One of these days I needed to provide rich sharepoint group descriptions, with html, and even a link.
Setting the description directly on the SPGroup object had the HTML being escaped and displayed on the group list page, which was not the wanted result.
So, how to get the rich description, like on OOTB sharepoint groups?
Continue reading “Sharepoint group description – add link or other HTML” »
Lately I’ve been playing with the Windows 8 developer tools, being focused on the HTML5 + Javascript version.
Although the paradigm changes a bit (being a pure OOP developer) I must say I’m well impressed with it.
The labs are a great place to start, and will provide a general knowledge of the main features of the windows store apps.
One of these features is the semantic zoom. While I was trying to use it on a experience project of my own, I got the nice exception “Javascript runtime Error: Object doesn’t support property or method ‘itemFromDescription'” when zooming out.
When zooming out, the position of each item will be retrieved. The action happens on the ui.js file:
if (typeof key === "string" && this._dataSource.itemFromKey) {
itemPromise = this._dataSource.itemFromKey(key, (this._isZoomedOut ? {
groupMemberKey: item.key,
groupMemberIndex: item.index
} : null));
} else {
var description = (this._isZoomedOut ? item.groupDescription : item.firstItemDescription);
if (WinJS.validation) {
if (description === undefined) {
throw new WinJS.ErrorFromName("WinJS.UI.ListView.InvalidItem", strings.listViewInvalidItem);
}
}
itemPromise = this._dataSource.itemFromDescription(description);
}
If you look closely, you’ll see that if the type of the key used for the group is not a string, the fallback will be the “item.groupDescription” (zoomed out) which obviously can be undefined (depending on the group object structure).
The workaround is to convert the group key to string:
var groupedItems = list.createGrouped(
function groupKeySelector(item) {
return item.departmentId.toString();
},
....
);
And that’s it. It doesn’t solve the problem, but it goes around it.
Cheers
One of these days I had the need to create and extensible enum. Extensible in a way that allows people to add items to it, but outside the assembly where the enum is declared.
The short answer to this is that enums are not extensible 
It become clear that I would need to find a workaround. Since we had some legacy code already working, it was necessary to keep the normal usage of the enum (i.e. switch – case).
The following solution may not be the best one, but it’s working good, allowing the extension of the enum and still preserve their traditional usage on the switch-case blocks.
Note: the following code is used to “replace” enums deriving from INT. Deriving from other datatype involves changing the operators.
Sometimes, when applying branding to Sharepoint sites, it’s necessary to hide the quicklaunch bar.
Some people do that by overriding the css styles, and basically making it invisible. This is a good approach for when, on certain pages, we need to display the quicklaunch, while on the others we need to hide it.
Please note that the quicklaunch it’s always there, with this approach. It’s simply not visible.
For a situation where we’ll never want to display the quicklaunch, we can simply deactivate it, with a feature.
Let’s say we create a feature called “HideQuickLaunch”, scoped for a site (Web). On the event receiver we can override the following methods:
//disable quicklaunch on feature activation
public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
using (SPWeb currentWeb = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent)
{
currentWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
currentWeb.QuickLaunchEnabled = false;
currentWeb.Update();
currentWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
}
}
//enable quicklaunch on feature deactivation
public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
using (SPWeb currentWeb = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent)
{
currentWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
currentWeb.QuickLaunchEnabled = false;
currentWeb.Update();
currentWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
}
}
Hope it helps 
One of these days I had the need to obtain a random datetime inside a specified range, on SQL Server 2008.
After a few minutes I came up with this script:
DECLARE @DateFrom DATETime = '2012-01-01' DECLARE @DateTo DATeTime = '2012-06-30' DECLARE @DaysRandom Int= 0 DECLARE @MillisRandom Int=0 --get random number of days select @DaysRandom= DATEDIFF(day,@DateFrom,@DateTo) SELECT @DaysRandom = ROUND(((@DaysRandom -1) * RAND()), 0) --get random millis SELECT @MillisRandom = ROUND(((99999999) * RAND()), 0) SELECT @DateTo = DATEADD(day, @DaysRandom, @DateTo) SELECT @DateTo = DATEADD(MILLISECOND, @MillisRandom, @DateTo) SELECT @DateTo
Hope it’s useful.
Sometimes we need to reference the MySiteHost, to create a link or for any other reason.
To avoid hard-coding it or saving it on a resource file (which would need redeployment to change), we can use the UserProfileManager and retrieve it dynamically:
public static string GetMySiteHostUrl()
{
SPServiceContext context = SPServiceContext.GetContext(SPContext.Current.Web.Site);
UserProfileManager upm = new UserProfileManager(context);
return upm.MySiteHostUrl;
}
Note: It’s necessary to reference the Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles Asssembly.
Cheers.
Hello,
One of these days I had to do some bugfixing on a Sharepoint project which used the Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq.DataContext class.
While trying to access a SPList belonging to Site Collection another Site Collection I always had an “Invalid Url Exception” right from the contructor, and other times I had exceptions when accessing the objects.
var context = new DataContext(otherSiteColUrl);
The problem is that inside, the constructor, the URL is only taken into account if we have no HttpContext. If we do have one, the context URL (which means, the current site url) the custom url passed on the constructor is ignored.
Continue reading “[Sharepoint] – DataContext with custom URL” »
A few days ago I needed to build a CAML query that return all the items which have changed since the last execution. I have a Yes/No (boolean) field called “HasChanged” that when the item is changed turns to “True”.
The query would be something like this:
<query>
<where>
<eq>
<fieldref Name="HasChanged"></fieldref>
<value Type="Boolean">true</value>
</eq>
</where>
</query>
The truth is that this query will not work as you might think. For Sharepoint, Yes/No fields are represented by 1 and 0. As so, the query has to be like:
Continue reading “[TIP – Sharepoint] – CAML Query – Filtering Boolean fields” »
Sometimes it’s necessary to embed a resource file in the assembly in order to make the distribution easier, or to protect the resource file.
In order to set the resource as embedded, it’s necessary to change the “Build Action” to Embedded Resource:
Whenever it’s needed to perform some heavy/slow task on a mobile application, it’s a good practice to perform that specific operation on the background, using a thread.
Continue reading “Updating the UI from a background thread on Android” »