Development

Display the users IP Address in a Data View Web Part

shehan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:20:00 GMT

Quite simple really :)

Open up an existing DVWP or create one.
Right click the DVWP and select ‘Common Data View Tasks’ (or click the little arrow that appears on the top right of the DVWP)
Click the ‘Parameters’ link
In the dialog that opens up click the ‘New Parameter’ button.
Provide a name for the parameter (e.g. IPAddress)
In the ‘Parameter Source’ dropdown select ‘Server Variable’
In the ‘Server Variable Name’ text box enter REMOTE_ADDR
Leave the ‘Default Value’ text box empty
Click OK
Now switch to the code view and go to the place where you want the IPAddress to appear and type the following:

<xsl:value-of select="$IPAddress" />

Thats it! Save and open the page containing the DVWP and it should show you you’re IPAddress. I’ve only been able to test it on the intranet and it works fine. If you want to display values of other server variables you can add more parameters and provide the appropriate variable name.

Here’s a list of server variables: http://www.w3schools.com/asp/coll_servervariables.asp

Technorati Tags: SharePoint Designer,DataViewWebPart,Server Variables,IP Address

Get all replies to a discussion

shehan — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:40:00 GMT

A discussion list in unlike a normal list in that it consists of two content types - a Discussion content type that maps to the discussion topic and a Message that maps to all replies to the topic. If you examine the Discussion content type you’ll see that its inherited from the Folder content type.

The reply contains a field called ‘ParentFolderId’ and as the name suggests it holds the ID of the discussion topic. So naturally if you were to do a query on the list for all items with the same ParentFolderId you would expect the query to work. However, since the topic is of a folder content type and the replies are contained within the ‘folder’ you would need to set the queries ViewAttributes property to "Scope='Recursive'" for it to return results.

Below is an example using the object model:

SPQuery query = new SPQuery();

query.ViewAttributes = "Scope='Recursive'";

StringBuilder queryString = new StringBuilder();

queryString.Append("         <Where>");

queryString.Append("              <And>");

queryString.Append("                        <Eq>");

queryString.Append("                             <FieldRef Name=\"ContentType\" />");

queryString.Append("                             <Value Type=\"Text\">Message</Value>");

queryString.Append("                        </Eq>");

queryString.Append("                        <Eq>");

queryString.Append("                             <FieldRef Name=\"ParentFolderId\" />");

queryString.Append("                             <Value Type=\"Number\">99</Value>"); //NOTE: change this to the value you need

queryString.Append("                        </Eq>");

queryString.Append("              </And>");

queryString.Append("         </Where>");

query.Query = queryString.ToString();

DataTable replyTable = discussionList.GetItems(query).GetDataTable();

Technorati Tags: Discussion,Replies,CAML,SharePoint

mailto with ‘#’ in email address issue

shehan — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:21:00 GMT

It seems that if you use an email address that contains a ‘#’ character and is part of a mailto tag, then clicking on it on the browser will open Outlook, but will not add the complete email address in the ‘To:’ field; it adds all characters until the ‘#’ character.

To overcome this replace the ‘#’ character with %23

So, if you had an email address like: #projectTeam@company.com the mailto tag should have it as %23projectTeam@company.com

Technorati Tags: mailto

Using SharePoint's Rich Text Box in a page

shehan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:17:48 GMT

ASP.Net does not provide a rich text box control in its set of web controls. So, if you need to place a rich text box on your SharePoint page you'll have to use a commercial, free or open source text box control (and there are plenty out there). However if you don't want to introduce another dependency, in the form of an external control, you can use SharePoint's built-in rich text box.

If you're creating a page layout that binds to a content types field then its straight forward and you can use RichTextField class. However, if you want to display a textbox that does not interact with a content type then you can use the InputFormTextBox and configure its properties so it render as a rich text box.

Here is an example:

<SharePoint:InputFormTextBox runat="server" ID="RichTextBox" ValidationGroup="CreateCase" Rows="8" Columns="40" RichText="true" RichTextMode="Compatible" AllowHyperlink="true" TextMode="MultiLine" />

Note: change the RichTextMode value to 'FullHtml' to render more html icons in text box's tool bar.

Technorati Tags: Rich text box,asp.net

CabLib Compress ERROR: Could not flush cabinet: Could not create cabinet file

shehan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:34:38 GMT

If you encounter this error when building a WSP it could mean that your files are read-only. Most source control tools mark files as read-only when a file is checked in. Either use the source controls tool to make the file writeable or right-click the file (or root folder) select Properties and uncheck Read-Only.

Technorati Tags: Soruce Control,Read Only,wsp,cablib