Creating Connectable Web Parts using SharePoint 2010 Visual Web Part.

In SharePoint 2010 we can create two type of web parts.

Here we are going to use Visual Web Part template to create Connectable Web parts. In  Asp.NET the Web Parts are communicated via interfaces  this allows Web Parts to exchange information with each other at run time.  This Interfaces will define the message structure which is passed between two connectable Web Parts.

Here are the steps we need to do to create a Connectable web parts .

1. Define the Interface that will specify the data we wanted pass or exchange from one web part to another web part.
2. Create Provider Web Part.
3. Consumer Web Part.

First Fire of VS.NET 2010 and  create Empty SharePoint project.  

Now Visual studio  provides you to select Deployment options.  Here we are going with  Farm based solution. because Visual Web part can not be deployed in  Sandboxed solution .

If you select Sandboxed solution and deploy to SharePoint you get the following error.

Now we need to add the Interface to our project . Here I am calling it  ICommunicationChannel.

public interface ICommunicationChannel
   {
       int GetInvoiceId { get; }
   }

Now we need to Add both Provider & Consumer Visual  Web Parts .

In provider web part UI just add  Dropdown list box.

   Now add Consumer web part UI just  add GridView control.

    Now open of the Provider Web part and Add our Interface to Implement as shown here.

Now  open of the Consumer web part  and add method to receive Provider Web Part message.

I am using  LINQ to SQL to connect my Data Source. Invoice and Invoice Line are tables from my Database.

Now we need to populate the drop down List box with Invoice ID’s from our Database table called Invoice Line.

In consumer web part we need to Query the Invoice Details information for the Invoice ID passed by Provider web part . [which is selected in Provider web part drop down list].

Now build the project correct it if any compiler errors and then  deploy to SharePoint. Now go to the SharePoint site where you wanted add this web parts and test.

Click Edit -> Insert and select Web Part button from the Ribbon menu now select Custom from Categories ->select Provider web part->  click add button this will adds provider web part to the Page. follow the same steps to add Consumer Web Part as well .

Once Both Provider and Consumer web parts are added to the Page now we need to establish the connection between these two web parts.  To do click Edit Web Part on Provider web Part you will see the connections and select Consumer web Part as shown below.  

   Here is the result of Connectable Web Parts.

Nandri(Thanks)

SreenivasaRagavan.

Using Microsoft OData Protocol (formerly Known as ADO.NET Services) to expose our Data.

OData – Open Data Protocol is developed by Microsoft to be an open standard for exposing the data across Internet. This is OData protocol is based on REST and JOSN.

Where OData  protocol is used?

1. SharePoint 2010 ( ListData.Svc)
2. Windows Azure
3. The Project code name Dallas

In Microsoft.NET  we can expose database through OData Protocol using WCF Data Service (FKA : ADO.NET Data Services).

First Create Empty ASP.NET Web Application project.

Add WCF Data Service Template to the newly created ASP.NET Web Application.

Now we need to Create our Data model which we are going to expose via OData. Here we can use LINQ to SQL or EF ( Entity Framework).

Here I am going to sue Entity Framework.

We are going to generate our model from existing Database.

    Provide the DB connection string Information.

Select the Tables you want to add to our Model.

Set Entity permission. Here I am setting all entity have Read access.

   Now hit F5 before that set start or up page as MyAlbum.svc.

Using REST API format we can access or query the Data . for example to get all customers Data we cause use the following REST URI

http://localhost:9570/MyAlbum.svc/Customers 

Nandri(Thanks)

Sreenivasaragavan.

Calling WCF Service (Hosted in SharePoint 2010) From Silverlight client .

In My previous blog post  I showed how to host custom WCF service inside SharePoint 2010. In this blog post we are going to see how to consume the same service from SilverLight client. here is the link which talks about how to host custom WCF Service in SharePoint 2010 http://mstecharchitect.blogspot.com/2010/03/hosting-wcf-service-inside-sharepoint.html.

Here are steps we are going to follow.

1. First Create a new SilverLight Project.
2. Add WCF Service Reference.
3. Call the WCF Service.

Step 1:

First Fire up VS.NET 2010 and Create SilverLight Application project.

Step 2:

Now add WCF Service Reference to newly created SilverLight project.

Step 3:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;

namespace SilverlightApplicationCallingWCFsvc
{
    public partial class MainPage :UserControl
    {
        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            SharePointWCFServiceReference.CustomServiceClient svc = new SharePointWCFServiceReference.CustomServiceClient();
            svc.GetTimeCompleted += new EventHandler<SharePointWCFServiceReference.GetTimeCompletedEventArgs>(svc_GetTimeCompleted); svc.GetTimeAsync(); } void svc_GetTimeCompleted(object sender, SharePointWCFServiceReference.GetTimeCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            txtfrommoss.Text = e.Result.ToString ();
        }
    }
}

In the above code snippet we are creating  the instance of WCF Serviceclient class and Invoking  the WCF Method. In Silverlight Application the service calls are made as Asynchronous calls. To call GetTime Method  in asynchronous we need to add event Handler for the GetTime Mehtod.

Now Hit F5 and test the app.

Nandri(Thanks)

Sreenivasaragavan

Hosting WCF Service Inside SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010  Out of the box all the Lists are exposed as WCF Restful Service using OData Protocol. Here is path or URL to access SharePoint Lists WCF Restful Services .   http://ServerName/_vti_bin/ListData.svc. The following screenshot shows the collections of List from my SharePoint site.

In this blog post  we are going to see how to host Custom WCF service Inside SharePoint 2010 and we will consume the same service from Silverlight client . Up front we know that we are going to call this WCF service from Silverlight so i am going to host this service in basicHttpBinding.

