December 8, 2014

Bypass all custom jslink

Client Side Rendering (CSR) and jslink are great for customizing lists and forms in SharePoint. In my current project we use it a lot of it. A disadvantage of that path, although, is that it might occur javascript errors, during the development phase, but also in production. We do, of course, our best to leverage the best jslink code, but unfortunately we have to live with the fact that errors can occur, especially when we use it for NewForm, EditForm, DisplayForm and View (in list and grid). If an error occurs, it won’t stop the rest of javascript (it is wrapped in try and catch by SharePoint), but the fields will still not function as intended. It can also be some “corrupt” or old data in the field value that will “break” the jslink code. I would like to suggest one little fix, an idea I’ve come up to in my jslink-heavy project:

December 5, 2014

Client Side Rendering with Async dependencies

Yesterday I asked a question on SharePoint StackExchange:

Client Side Rendering with Async dependencies

I also asked Elio Struyf on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eliostruyf/status/540473976255152128 Good idea, Elio Struyf! Now I want to try it out.

Preparations

In this case I’ll be using my example from my blog post yesterday: Drag and Drop Image using Client Side Rendering I have created a new list and added a lookup field to my previous list. What I get is a Title of the lookup item, but not my custom field called DragAndDrop. In my test I will try to load the DragAndDrop Image using an ajax call and rendering it after Client Side Rendering is done with my item. To be complete, I want to show some screenshots for my lookup field: It will result in this OOTB rendering:

December 4, 2014

Drag and Drop Image using Client Side Rendering

I continue my series about Client Side Rendering (CSR) and jsgrid. Today I want to try a custom field where users can drag and drop images. The inspiration comes from:

AutoUpload field written by Anton Vishnyakov and
Base64 Drag and drop written by oroboto

What I want to achieve is:

A custom field that is rendered with jslink
Users can drag and drop small pictures (thumbnails) into the field
A base64 image representation is saved as the field value
Optionally implement pasting images using Clipboard API

Step 1 Create a field with a custom jslink

Create a field of type Note. I am using the PnP Core Extensions to make it quickier: ’ My jslink file is very simple to begin with: [code language=“javascript”] (function () { ‘use strict’; function view(ctx, field) { return “hello”; } var overrideContext = {}; overrideContext.Templates = overrideContext.Templates || {}; overrideContext.Templates.Fields = { ‘DragAndDropImage’: { ‘View’: view, ‘DisplayForm’: view //‘EditForm’: verySimpleNewAndEdit, //‘NewForm’: verySimpleNewAndEdit } }; SPClientTemplates.TemplateManager.RegisterTemplateOverrides(overrideContext); })(); [/code] This will result in the following display form. Just outputting “hello” indicates that my field is jslink are registered correctly:

November 28, 2014

Disabling a column in Quick Edit

In my project I have a column called Request Status. This column is not shown in any forms, meaning users should not edit, because it is controlled through the app. Nevertheless it is editable in the Quick Edit. Yesterday I wrote about jsgrid in my blog. Now comes more. Today I’ll share a little practical solution how one can disable editing a field in Quick Edit. The field is edited in jsgrid, but to disable it, we only have set the property called AllowGridEditing to false on our column (not even touching the heavy jsgrid api). We can do in the OnPreRender event in our Client Side Rendering (CSR) registration. Having the context object we have access to the Fields (ContextInfo.ListSchema.Field): [code language=“javascript” highlight=“6,9”] (function () { var overrideContext = {}; overrideContext.Templates = overrideContext.Templates || {}; overrideContext.Templates.OnPreRender = function(ctx) { var statusField = ctx.ListSchema.Field.filter(function(f) { return f.Name === ‘Request_x0020_Status’; }); if (statusField) { statusField[0].AllowGridEditing = false; } } SPClientTemplates.TemplateManager.RegisterTemplateOverrides(overrideContext); })(); [/code] Another way is to implement the display form: [code language=“javascript”] (function () { var view = function (ctx, field) { if (ctx.inGridMode) { field.AllowGridEditing = false; } return window.RenderFieldValueDefault(ctx); }; var overrideContext = {}; overrideContext.Templates = overrideContext.Templates || {}; overrideContext.Templates.Fields = { ‘Request_x0020_Status’: { ‘View’: view } }; SPClientTemplates.TemplateManager.RegisterTemplateOverrides(overrideContext); })(); [/code]

November 27, 2014

JSGrid Basics

JSGrid is the javascript framework in SharePoint used in Quick Edit View (previously Datasheet View). There are a few very good blog posts on this topic (See below in “Sources”). Nevertheless the fact is that jsgrid and working with quick edit from a developer’s perspective is a huge undiscovered area. Articles I have seen are intended for advanced developers. The goal with my post today is to outline the very basics of working with JSGrid. When you know the basics you will be more comfortable to discover and try out more. The example I want to show is a jsgrid code for a “VerySimpleColumn”. The source code can be found on gist.github.com To focus on jsgrid, I assume you have knowledge and some experience of working with jslink, which is related to jsgrid.

