Rob Garrett – Blog

My colleague, Carlos Fernandez, sent me this CSCRIPT command for recycling the an IIS application pool:

%windir%\system32\cscript.exe c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs /a "SharePoint – 80" /r

Tired of manually recycling the app pool each time you make a code change to your SharePoint web part?  No problem, add the following command to the post build events in Visual Studio.

This is one of those topics, which I frequently look up, and so what better place to put the information than this blog?  Scot Hillier has explicit instructions in his book (Microsoft SharePoint – Building Office 2007 Solutions in C#) on page 404 to deploy a webpart using a solution package.  The following instructions are an excerpt from his information.

Create a Strong Name Assembly

1. Create a strong name for your web part (if you have not already done so), using sn-k c:keypair.snk.
2. Add the key pair file to the project containing your web part.
3. In the webpart project properties, sign the assembly using the key pair.

Create a Manifest File

1. Add a new XML file to the webpart project, name this file manifest.xml.
2. Add the following code to the XML file…

      1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

      2: <Solution xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"

      3:           SolutionId="AF597DAB-65D7-4c1a-A012-D04184CA647E">

      4:     <Assemblies>

      5:         <Assembly DeploymentTarget="WebApplication"

      6:             Location="SPDataPart.dll">

      7:             <SafeControls>

      8:                 <SafeControl

      9:                     Assembly="SPDataPart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8c9fc716f38d08b2"

     10:                     Namespace="SPDataPart" TypeName="*"/>

     11:             </SafeControls>

     12:         </Assembly>

     13:     </Assemblies>

     14: </Solution>

3. Change the details in to match your webpart DLL name, strong name, and public key token.
4. Note: If creating XML solution file is not your thing, Scot talks about a Visual Studio template on CodePlex to make solution file creation easier – link.

Create the Solution Package

1. Add a new “CAB Project” to the solution, alongside the webpart project.
2. Add “Project Output/Primary Output” from the webpart project to the CAB project – this adds the webpart DLL to the CAB.
3. Add “Project Output/Content Files” from the webpart project to the CAB project – this adds the manifest file to the CAB.
4. Build the entire solution.
5. Find the CAB file in the bin/[Debug|Release] folder for the CAB project and rename the CAB extension to WSP.
6. You now have a Web Solution Package.

Deploying Solution to SharePoint

1. Run the following command on the SharePoint box to install the solution:

   stsadm.exe -o addsolution -filename PathToMyWSPFile.wsp

2. Open SharePoint Central Administration Console.
3. Click the operations tab and then Solutions Management link.
4. Click the solution package listed, which we added in step 1 of this section
5. From the package options page, click deploy.
6. Navigate to the top level site containing the web part.
7. Go to the web part gallery under site settings.
8. Click the New button.
9. Check the webpart(s) from the list to add to the site.
10. You are now ready to add the webpart to web part zones within the site.

OK, this has to be one of the most asked questions about Microsoft Live.com gadgets (except perhaps the question – “Are Vista Gadgets and Live.com Gadgets the same?”) –

How to host Microsoft Live.com gadgets in my own ASP.NET applications?

Sounds like there must be an easy answer for this one…. not exactly.  Microsoft haven’t published the Live.com back end infrastructure as yet, just the means in which developers can use the Live.com site to host their home-brew gadgets.  MS won’t commit to whether they intend to release the gadget framework, leaving custom portal developers without any way to incorporate the vast array of Microsoft gadgets into their sites.

I’m not one for giving up easily, so I trawled the web, and after some time found the answer I was looking for.  It seems that Microsoft made some changes to their gadget framework back in late 2005, which changed how gadgets are rendered with IFRAMES.  As a side effect, the following URL will render a Live.com gadget in your browser (try it):

http://gadgets.start.com/gadget.aspx?manifestUrl=http://gadgets.donavon.net/gadgets/digitalclock.xml&dash=false&view=Custom

Hosting Live.com gadgets in your web site is a simple case of embedding an IFRAME tag with the above URL (change the manifest URL to the desired gadget of course):

<iframe id=”Iframe1″ src=”http://gadgets.start.com/gadget.aspx?manifestUrl=http://gadgets.donavon.net/gadgets/digitalclock.xml&dash=false&view=Custom&#8221;

scrolling=”auto” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%”></iframe>

I went one step further and created a custom web part for ASP.NET 2, which should also work for SharePoint 2007 with very little adjustment, below is the code.  Throw it into a class library, add a reference to your web site, and instantiate the GadgetWebPart control.

Presto!

public class GadgetWebPart : WebPart

{

#region Fields

private string _manifestURL = String.Empty;

private TextBox _urlTB = null;

private Button _submitBtn = null;

private HtmlGenericControl _iframeCtrl = null;

#endregion Fields

#region Properties

/// <summary>

/// Manifest URL of web part.

/// </summary>

[WebBrowsable(), Personalizable()]

public string ManifestURL

{

get { return _manifestURL; }

set { _manifestURL = value; }

}

#endregion Properties

#region Methods

/// <summary>Called by the ASP.NET page framework to notify server controls that use composition-based implementation to create any child controls they contain in preparation for posting back or rendering.</summary>

protected override void CreateChildControls()

{

// Clear the controls collection.

Controls.Clear();

// Create controls.

_urlTB = new TextBox();

Controls.Add(_urlTB);

_urlTB.Style.Add(“width”, “200px”);

_submitBtn = new Button();

_submitBtn.Text = “Install Gadget”;

_submitBtn.Click += new EventHandler(submitBtn_Click);

Controls.Add(_submitBtn);

_iframeCtrl = new HtmlGenericControl(“iframe”);

Controls.Add(_iframeCtrl);

_iframeCtrl.Attributes.Add(“width”, “100%”);

_iframeCtrl.Attributes.Add(“height”, “100%”);

_iframeCtrl.Attributes.Add(“scrolling”, “auto”);

_iframeCtrl.Attributes.Add(“frameborder”, “0″);

}

/// <summary>Raises the <see cref=”E:System.Web.UI.Control.PreRender”></see> event.</summary>

/// <param name=”e”>An <see cref=”T:System.EventArgs”></see> object that contains the event data. </param>

protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)

{

// Do we have a manifest URL?

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(_manifestURL))

{

_urlTB.Visible = false;

_submitBtn.Visible = false;

_iframeCtrl.Visible = true;

_iframeCtrl.Attributes["src"] =

String.Format(“http://gadgets.start.com/gadget.aspx?manifestUrl={0}&dash=false&view=custom”, _manifestURL);

}

else

{

_urlTB.Visible = true;

_submitBtn.Visible = true;

_iframeCtrl.Visible = false;

}

// Call base version

base.OnPreRender(e);

}

/// <summary>

/// Submit button clicked.

/// </summary>

/// <param name=”sender”>Sender Object.</param>

/// <param name=”e”>Event args.</param>

void submitBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (null != _urlTB && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(_urlTB.Text))

_manifestURL = _urlTB.Text.Trim();

if (null != Width && Width.Value > 0)

_iframeCtrl.Attributes["width"] = Width.Value.ToString();

if (null != Height && Height.Value > 0)

_iframeCtrl.Attributes["height"] = Height.Value.ToString();

}

#endregion Methods

}

Thanks to Donavon for his post on the following forum thread:  http://microsoftgadgets.com/forums/1478/ShowPost.aspx