Corey Roth [MVP] : Solution

Intro to SharePoint 2010 Development: How to Build and Deploy a Web Part

CoreyRoth — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:17:41 GMT

If you are already familiar with SharePoint 2010, you already know how easy it is to build and deploy a web part now. However, this post is for those that don’t keep up with SharePoint as some of us do and may not realize how the development experience has improved so much. My post How to Build and Deploy a Web Part is by far the most popular post on DotNetMafia.com. I wanted to make today’s post just as a point to show you how much less work is involved in deploying a web part. I am going to group this post into sections in a similar manner as I did the post for the WSS3 post.

Environment

There can be entire talks about what the best way to develop is now, but we’ll start with the simplest. Although you can install SharePoint on Windows 7 and directly develop on it, most people are going to say stick with a virtual machine and run Windows Server 2008 R2. It’s certainly simpler to get all of the prerequisites installed if you stick with Windows Server. The benefits to developing directly on a machine with SharePoint on it are so great now that I would recommend against remote debugging (although you still can). The SharePoint Root (or the 12 hive as you called it) is now the 14 hive and is located at the predictable path below.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\14

Coding the Web Part

Here is where things start to change. Instead of creating a class library and adding references to the SharePoint DLLs, we simply use one of the new included SharePoint project templates as you can see here.

Start by using the Empty SharePoint Project template. Also make sure you have it set to .NET Framework 3.5 as SharePoint does not run under .NET Framework 4.0 (don’t get me started). You’ll notice you have many different project templates to choose from. Most of these can also be used once you create an empty project. On the next dialogue, pick farm solution. I’ll go into the difference between sandboxed and farm solutions, but more than likely you are going to use farm solutions every time. You also need to specify the URL to your server. You can change that if you want but the default value will probably work for you in this case.

This gives us a solution that looks like this.

Now we are ready to build our new web part. If you bring up the add new item context menu, you will see a number of choices for the types of new SharePoint Project Items (SPIs) that you can create. We’re going to choose Web Part in this case.

What is the Visual Web Part you ask? That’s just a user control which relates directly to my second most popular post on How to Deploy a User Control. Now we’re finally ready to add some code. We’re just going to take our code from the WSS3 post and use it here.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
 
namespace SharePointProject1.TestWebPart
{
    [ToolboxItemAttribute(false)]
    public class TestWebPart : WebPart
    {
        public TestWebPart()
        {
        }
 
        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            base.CreateChildControls();
            Controls.Add(new Label() { Text = "My Test SharePoint 2010 Web Part (Hello World)!" });
        }
 
        protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter writer)
        {
            base.RenderContents(writer);
        }
    }
}

The only line of code I added here was the line to add the label and set its text. Everything else came from the template.

Describing the Web Part

In my WSS3 post, this is where I talked about building a .webpart file. Well, you don’t need to worry about that any more as Visual Studio creates it for you. Here is what solution explorer looks like after you add your first web part.

As you can see the .webpart file is already there as well as an elements.xml file for a feature to deploy the web part. The WSS3 post went on to talk about all of the things you need to know about building a feature. This is still good stuff to know, but its already taken care of for you. If you want to edit the basic feature information, just open it up in solution explorer and you get a nice new interface that looks like this.

I’m not going to waste space showing you the insides of the files it creates for you. Just know it creates them for you and it saves you a ton of time.

Deploying via Solution Package

In my WSS3 post, I explained how to create a cab.ddf and manifest.xml file. Well guest what? That is taken care of for you now as well. The Package.package file in the solution explorer provides another nice editor which allows you to choose with files go into the package. You don’t have to keep track of a thing any more, it just builds the package and takes care of it for you.

At this point, Visual Studio has created the .webpart file, the feature, and the solution package. However, we still need to deploy it and if we could debug it that would be even cooler right? Take a look at our new options in the Build menu.

We can build and rebuild just like any other project, but notice the options for Deploy, Package, and Retract. Those are all SharePoint functions. In this case, I want to deploy my solution. Choosing deploy, we see the following in the output window.