November 26, 2014

Announcing web based SQL Max Memory calculator

Today I want to announce a tiny web application for calculating max memory in the SQL Server to improve the overall performance in you SharePoint environment: SQL Max Memory Calculator. One of the important actions to improve the performance in SharePoint is fine tuning of the SQL Databases. Regarding the databases one of the crucial settings is the Max Memory Setting. You can read more about database optimizations for SharePoint in a whitepaper written by SharePoint MVP Vlad Catrinescu. The document is available on the SharePoint Community Web Site:

September 19, 2014

Export any web part from a SharePoint page

The blog post below describes the technical details about how Web Parts can be exported using a hidden tool in OOB SharePoint, though this requires manual assembling of a special url. If you are just interested in a solution for an easy Web Part Export function, just proceed directly to my new blog post where you can download my tool that you can add to your web browser.

Web Part Exporter

September 11, 2014

Export SharePoint List Data To Xml through PowerShell

Today my colleague Johannes Milling wrote an awesome post: Export SharePoint List Data To XML Directly from the GUI He uses the old and forgotten RPC-based web service owssvr.dll (that has existed since SharePoint 2003). This url pattern is used to get the xml-formatted list data for a specific ListView: [source] http://<site_url>/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List=&View=&Query=*&XMLDATA=TRUE [/source] To automate this I have written a PowerShell function. All the details are in the comments: [source language=“PowerShell”] function Export-OIPSPListDataAsXml { <# .Synopsis Exports list items as xml .DESCRIPTION This function uses a built-in hidden service owssvr.dll in SharePoint .PARAMETER Web SPWeb or a url for the SPWeb object where the list resides .PARAMETER ListName List Name (List Title) .PARAMETER ViewName Name of the List View to export the data .EXAMPLE Export-OIPSPListView -Web http://myawesomesite -ListName “Teddy Bears” -ViewName “All Items” .EXAMPLE Export-OIPSPListView -Web $webInstance -ListName “Top Links” -ViewName “All Items” .Notes Name: Export-OIPSPListDataAsXml Author: Anatoly Mironov Last Edit: 2014-09-11 Keywords: SPList, SPWeb, SPListView, Xml .Link http://chuvash.eu #> [CmdLetBinding()] param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPWebPipeBind]$Web, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$ListName, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$ViewName) $spWeb = $Web.Read() $list = $spWeb.Lists[$ListName] if (!$list) { throw “List $ListName on web $($spWeb.Url) could not be found” } $view = $list.Views[$ViewName] if (!$view) { throw “View $ViewName on web $ListName could not be found” } $url = “{0}/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={1}&View={2}&Query=*&XMLDATA=TRUE” ` -f $spWeb.Url, $list.ID, $view.ID $wc = New-Object Net.WebClient $wc.UseDefaultCredentials = $true $wc.DownloadString($url) } [/source]

September 2, 2014

Improving the web performance of an intranet

[caption id=“attachment_3437” align=“alignnone” width=“480”] All the “small” app parts, web parts, delegate controls, user controls, and other “packages” that “must” be delivered to the users on every page load of the Start Page of your Intranet.[/caption] Recently we made an investment to improve the performance of our intranet. We made many changes in different layers: SQL, Network, Browser upgrade and code. Here I want to tell about what code changes we did to improve the web browser performance. Please leave feedback if you find it useful. You can also share your suggestions. We measured the performance before our code changes and after them. We had amazing results. Unfortunately I can not share any numbers, but we improved the Time to First Byte, time to load event firing in the browser, memory consumption in the clients and, perhaps, the most important, we improved the perceived performance of the Intranet, the way how users experience the speed and UI responsiveness. To do this I got many ideas of my project colleagues and branch colleagues. Here is the list of changes we’ve implemented:

September 1, 2014

Do not mess with the hive

In our Intranet we got this nasty double encoding error that was introduced in SharePoint April 2014 CU. In July 2014 CU the problem is still there. I often hear the suggestions to update files directly in the hive (the root folder for SharePoint: C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\) In that blog post it is described what the problem is and what files are affected and what code must be altered in order to get it to work (which I like). But it is also suggested to update the Search.ClientControls.js directly on the server (which I don’t like). So my advise is: