Visual Studio 2010 Code Snippets

Code snippets are a great way to speed up development time. In this post I'll go through a simple way to create your own code snippets. I'll be creating a snippet to log to the 14\LOGS files.

Open a Visual Studio project and add a new xml file. Make sure to save it with a .snippet extension.

Right click in the new xml file,  select Insert Snippet and double click on snippet. The xml below will be inserted for you.

Fill in the values you would like for these tag. The most important is the shortcut - its what will start intellisence for you.
    <Title>SharePoint Logging</Title>
    <Author>Me</Author>
    <Shortcut>SPLog</Shortcut>
    <Description></Description>

Choose what type of snippet you want either SurroundsWith or Expansion, I'm using expansion here.
    <SnippetTypes>
      <SnippetType>SurroundsWith</SnippetType>
      <SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
    </SnippetTypes>

Now enter what you would like to replace in instances of the snippet. Here the component name to be logged changes. If there are more replacements needed, add more Literal tags.
    <Declarations>
      <Literal>
        <ID>Component</ID>
        <Default>CustomComponent</Default>
      </Literal>
    </Declarations>

Change the code language to CSharp.
    <Code Language="CSharp">

Enter the code to be inserted in CDATA[ YOUR CODE GOES HERE  ]
  <![CDATA[
  SPDiagnosticsService.Local.WriteTrace(0,
                    new SPDiagnosticsCategory("$Component$", TraceSeverity.Unexpected, EventSeverity.Error), TraceSeverity.Unexpected, ex.Message, ex.StackTrace);
  ]]>


Save the snippet to the default location "C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets" and your ready to try your new snippet.

Completed snippet file

<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
  <Header>
    <Title>SharePoint Logging</Title>
    <Author>Me</Author>
    <Shortcut>SPLog</Shortcut>
    <Description></Description>
    <SnippetTypes>

      <SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
    </SnippetTypes>
  </Header>
  <Snippet>
    <Declarations>
      <Literal>
        <ID>Component</ID>
        <Default>CustomComponent</Default>
      </Literal>
    </Declarations>
    <Code Language="CSharp">
      <![CDATA[
  SPDiagnosticsService.Local.WriteTrace(0,
      new SPDiagnosticsCategory("$Component$", TraceSeverity.Unexpected, EventSeverity.Error), TraceSeverity.Unexpected, ex.Message, ex.StackTrace);
  ]]>
    </Code>
  </Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>

Logging in Sharepoint 2010

Logging in SharePoint 2010 is a pretty straight forward affair. The code block below will write to 14\LOGS 

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;

                SPDiagnosticsService.Local.WriteTrace(0,
                    new SPDiagnosticsCategory("CustomComponent", TraceSeverity.Unexpected, EventSeverity.Error), TraceSeverity.Unexpected, ex.Message, ex.StackTrace);

If you want to create your own custom logging component, the following two blogs will assist you.

http://blog.mastykarz.nl/logging-uls-sharepoint-2010/
http://www.sharepointproconnections.com/article/sharepoint-development/SharePoint-Logging-What-s-New-in-SharePoint-2010.aspx

ASP.NET Align Labels with Text

The simple task of aligning labels and text can become not so easy when you move away from using tables. In this example I'm wrapping the lables and textboxes in div and using a bit of CSS to produce the result below. The important bits are highlighted.

div{
      clear:left; 
      margin: 5px 0 0; padding: 1px 3px;
      width: 400px;
}
.input{
      display:block; float: left;  
      margin: 0 0 5px; padding: 3px 5px;
      text-align:right;width: 130px;
}




<div>
      <asp:Label AssociatedControlID="txtOne" CssClass="input" ID="label1" runat="server"  
      Text="Text One:"></asp:Label>
      <asp:TextBox ID="txtOne" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</div>
<div>
     <asp:Label AssociatedControlID="txtTwo"    CssClass="input" ID="label2" runat="server"
     Text="Text Two:"></asp:Label>
     <asp:TextBox ID="txtTwo" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</div>
<div>
     <asp:Label AssociatedControlID="ddlOne" CssClass="input" ID="label3" runat="server" 
      Text="DropDown:"></asp:Label>
     <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlOne" runat="server">
           <asp:ListItem>Choice1</asp:ListItem>
           <asp:ListItem>Choice2</asp:ListItem>
     </asp:DropDownList>
</div>
<div>
    <asp:Label AssociatedControlID="txtThree" CssClass="input" ID="label4" runat="server"  
    Text="Text Three:"></asp:Label>
    <asp:TextBox ID="txtThree" runat="server" Rows="5" TextMode="MultiLine"></asp:TextBox>
</div>
<div>
    <asp:Label AssociatedControlID="txtFour" CssClass="input" ID="label5" runat="server"
    Text="Text Four:"></asp:Label>
    <asp:TextBox ID="txtFour" runat="server" Rows="5" TextMode="MultiLine"></asp:TextBox>
</div>