------ Build started: Project: SharePointProject1, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------
SharePointProject1 -> C:\Code\SharePointProject1\bin\Debug\SharePointProject1.dll
Successfully created package at: C:\Code\SharePointProject1\bin\Debug\SharePointProject1.wsp
------ Deploy started: Project: SharePointProject1, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------
Active Deployment Configuration: Default
Run Pre-Deployment Command:
Skipping deployment step because a pre-deployment command is not specified.
Recycle IIS Application Pool:
Recycling IIS application pool 'SharePoint - 80'...
Retract Solution:
Skipping package retraction because no matching package on the server was found.
Add Solution:
Adding solution 'SharePointProject1.wsp'...
Deploying solution 'SharePointProject1.wsp'...
Activate Features:
Activating feature 'Feature1' ...
Run Post-Deployment Command:
Skipping deployment step because a post-deployment command is not specified.
========== Build: 1 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========
========== Deploy: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

From inspecting the text of the log, you can see that Visual Studio compiled, created a package, reset my Application Pool, Added the Solution, Deployed the Solution, and activated the feature. Let’s check SharePoint and see if it’s really there.

Checking the web part gallery, we see our .webpart file. Let’s add it to a page and see how it looks. Edit any page and use add a web part and you will see the new interface for choosing a web part. It puts it in the Custom group by default.

One you hit and add finish editing, we see the web part working correctly.

You have to admit this is quite a bit easier than deploying a web part in SharePoint 3. What if you want to debug though? No problem. Just set a breakpoint and choose debug from the build menu like you would any other type of project.

As I mentioned earlier, if you are familiar with SharePoint 2010, this is nothing new to you. However, my point today is for those who shied away from SharePoint in the past because the development experience was far from optimal. Try it for yourself and you will see how easy it is to get up and running with your code. Even with pictures this post is half the size of the WSS3 post. That’s because it really is just that easy. I really think Visual Studio 2010 will open the way for a new round of SharePoint developers. Try it out today.

Solution Dependencies in SharePoint 2010

CoreyRoth — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:30:56 GMT

With MOSS 2007, I often got asked what order do I install these solution packages in. Oftentimes, it was critical that they get installed in a particular order. With features, we have had the ability to set dependencies, but we really didn’t have anything like that for solution packages. Well, I haven’t heard people talking about this new feature yet, but we can in fact set solution dependencies in the manifest.xml file.

The way it works is that it checks to see if a dependent solution has already been deployed on your farm (or site collection for sandbox solutions). However, it won’t chain deploy child solutions for you like you can do with hidden dependent features. It does this check when you attempt to deploy the feature (not when you add it). It also won’t remove a parent solution should you remove any of its dependent child solutions. Solution dependencies will also work between sandbox and farm solutions. Here is what the XML looks like that you will put in your manifest file.

<ActivationDependencies>
  <ActivationDependency SolutionId="{CF4F3DC2-FE50-40bc-8F33-C58FF4F487E2}" />
</ActivationDependencies>

The last thing I’ll point out is there is no Visual Studio Designer support, but you can get to the XML through the package editor and add the necessary XML pretty easily.

Use those version numbers in SharePoint 2010

CoreyRoth — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:59:45 GMT

With MOSS, it seemed like most web part developers tended to avoid changing the version of their DLL, because it lead to numerous headaches as you had to update the .webpart file. You also had to update any page that you might have the web part on as well so that it would load the new version. What’s nice about SharePoint 2010 is that your manifest file in your solution package can now deploy binding redirects to your web.config. For example, this means you can have any reference to version 1.0.0.0 redirect to use version 2.0.0.0. Binding redirects are nothing new to .NET, it’s just that SharePoint is now taking advantage of this feature. In fact, SharePoint uses this feature itself to redirect any calls to its DLLs from version 12.0.0.0 to 14.0.0.0. Here is an example of what that might look like.

<Assemblies>
  <Assembly DeploymentTarget="GlobalAssemblyCache" Location="MyWebParts.dll">
    <BindingRedirects>
      <BindingRedirect OldVersion ="1.0.0.0" />
    </BindingRedirects>
    <SafeControls>
      <SafeControl Assembly="MyWebParts, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral" Namespace="MyWebParts" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />
    </SafeControls>
  </Assembly>
</Assemblies>

I really like this new feature and I think it will make it much easier for developers to version their assemblies.

