#sharepoint_2010

[shailensukul]

SharePoint Explorer View Not Working

I had this strange issue at a client site today. They have SharePoint 2010 and it was working with Explorer View perfectly fine until they installed the WebDav role with Keberos.

Suddenly Explorer stopped working for their users using IE 9+. I was able to reproduce the issue and tried the following:

- Restarting the WebClient Service

- Used 32 bit version of IE

Funnily enough, the client found an old XP box and was able to launch explorer view from there. I think it was somehow related to Keberos and possibly a double hop issue.

I uninstalled WebDev and sure enough, Explorer View started working again!

I will investigate further and update this post.

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul

[shailensukul]

SharePoint, ADFS & Anonymous Page

Overview

Consider a situation where you have a SharePoint website configured with Claims-based authentication, say LiveID. If you create an anonymous landing page, the User Identity object will be set to NULL, EVEN if you navigate from another site where you have already logged in.

That is because SharePoint does not bother creating a security context on an anonymous page. Read on for a solution...

The trick is to create a SharePoint Application page which will be secure. This page will receive requests from a WebPart on the Anonymous page and return a JSON response which can provide the user's identity name.

So one of 2 things will happen:

The user is already signed in - since the application page is secure, the jQuery call should force SharePoint to create a security context and the Identity object will not be null

The user has not signed in - this will call the jQuery call to fail with an exception which you can then trap.

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul

[shailensukul]

XSLT Timeout Errors

Summary

Any SharePoint WebParts which contain an XSLT to transform XML data may sporadically fail with this error message: “Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator.”.

You will also see System.StackOverflowException errors in the SharePoint log.

Why

Historically, this issue arose after the installation of the June CU. Later on, Microsoft reduced the timeout for XSLT transformation from 5 seconds to 1 second but did not give the administrator the option of increasing it manually via Powershell.

The timeout essentially causes any modified XSLTListViewWebPart and XSLTDataViewWebParts to error intermittently when viewed in the browser.

Although it was meant to have been fixed in the August CU, installing the December CU breaks the fix from August and now it was recommended to install the ensuing Feb CU.

Fix

Although Microsoft have some “workarounds” at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2639184 , none of them are appropriate. You should either patch to the latest CU or get a hotfix directly here.

Once the hotfix is installed, you should be able to increase the timeout (in seconds) using the PowerShell script below:

$farm = Get-SPFarm $farm.XsltTransformTimeOut = 5 $farm.Update()

Keywords: SharePoint WebPart XSL XSLT XML Timeout

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul

[shailensukul]

SharePoint Managed Account Password Expired

Summary

My local SharePoint development environment uses my corporate login as the farm account (since I cannot create another AD forest without messing up my corporate login). When my password needs changing, my local environment gets messed up and I am not able to access the Managed Account via Central Admin to change its password.

I basically go into each of the SharePoint application pools and Windows services and change the password manually. Then I change the service account password using the following PowerShell script:

$ver = $host | select version if ($ver.Version.Major -gt 1) {$Host.Runspace.ThreadOptions = "ReuseThread"} Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell Set-location $home $inManagedAcct = Read-Host 'Service Account' $managedAcct = Get-SPManagedAccount $inManagedAcct $inPass = Read-Host 'Enter Password' -AsSecureString $inPassConfirm = Read-Host 'Confirm Password' -AsSecureString Set-SPManagedAccount -Identity $managedAcct -NewPassword $inPass -ConfirmPassword $inPassConfirm -SetNewPassword

Keywords: SharePoint 2010 Central Administration Admin Manage Account Change Password

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul

[shailensukul]

Get User Profile Owner

Summary Do you need to get the owner of the user profile in SharePoint to conditionally display sensitive data? If yes, then read on... (Tip from colleague Kiran Bellala) ProfilePropertyLoader.GetPageProfile method can return the user profile associated with the page. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.portal.webcontrols.profilepropertyloader.getpageprofile.aspx)

UserProfile thisPageUserProfile = ProfilePropertyLoader.GetPageProfile(this.Page); string thisPageAcctName = thisPageUserProfile["AccountName"].Value.ToString(); string loggedinUserAcctName = HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name; if (thisPageAcctName.Equals(loggedinUserAcctName)) { Label1.Text = "This is my user profile"; } else { //this is not my user profile. hide the web part this.Hidden = true; }

Keywords: SharePoint User Profile

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul

[shailensukul]

Javascript and CSS Optimization with SharePoint

Summary

It is a common practice to minimy Javascript and CSS files. This is achieved by removing whitespace and unncesssary characters (like comments) from the files to make the footprint as small as possible. I will demonstrate how to leverage this technique in your everyday SharePoint development environment.

