves from PROD to TEST (and rarely
to DEV)
• See: Managing the Code when Customizing
SharePoint
Updating Assemblies
• The assemblies are often loaded by four part
name…
– Name
– Version
– Culture
– Public Key Token
• The four part name is in the content DB
(which you can’t modify directly)
Unit Testing
• It’s hard
• Objects are sealed and have internal
constructors
• TypeMock can be used…
• You can isolate your SharePoint calls
Continuous Integration
• How do you setup a build server? (Build
requires SharePoint installed)
• How do you dynamically create SharePoint
Solutions Packages
What if I want more?
• Go to http://www.codeplex.com/spg
Thank You
ROBERT L. BOGUE
[email protected]