Intro to SharePoint Development: How to Build and Deploy a Web Part

CoreyRoth — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:50:00 GMT

UPDATE: Building Web Parts in SharePoint 2010

I've recently helped out a number of developers new to SharePoint and I found that I have been often asked the same types of questions. Most of those involve getting started and deployment, so today, I am beginning my series on getting started with SharePoint. Most new developers find starting out pretty overwhelming, but once you get used to it, it does all make sense. Hopefully this post will help the community and keep new SharePoint developers from getting scared off. There have been a lot of posts on this topic I admit. Since there are so many ways to do things, I wanted to write this post as a reference to new developers so they can see how I usually do things. What I find is that most developers have no trouble getting a web part built, but when it comes time to deploy it, they are lost. There are multiple ways to do this and not all of them are necessarily the right way.

Environment

Let's start by talking about your development environment. In an ideal situation, you probably have your own virtual machine with Windows Server 2008 (or 2003), MOSS 2007, and Visual Studio 2008 installed. However, maybe you don't have your own dedicated machine and you are going to be developing on a Windows XP machine, but deploying to a remote SharePoint server. This is fine, but you are going to have to do some things a little differently. First, you won't be able to install the Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint. You can live without this though because most people I have ran into say they don't use them. Secondly, when it comes to deployment (which we'll talk about down below), you are going to have to copy your source files (either manually or via solution package) to the server. You are also going to have to remote debug but fret not my post on it makes it easy.

If you are developing on a desktop, another thing you will need to do is copy the SharePoint assemblies to your computer. We can easily get these from a deployed SharePoint server. However, this is a great time to take an aside and talk about some of the SharePoint directory structure.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12

All SharePoint developers have that file path permanently burned into their memory. It is often referred to as the 12 hive. A lot of things happen within this folder. Subfolders here contain the SharePoint binaries, Master Pages, Application Pages, User Controls, Configuration Files, and Features. Although SharePoint will let you customize any file in here, in general you don't want to make changes to any of these builtin files as it puts you in an unsupported scenario. If you want to customize a master page or a style, it is typically best that you make a copy of what you want to customize and go from there. Here is a quick list of some of the key folders and what they are used for.

Folder	Description
CONFIG	Contains partial trust configuration files
ISAPI	Binaries and SharePoint Web Services
LOGS	Error Logs (look here first when you get a strange error)
TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES	User Controls
TEMPLATE\FEATURES	SharePoint Features (turns functionality on and off)
TEMPLATE\IMAGES	MainImages Folder
TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS	Pages and Styles
TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates	Definitions avaiable for deploying new sites
TEMPLATE\THEMES	Used to create custom themes in SharePoint
TEMPLATE\XML	Contains XSDs for any XML used with SharePoint

Enough on that tangent, back to the assemblies that we need to copy. Go to the above path and then go into the ISAPI folder. Copy all of the DLLs from this folder onto your desktop machine in the corresponding folder name. If you don't have that folder, create it. You may also copy them to the Global Assembly Cache as well. Once you are this point, you are ready to being building a web part.

Coding the Web Part

Start by creating a new class library project in Visual Studio. There are packages and tools out there to automate some of these steps, but its best that you learn how to do it first by hand, so you know how to troubleshoot it should something go wrong. Next, you will want to add (at a minimum) a reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.dll. You can either grab it out of the GAC (will be listed under Windows SharePoint Services) or use the copy that you put in your ISAPI folder. After you add it, make sure Copy Local is set to false on your reference. You will also want to add System.Web since more than likely your web part will use an ASP.NET control in it. You are now ready to create your web part. To do this, create a new class and add a using statement for Microsoft.SharePoint. In the past, you would derive your class from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPart (and you still can), but now the more accepted way of doing things is to derive from the new System.Web.UI.WebParts.WebPart class. The latter comes from ASP.NET 2.0 and can actually be deployed outside of SharePoint. Here is what our class is going to look like.

public class TestWebPart : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
{
    protected override void CreateChildControls()
    {
        base.CreateChildControls();
        Controls.Add(new Label(){Text = "My Test Web Part (Hello World)!"});
    }
}

The content of the class is simple. We use the overridden CreateChildControls method to add ASP.NET controls to the page to do the rendering. I simply call Control.Add and add a Label control with the text above. Compile it and this web part is good to go, but there is the small matter of deploying it. Compiling it yield you a DLL that has be deployed to SharePoint somehow. SharePoint also needs to know where the web part is and how to reference it. This is where the .webpart file comes in.