Enable IntelliSense for SharePoint Client Object Model in Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft released some guidance on enabling intellisense for the SharePoint client object model and was disappointed, it only gave partial intellisense. After a bit of investigating, I found that there are a number of debug.js files in the layouts folder. Adding the SP.Core.debug.js file gave me the result I was looking for. 

<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/MicrosoftAjax.js" ></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/SP.debug.js" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/SP.Core.debug.js" />

Table of Contents Web Part

The table of contents web part isn't showing all the sites. Go to site settings, navigation and increase the number of sites to display.

Windows 2008R2 boot VHD

I was in need of a faster SharePoint 2010 development environment and saw some posts on booting from a vhd and decided to give it a try. I'm running Windows 7 ultimate on my laptop and will install Windows 2008 R2 on the vhd. The first thing I tried was converting my virtualbox hard drive. Big waste of time, the conversion from vdi to vhd just didn't work. So, it was time to create a new vhd and install everything all over again. In this post I'll go thorough the steps to create a new vhd and install Windows 2008R2 on to it.

Change the bios settings on your machine so the dvd will boot before the hard drive.

Boot your machine from the install dvd. Oh, you don't have an install dvd, you have an iso file don't you? So you need to create an install dvd from the iso file. It's not so bad. Use a utility like ImgBurn to unpack the image file to disk, you'll see all the setup files when your done. 

Boot your machine from the install dvd. Select your language and click next.


Go to the command prompt  - enter shift+F10
x:\sources > diskpart
diskpart > create vdisk file=c:\win2008r2.vhd maximum=40000 type=expandable
diskpart > select vdisk file=c:\win2008r2.vhd
diskpart > attach vdisk
diskpart > exit
x:\sources > exit

Install the operating system - you will be able to select your new vhd later.

Select the disk you just created, there will be more than one to choose from. Choose carefully. Ignore the warning that you can't use the disk.

Continue with the installation. 

When the installation is finished, remove the dvd from the drive and restart your machine. You will be able to choose between Windows 7 and Windows 2008R2.

Migrating to SharePoint 2010

Recently I've been migrating farms from SharePoint 2007 to 2010 using the attach database method. In this post I'm going to outline the steps I've used to perform the upgrade. I'm assuming SharePoint 2010  has been set up and that the visual compatibility mode will be used. 

Clean Up Your Current Environment 
Remove unused site collections, features, etc. Run "stsadm -o preupgradecheck" to identify potential problems.

Find the Customizations
Your disaster recovery plan will really come in handy here. If you don't have a disaster recovery plan, this will be a good start for one. Go to central administration and note your settings. They will need to be used to configure your new farm. Find the custom code and files that have been deployed to your farm. If solutions have been used to deploy customizations, they can be used to deploy to the new farm. Make copies of the web.config files, many of the custom settings have been made by hand. Think safe controls, http modules, application settings, connection strings. Run a comparison between your 12 hive and an oob 12 hive to find any differences. Check IIS for any folders or applications that have been added.

Copy your Content Databases
The databases can be detached and copied or backups can be taken. Copy the .mdf files to the new SQL Server.

Install Customizations to the new 2010 Farm
Install your solutions and features, move files into the 14 hive, edit the web.config files... Create new Web Applications for the ones you’re moving. Delete the configuration databases that are created.  

Attach the Content Databases to the new SQL Server 


Test Content Database against the Web Applications
Run Powershell command:     Test-SPContentDatabase -Name "contentdbname" -WebApplication "http://webapplicationurl"  This will give you the guids of missing features and let you know if there are any errors that would stop the upgrade.  

Attach the Content Database to the farm
Run Powershell command:     Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name "contentdbname" -WebApplication "http://webapplicationurl"

Test the upgraded farm