Pre-requistes:

Download and install the JS/CSS minifier from http://ajaxmin.codeplex.com

Download and open the sample project from http://code.sukul.org/Public/SharePoint%202010/Minification/MinificationExample.rar

Overview

Open the MinificationExample.sln file

Observe the MinificationExample.debug.css and MinificationExample.debug.js files. These are the "original" uncompressed files.

Right click on the Project name and click Properties. Observe the Pre Build Event calls for minifying the javascript and CSS files.

Build the project. You will notice 2 new files: MinificationExample.css and MinificationExample.js minified files

Reference the CSS and JS files in your UI using the ScriptLink and CSSLink controls:

When you run the application in debug mode (by pressing F5), the debug version of the javascript file will referenced

When you run the application without debugging(by pressing CTRL+F5), the minified version of the JS file gets loaded. Make sure that you remove the debug setting from the web.config file in this section:

<compilation batch="false" debug="false" optimizeCompilations="true">

Keywords: SharePoint 2010 Javascript CSS Minifiy Minification Optimization Compression

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul

[shailensukul]

SharePoint Smart Serve

Summary

SharePoint 2010 has numerous artifacts which make up a SharePoint web page, just like any other web page. The primary ones are:

Javascript

Images

CSS

Often, these will add up to make a SharePoint page bloated and slow. You can optimize the page by minifying and compressing the javascript as well as compressing images and CSS. However, it may prove to be time consuming if you have lots of such artifacts, especially if multiple designers are working in SharePoint.

To mitigate such a scenario, I have created a HttpHandler to automatically minify and compress artifacts on the fly. In order to use it, start off by installing the WSP from http://smartserve.codeplex.com.

Then rewrite all your javascript, CSS and image references to utilize the HttpHandler. Syntax below:

Images Syntax: http://yoursite.com/_layouts/SharePoint.SmartServe/SmartServe.ashx?filepath=&width=&height= Example: http://mysite.com/_layouts/SharePoint.SmartServe/SmartServe.ashx?filepath=http://mysite.com/MyPics/MyImage.jpg&width=50&height=50 Javascript Syntax: http://yoursite.com/_layouts/SharePoint.SmartServe/SmartServe.ashx?filepath= Example: http://mysite.com/_layouts/SharePoint.SmartServe/SmartServe.ashx?filepath=http://mysite.com/MyDoc/MyScript.js CSS Syntax: http://yoursite.com/_layouts/SharePoint.SmartServe/SmartServe.ashx?filepath= Example: http://mysite.com/_layouts/SharePoint.SmartServe/SmartServe.ashx?filepath=http://mysite.com/MyDoc/MyCss.css Keywords: SharePoint SharePoint 2010 Javascript Minify Minified GZip G-Zip CSS Image Resize

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul

[shailensukul]

Remove Event Handlers

Summary

I found this handy little utility to remove event handlers from a list from: http://weblogs.asp.net/vikram/archive/2009/01/14/sharepoint-removing-event-handler-to-the-list-with-the-help-of-a-generic-console-application.aspx

The console application does the work of removing the event handler to the list. The console application needs 5 different values from the appsettings section of the configuration file. It is available at the above url or by clicking here.

SiteCollectionURL - Takes the URL of the Site where the list resides. Example – “http://www.example.com”

RecordListName – Takes the name of the list on which the event handler should be attached. Example – “ListOfFriend”

EventHandlerName – Name of the eventhandler that should be applied like ItemUpdating. If there are more than one event handler, then user can pass the venet handler as a comma seperated list ItemDeleting,ItemUpdating

ClassName – FullName of the class where the code for the event handler has been written. Example – SharePoint.Vikram.EventHandlers.FriendList

AssemblyName – Name of the assembly where the class for the event handler - SharePoint.Vikram.EventHandlers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=faeb5f91b6c4621e

Keywords: remove event handler from list

Copyright 2012 Shailen Sukul