First  create a empty SharePoint project.

Now we need to provide the site where you wanted to host this WCF service and how we are going to deploy it either SandBox or Server Farm.  Here  i am going to choose Farm solution.

Once the project is successfully created. Now we need to Add  SharePoint ISAPI Mapping folder. To do this right clicking the project and choose the SharePoint Mapped Folder as shown below.

Adding /Mapping SharePoint  ISAPI Folder.

Now add C# Interface file and Class File to define the WCF Service Contract and Service implementation.  and also we need to add .svc and web.config file to host the service.

Simple WCF Service Contract:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace WCFSVCINSHAREPOINT
{
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface ICustomService
    {
        [OperationContract]
        string GetTime();
     }
}

Service Implementation 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.ServiceModel.Activation;

namespace WCFSVCINSHAREPOINT
{
    [ServiceBehavior]
    [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]
    public class CustomService : ICustomService
    { 
        public string GetTime()
        {
            return DateTime.Now.ToString();
        }
 
    }
}

.SVC file

You can use .NET Reflector to get the following ServiceHost attributes PublicKeyToken , Assembly Type name, Version. But i  used the   Strong name  (SN.EXE ) Utility to get all the above attributes . Here is the sample how to use SN.EXE

Web.Config file

Now Fire up the IE and Browse the WCF Service. [Note: Make sure that your SharePoint Site has Anonymous access as  Shown below.]

Next Blog post we will see how to call this Service from Silverlight Client.

Nandri(Thanks)

SreenivasaRagavan

Building a Windows 7 Phone Weather Application Using SilverLight

This WP7 application takes Zip code as a input from user and calls the Web Service (.ASMX) using HTTP-GET. In this CTP SDK bits we can not add Service Reference to the  project so here we are going to use WebClient class to invoke the Web Service and get the Response as XML string  then using LINQ TO XML we are going to parse the XML . Here is the look and feel of the WP7 Weather application  once we finish building this.

To get weather information by Zip code i am using the following  XML Web Service.

http://www.webservicex.net/WeatherForecast.asmx its free.

Steps to Create this application.

1. Create New Windows Phone 7 application project
2. Build UI using XAML code.
3. Get Input from user and call the .ASMX Web service (HTTP-GET)
4. Get the Response and Parse it and create UDT ( User Defined Type which stores XML Data).
5. Bind UDT to List BOX.

First Create New Windows Phone 7 application .

Here is the XAML code for the above Weather Apps GUI.

 

Here i am using InputScope property of Text Box to show only numeric keyboard when user enter Zip code in Textbox. Here i am setting Inputsopename NameValue to PostalCode.

Create the UDT ( User Defined Type) class with the following properties to store XML Weather Data as a .NET Type. 

In Windows Phone 7 application project  right now we can not add Service Reference so we are going to use WebClient class to invoke the web service. This is Siliverlight application so we need to invoke the Web Service method as Asynchronous call .

Once we get the response from Weather WebSerice we are going to use LINQ TO XML to parse the XML data and create the WeatherData UDT type. [ NOTE :We need to add System.Linq.Xml Assembly as reference to our project to parse XML using LINQ]. Once we parse the XML we are setting result to Listbox Itemsource property.

Nandri(Thanks)

SreenivasaRagavan

Windows Azure – BLOB Storage

What is BLOB ? –

Binary Large OBjects.

Windows Azure basically provides 4 type of storages

1) BLOB

2) Tables

3) Queues

4) Drive ( This is new) – NTFS drive.

In this Blog post i am going to use BLOB storage to store Binary Objects like  Images , Videos , etc..

Blobs can be used to store data that is unstructured. Windows Azure account holder  can create one or more containers to store related collections of blobs. Containers can be setup as either private or public. If a container is setup as public than any internet user will be able to read the blobs contained within it using the proper URL. If a container is marked as private than the secret key that comes with a Windows Azure storage account will be needed to access the blobs within the container. Additionally, if a single Blob is very large then Windows Azure provides tools to break up these large blobs into blocks so that they may be transferred to Windows Azure Blob storage more efficiently.

  

Container Rules

1. Container name must be a valid Domain Name System (DNS) name, conforming to the following naming rules.
2. Must start with a letter or number, and can contain only letters, numbers, and the period (.) and dash(-) characters.
3. All letters must be lowercase.
4. Must be from 3 to 63 characters long.
5. A name cannot contain a dash next to a period.

The following screenshot shows the Methods of my Windows Azure Service project .Now we are going to create these methods and we will be using in ASP.NET Web UI to Upload  the BLOB into Azure Storage. [Note: Here i am using my local Development Fabric ]

Here is the ASP.NET Web UI for this application.

 

First Run VS.NET 2010 as an Administrator  and then create Cloud service project .

Now add ASP.NET Web Role to it. Open of Default.aspx Code behind file and  Create  CloudBlobClient private variable we will be using more often this.

InitBlobAccess:

This method Create a Local windows Azure Blob storage.

CreateContainer:

This method will create a container and set the access permission as public . [By default Windows Azure Blob storage permission is private. ]

DeleteContainer:

This method delete the container by given name.

ListBlobContainers:

This method  returns all publicly accessible[ permission] containers.

ListBlob:

This method returns a List of all available Blobs for selected (given) container in Dropdown List.

Upload File:

This method will enumerate all the uploaded file and load the content into Selected container and create the Blob in Windows Azure Blog Storage. 

Now wire up the above methods with ASP.NET WEB UI and upload the BLOB content and test it.

For more on Blob please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/25/windows-azure-storage-at-pdc-2009.aspx

Nandri(Thanks)

SreenivasaRagavan.