Describing the WebPart

The .webpart file is an XML file that tells SharePoint what to call your DLL and what assembly it is located in. The easiest way to get started creating this file is to copy another one in SharePoint. You can find plenty of examples by going to your web part gallery (Site Root -> Site Settings -> Web Parts). this file simply describes the class and assembly of your web part as well as some default properties (i.e.: it sets a title and description). You can also add your own properties by specifying a series of attributes on a property in your class.

<webParts>
  <webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3">
    <metaData>
      <type name="MyWebPart.TestWebPart, MyWebPart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral" />
      <importErrorMessage>Cannot import this Web Part.</importErrorMessage>
    </metaData>
    <data>
      <properties>
        <property name="Title" type="string">My Web Part</property>
        <property name="Description" type="string">A test web part.</property>
      </properties>
    </data>
  </webPart>

Note: There is also a .dwp file, which comes from version 2, that can describe your webpart as well. It still works but it is consider deprecated.

Ghetto Deploying

So far, we have built a web part and created a .webpart file so now it is time to deploy it. We'll start by doing it the wrong way. The first thing to know is that you can't just copy your DLL into the bin folder of your web application unless you change to full trust (not recommended) or specify Code Access Security. Specifying CAS when first starting out will make even the most seasoned developers run for the hills. So we are going to start by deploying to the GAC. In almost all situations, I recommend against this, but for the sake of getting you started, it is ok. You can then follow the Code Access Security post later on how to set up everything properly.

Start by copying your compiled DLL into the Global Assembly Cache of your SharePoint server. Keep in mind anytime you update this DLL, you will need to either reset IIS or recycle the application pool (otherwise the old version stays in memory). The next thing you need to do is upload the .webpart file to the web part gallery of your site collection (again Site Root -> Site Settings -> Web Parts). At this point, SharePoint will be able to recognize your web part and it can be added to a page. If you click on the name of the web part in the gallery (in this case MyWebPart.webpart), it will display a preview of what it will look like on a page. If everything is working correctly, you will see your web part, otherwise you will get an error. At this point, you will have the following error.

A web part on this web part page cannot be displayed or imported because it is not registered on this site as safe.

This is because there is one more step to do. Every web part or user control in SharePoint must be registered as safe to execute in the web.config. To do this, find the SafeControls element near the top and add the following line (changing it with your fully qualified assembly path).

<SafeControls>
  <SafeControl Assembly="MyWebPart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral" Namespace="MyWebPart" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />
</SafeControls>

Now when you go back to the web part gallery, it should give you a preview of your web part. If it doesn't check your assembly paths and make sure the file is deployed. If you still have issues, check out this post on troubleshooting a web part. Assuming you were able to get the web part to preview, you can also go add it to a page by going to any page, clicking Edit Page and then Add Web Part. Scroll through the list until you find your web part and select it. You should then see your web part on the page.

Features

So we talked about deploying a web part the wrong way. Ok, it's not necessarily wrong, but it really adds a lot of extra work This can be automated quite a bit by using features and solution packages. Creating a feature, allows you to turn on and off customizations to SharePoint at the click of a button. They can be used to deploy web parts, site definitions, workflows, document libraries, and plenty of other things. In this case, we are building a feature to automate the deployment of our .webpart file. You can also specify a class (Feature Receiver) that is executed when the feature is installed, activated, deactivated, or uninstalled. A feature typically consists of two XML files. The first file Feature.xml (must be named that), describes the feature and where its feature receiver is (if any).

<Feature 
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" 
    Id="{BDD425C3-CA50-4aee-9170-73954044D764}" 
    Scope="Site" 
    Hidden="False" 
    Title="My Web Part" 
    Description="My Test Web Part"
    >
  <ElementManifests>
    <ElementManifest Location="Elements.xml" />
  </ElementManifests>
</Feature>

The Id element contains a GUID. Every feature needs a different one. The Scope attribute specifies where to deploy the feature. Possible values are Site, Web, WebApplication, and Farm. I would go into the difference in scopes, because this post is already getting long enough. You will most likely use Site or Web for most things you do (note on terms in API). The ElementManifest element makes calls to additional XML files. Typically the other file is called Elements.xml (although it can be called anything).

