In one of my previous posts I showed how to retrieve data from listdata.svc with jQuery $.getJSON method. Getting data is very simple, listdata.svc provides a powerful restful interface with filtering, expanding and other features. Read the best and short introduction to listdata.svc by Suneet Sharma or a more detailed and technical article about filters, functions and operators by Mike Flasko at Microsoft with short examples here. Now back to listdata.svc in the SharePoint environment. Corey Roth provides a good images and sample results. For REST the “http verbs” are very important: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.. SharePoint RESTful interface defines these verbs like that:

We can use PublishingPageContent Property to write content to a page:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
 <Module Name="Pages" Url="$Resources:cmscore,List\_Pages\_UrlName;" >
 <File Path="Pages\\Help.aspx" Url="Help.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary">
 <Property Name="Title" Value="Contoso Help Page" />
 <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/\_catalogs/masterpage/ContosoPageLayout.aspx, Text page" />
 <Property Name="ContentType" Value="$Resources:cmscore,contenttype\_welcomepage\_name;" />
 <Property Name="PublishingPageContent" Value="hello world"/>
 </File>
 </Module>
</Elements>

Using asp:UpdatePanel isn’t so easy with jQuery(document).ready() or jQuery(window).load(). The jQuery selectors can’t find elements which are not shown in the beginning. All other elements which are loaded dynamically are difficult to catch. I found a solution in forums.asp.net. A user called germanz creates an jQuery event listener AjaxReady, he uses the ASP.NET built-in PageRequestManager. If there only few usages of it it can be invoked directly from a PageRequestManager instance:

As an alternative to asp:Calendar we can use the fancy jQuery UI Datepicker:

$(document).ready(function () {
	$.datepicker.setDefaults($.datepicker.regional\["sv"\]);
	$("#").datepicker({
		changeMonth: true,
		changeYear: true,
		yearRange: "-120:+0" 
	});
});
```I found this a much simple and best solution for an [birthdate input](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/339956/whats-the-best-ui-for-entering-date-of-birth). We can set [international options](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1865091/jquery-datepicker-language-problem), [year range](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/269545/jquery-datepicker-years-shown), [year](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3164898/jquery-ui-datepicker-next-and-previous-year) and [month navigation](http://jqueryui.com/demos/datepicker/dropdown-month-year.html). Other options I have tried are asp:Calendar, ajaxtoolkit:CalendarExtender and DateJs. jQuery UI is the most simple much more than datepicker and works smoothily with SharePoint.

To integrate ASP.NET Ajax Toolkit is not the most straight forward task in SharePoint. If you want to take the risk, “Inspired by Technology” provides the best guide so far.

Just add this to the url in the browser address bar:

?SortField=Modified&SortDir=Asc

To reduce postbacks and database calls, a copy of the current object(s) can be pushed down to the client in JSON format. Say a webpart renders information about a person, another webpart shows related information which is retrieved dynamically (like web services). Instead of getting the current person from the database in the second webpart again, we can reuse the same person object from the first webpart. To do so we must provide a DataContract for the Person class:

PeopleEditor is a nice webcontrol for picking people. To add it to your webpart or page is easy: But there is more we can do with pickers in Sharepoin. We can define our own pickers. Jeremy Luerkens gives one such example and a code sample (!). Another example can be found in Sharepoint as a Development Platform (p. 661), even though it misses the important class BookQueryControl. Just to start I made a book picker (I simplified and changed the idea provided in the book). Here is the working result, for simplicity the whole code is in one file:

A tip for all who want to administer AD with powershell: Idera Powershell scripts. Just sign up and get the free scripts for AD, SQL, Exchange and Sharepoint. I personally prefer to user modules, so I change the file extension from ps1 to psm1 and then I can use import functions as modules. Here is a simple example for creating for domain users:

import-module .\New-IADUser1.psm1
function Add-User($name) {
    New-IADUser -Name $name `
         -sAMAccountname $name `
         -ParentContainer 'CN=Users, DC=contoso, DC=com' `
         -Password 'SvenskaAkademien1786' `
         -EnableAccount -PasswordNeverExpires
}
Add-User "user01"
Add-User "user02"
Add-User "user03"
Add-User "user04"

update 2012-03-15: nice script from Ryan

Ryan Dennis has created a very handy script for creating random users. In PowerShell v3.0 there is a cmdlet for creating users: New-ADUser. So the function above can be rewritten like that:

There is a very handy JSON lib for serializing javascript objects. It is hosted on github under douglas crockford. Download json2.js and serialize with JSON.stringify function: EDIT: There is actually this function in core javascript. It exists since javascript 1.7 and ecmascript 5. So you don’t have to add anything to get this functionality:

var t = { name: "dev", city: "new york" };
JSON.stringify(t);
```There are actually built-in goodies for serializing javascript objects in [ASP.NET](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb310857.aspx): Sys.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer.serialize

var t = { name: “dev”, city: “new york” }; Sys.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer.serialize(t);