The Elements.xml file can be used to deploy files, create document libraries, and many other functions. I won't go into the whole detail of this file (it's in the SDK), but basically we are specifying that the MyWebPart.webpart file should be copied into the web part gallery. I will tell you what a few things are though. In this case the Module element says that we are going to deploy something into a list that is located at _catalogs/wp (this is the URL of the web part gallery). How did I figure this out? I looked at another example. The File element deploys our MyWebPart.webpart file into the web part gallery. I wont go into why you set the Type to GhostableInLibrary right now. Just know this is the value you will pretty much always use.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <Module Name="WebPartPopulation" List="113" Url="_catalogs/wp" RootWebOnly="TRUE">
    <File Url="MyWebPart.webpart" Type="GhostableInLibrary" />
  </Module>
</Elements>

When the feature is activated, it will put the file in the web part gallery. However, it won't remove the item from the web part gallery on deactivation. It's pretty easy to do with code and I still plan to write a post on it. For now, if you want the .webpart file gone you will have to delete it manually. During the development cycle though, the only time it really is necessary to remove a .webpart file is if you have changed the namespace, class name, or public key token. Here is what an elements file typically looks like for deploying a web part.

So where do all these files go? Let's talk about where you put them in your Visual Studio project first. Typically, what you will do is create a folder structure in your project that matches the 12 hive. So in this case, we will create a TEMPLATE\FEATURES folder. We will then create a folder for our web part. I am just calling it MyWebPart for now. Here is what your solution will look like. This folder is where you will put Feature.xml, Elements.xml, and MyWebPart.webpart.

To deploy the feature, copy it to the TEMPLATE\FEATURES folder in your 12 hive. You then need to use stsadm command to install it. The stsadm executable is located in the bin folder of the 12 hive. You tend to use it a lot, so you might want to put it in your path environment variable. Once you have located it, issue the following command.

stsadm -o installfeature -name MyWebPart

This makes the feature available to be activated. To activate it, go to Site Collection Features (Site Root -> Site Settings -> Site Collection Features). Find the feature in the list and click the Activate button. This deploys the web part to the gallery and it can be added to pages as before. If you ever want to remove the feature, use the uninstallfeature operation. You will want to deactivate the feature first, otherwise you will have to use the -force parameter when using stsadm.

Deploying Via Solution Package

Features are nice, but we can take this one step further. A solution package (.wsp file) allows you to package your entire solution into one .wsp file for deployment. A .wsp file is simply a cab file with a manifest.xml file that tells SharePoint how to install the contents. It will even deploy and install your feature for you, allowing you to skip the installation steps above. Two files are required to build the .wsp file: cab.ddf and manifest.xml. These files typically go into a folder called Solution in your Visual Studio project. Cab.ddf tells the utility, makecab.exe, how to construct the .wsp file. Below is an example DDF file. You will need to set the CabinetNameTemplate to the filename you want for your wsp file. You then specify a source and destination for each file you want copied. In the example below, note that I am copying the DLL, Elements.xml, Feature.xml, and MyWebPart.webpart file.

; ** MyWebPart.wsp **
.OPTION EXPLICIT    ; Generate errors 
.Set CabinetNameTemplate=MyWebPart.wsp
.set DiskDirectoryTemplate=CDROM ; All cabinets go in a single directory
.Set CompressionType=MSZIP;** All files are compressed in cabinet files
.Set UniqueFiles="ON"
.Set Cabinet=on
.Set DiskDirectory1=Package
 
Solution\manifest.xml manifest.xml
 
; binary
bin\debug\MyWebPart.dll MyWebPart.dll
 
; feature files
TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MyWebPart\Elements.xml MyWebPart\Elements.xml
TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MyWebPart\Feature.xml MyWebPart\Feature.xml
 
; web part files
TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MyWebPart\MyWebPart.webpart FEATURES\MyWebPart\MyWebPart.webpart

I won't go into manifest.xml again because I have already covered it once in this post. It's this file that tells SharePoint how to deploy features, copy files, setup code access security, and add SafeControl entries to your web.config. Once you create your solution files, build your project and then go to the command line. The utility makecab.exe (should already be on your system) will actually create the wsp file. In the command prompt, go to the root folder of your project and execute the following command. It has to be executed from that folder because all of the paths are relative.

makecab.exe /f solution\cab.ddf

You can automate this step when you build, by creating a build action.

If you are working on a remote server, you will need to copy the .wsp file onto the server. Add and deploy the solution with the following commands.

stsadm -o addsolution -filename package\MyAssembly.wsp
stsadm -o deploysolution -name MyAssembly.wsp -immediate -allContentUrls -allowGacDeployment
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

At this point if all goes well, your solution will be installed and deployed. This eliminates all the steps of manually copying files into SharePoint. You can then activate your feature like before (remember it installs the feature for you) and add your web part to a page. If you make an update to your web part, deploying is easy, just use the upgradesolution stsadm command and it will update all the files in your solution. Should you decide, you don't need the solution any more, use the retractsolution command. After you issue either of those commands, you will need to follow it up with a execadmsvcjobs command as shown above.

This may sound like a lot, but it really isn't bad. It makes deployment really easy (especially to other servers). Once you have your solution deployed and you want to make an update, you can also just directly copy out the binary to your server. Not really a best practice, but it does speed things up quite a bit, since stsadm commands take a few seconds to run.

Once you get the hang of it and are familiar with the deployment process, you really need to consider deploying your solution to the bin folder by deploying your solution under partial trust. Remember right now, you are deploying to the GAC which is not ideal. My post on Code Access Security walks you through the whole process and provides more details on how solution packages are built.

User Controls

By now, you may be thinking, I went through all of that and I still have to render stuff to the screen using straight code? I hear you. It's not any fun at all and can be a controversy among some SharePoint developers. You do have a couple of alternatives, use the SmartPart or write your own. I typically go with the latter. This simple web part uses Page.LoadControl to load the .ascx file you specify.

This is quickly becoming the longest post I have ever written. I've attached the code I used in this post. You can use it to verify that you put your own web part together correctly or you can use it as a starting point. I hope this provides enough information for a new SharePoint developer to get started. I certainly wish I had this much info condensed in one place when I was starting out. You may also want to check out one of the many solution generating tools out there such as stsdev. Please leave a comment if this helps or if you have any questions. If I am missing anything or you think I need to add anything, also please let me know.

More on Manfiest.xml

CoreyRoth — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:19:32 GMT

There are a ton of tools out there to create SharePoint solution packages (.wsp files) for you, but it is still a good idea to know what those tools are creating for you exactly. Sometimes, things don't always work right, and you may need to customize or tweak your manifest file. If you are new to SharePoint development, the Manifest.xml file is used during the deployment of a .wsp solution package. It tells SharePoint what files to copy, what features to install, where to put your binaries, adds SafeControl entries, as well as set code access security. The file seems pretty straight forward but there are a lot of ways to mess it up. As I pointed out in the past, do not put any comments in this file. It will cause all kinds of FAIL.

I'll start by go over the key elements of this file and point out some things you need to know about each one. If you create any of these main elements, note, that they will always require some kind of child element, otherwise the file won't validate. The first element we will talk about is FeatureManifests. This name as it sounds is used to deploy features. Your solution will install features but not activate them for you. You can list multiple features to install here using the FeatureManifest element. It's Location attribute specifies the path to the feature (inside the DDF file). What that means is the path specified to your feature.xml file will match whatever you have listed as the destination in your DDF file. We can talk about DDF files again another day if necessary.

<FeatureManifests>
    <FeatureManifest Location="MyFeature\feature.xml" />
</FeatureManifests>

The TemplateFiles element is used to copy out any additional files to the SharePoint server. These could be .webpart files, user controls, other XML files, application pages, master pages, etc. SharePoint will not copy any file that is not listed here (except for binaries and feature.xml and related files). Again, you can specify multiple TemplateFile child elements to copy multiple files. Part of what makes this file tricky is the paths. Some are relative, some require you to specify something inside the 12 hive. It takes some getting used to. In this case, if you are copying additional files into a feature folder for a web part, you would specify something like FEATURES\MyFeature\mywebpart.webpart.

<TemplateFiles>
  <TemplateFile Location="FEATURES\MyFeature\MyWebpart.webpart" />
</TemplateFiles>

The Assemblies element specifies which binaries will be deployed to SharePoint and where. You can copy multiple assemblies out at a time with a feature by specifying more than one Assembly element. The Assembly element has a Location attribute which typically just contains the DLL name (again dependent on where the DLL is copied in your DDF file). It also contains a DepoymentTarget attribute which specifies wether to copy it to the GAC (GlobalAssemblyCache) or the bin folder (WebApplication). It also contains a SafeControls element with the same syntax of what is used in the web.config.

<Assemblies>
  <Assembly DeploymentTarget="WebApplication" Location="MySolution.dll">
    <SafeControls>
      <SafeControl Assembly="MySolution, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral" Namespace="MySolution.WebParts" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />
    </SafeControls>
  </Assembly>
</Assemblies>

One thing to note here is that if you do not specify at least one assembly with a SafeControl element, SharePoint will decide that your solution does not contain a Web Application Resource and therefore will not deploy it when you specify a URL with stsadm. So, I typically include this line even if I don't have any controls or web parts in my solution. You will get an error like the one below.

This solution contains no resources scoped for a Web application and cannot be deployed to a particular Web application.

The last element, I am will talk about is CodeAccessSecurity. This of course is the most complex one. I have posted on this topic in the past and don't forget, I will be speaking about it next month. The post I have on it covers it in more detail that I will cover today. The one thing, I will remind you of is that it is ok to specify multiple assemblies.

I haven't talked about the root element yet. It's pretty simple. Just remember the SolutionId needs to be unique. The ResetWebServer attribute can be set to false if you don't want it to reset IIS on deployment.

<Solution SolutionId="{B3270C0DF-EACA-4320-9B2A-C293435C5DF1}"  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" ResetWebServer="true">

Anyhow, hopefully this will help someone out the next time they are looking at a manfiest.xml file.

Solution Deployment blocked by CommVault

CoreyRoth — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:32:27 GMT

I tend to run into this issue every time I do a production deployment on this one particular MOSS farm. What happens is when I deploy a solution, stsadm of course says everything worked great but I try to look for my new code and its not there. Eventually, I remember to look at the solutions page in central admin where I will always find an error. It turns out on a few of the frontend servers, the solution deployment failed because it can't update one of the DLLs in the bin directory. It's the typical, this file can not be copied because it is in use error message. After going through the list of processes, I finally found the one that was the culprit SP2K3DocBackup.exe. After a little research, I discovered this belonged to CommVault Galaxy (a data backup application). The solution was simple, once I killed this process on each server, I redeployed my solution file and it installed correctly. I am not sure why this process locks your DLLs. You would think it would use Volume Shadow Copy or something so it wouldn't have to. Hopefully this will help if you run into this situation.

Beware of readonly files when deploying solutions

CoreyRoth — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:16:00 GMT

Sometimes when I am developing a feature that is deployed via solution, after I have deployed it to the server a few times, sometimes I think it is a good idea to just copy out my feature manually to the features folder. I've got to get out ofthe habit of doing this, because it leads to nothing good. If you keep files in source control, more than likely one of them might be marked as readonly. Later when you deploy your solution file again, it will say the feature installed, but more than likely you will see a message like the following.

Executing solution-deployment-mysolution.wsp-0. The solution-deployment-mysolution.wsp-0 job completed successfully, but could not be properly cleaned up. This job may execute again on this server.
Operation completed successfully.

What this should really read is, "Something really screwed up while installing your deployment solution, but we're not going to tell you what it is and just make you think everything went fine." Ok, admittedly this doesnt always mean something is messed up, but in this case, something definitely was. I went back to my SharePoint site, and could not find my feature anywhere. I tried retracting and deploying the solution and still nothing.

This meant is was clearly time to go sifting through logs. It was then when I saw an excpetion that the solution could not copy a file because it was readonly. To fix it, I retracted the solution and I also manually ran uninstallfeature using stsadm to make sure the features weren't registered in SharePoint. I then physically deleted the feature folder in question from the SharePoint features folder and reinstalled the solution.

The lesson to be learned here is don't take shortcuts when developing and deploying features or if you do, make sure nothing is readonly or it will cause problems later.