Understanding Field Controls and Web Parts in SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites

I just read an great article from Andrew Connell about the use of Field Controls and Web Parts in MOSS 2007 Publishing sites.

He describes clearly the advantages and disadvantages of using them and that you should considered in the early phase of the implementation of a new publishing site which approach to use.

Read the article on MSDN
Understanding Field Controls and Web Parts in SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites.

SharePoint PublishingWeb class inside out

For a project I've done in the past, I had to create an application that could report all sorts of SharePoint site information. While developing this application, the biggest challenge was to gather information about publishing sites, without the use off the Micosoft.SharePoint.Publishing assembly. The reason for this was that the application also had to run on a WSS only installation of SharePoint. During refactoring I found out that most information was stored in the propertybag of the web.

I created a SharePoint Publishing helper class that can retrieve values for the following PublishingWeb properties and functions.

• GetAvailablePageLayouts
• GetIncludeInNavigation
• IncludeInCurrentNavigation
• IncludeInGlobalNavigation
• IncludePagesInNavigation
• IncludeSubSitesInNavigation
• InheritAlternateCssUrl
• InheritCurrentNavigation
• InheritCustomMasterUrl
• InheritGlobalNavigation
• IsInheritingAvailablePageLayouts
• IsInheritingAvailableWebTemplates
• IsPublishingWeb
• NavigationAutomaticSortingMethod
• NavigationShowSiblings
• NavigationSortAscending
• OrderingMethod
• PagesListId

public static class SharePointPublishingHelper
{
 public static bool IsPublishingWeb(SPWeb web)
 {
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__PublishingFeatureActivated", false);
 }

 public static bool IncludeInGlobalNavigation(SPWeb web)
 {
  return GetIncludeInNavigation(web, "__GlobalNavigationExcludes");
 }
 
 public static bool IncludeInCurrentNavigation(SPWeb web)
 {
  return GetIncludeInNavigation(web, "__CurrentNavigationExcludes");
 }
 
 private static bool GetIncludeInNavigation(SPWeb web, string propertyKey)
 {
  if(web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(propertyKey))
  {
   throw new ArgumentException("The argument can't be null or a empty string.", "propertyKey");
  }
 
  SPWeb parentWeb = web.ParentWeb;
  if (!web.IsRootWeb && parentWeb != null)
  {
   string globalNavigationExcludes = GetValueFromPropertyBag(parentWeb, propertyKey) as string;
   if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(globalNavigationExcludes))
   {
    string[] list = globalNavigationExcludes.Split(new[] { ';' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
    bool found = list.Contains(web.ID.ToString("D"));
 
    return !found;
   }
  }
 
  return true;
 }
 
 public static bool InheritGlobalNavigation(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  if (web.IsRootWeb)
  {
   return false;
  }
 
  return web.Navigation.UseShared;
 }
 
 public static bool InheritCurrentNavigation(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  if (web.IsRootWeb)
  {
   return false;
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__InheritCurrentNavigation", true);
 }
 
 public static bool IncludeSubSitesInNavigation(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__IncludeSubSitesInNavigation", true);
 }
 
 public static bool IncludePagesInNavigation(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__IncludePagesInNavigation", true);
 }
 
 public static string OrderingMethod(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  string value = GetValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__NavigationOrderingMethod").ToString();
  switch (value)
  {
   case "0":
    return "Automatic";
   case "1":
    return "ManualWithAutomaticPageSorting";
   case "2":
    return "Manual";
   default:
    break;
  }
 
  return "Manual";
 }
 
 public static bool NavigationShowSiblings(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  if (web.IsRootWeb)
  {
   return false;
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__NavigationShowSiblings", true);
 }
 
 public static string NavigationAutomaticSortingMethod(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  string value = GetValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__NavigationAutomaticSortingMethod").ToString();
  switch (value)
  {
   case "0":
    return "Title";
   case "1":
    return "CreatedDate";
   case "2":
    return "LastModifiedDate";
   default:
    break;
  }
 
  return "Title";
 }
 
 public static bool NavigationSortAscending(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__NavigationSortAscending", true);
 }
 
 public static Guid PagesListId(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  string value = GetValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__PagesListId").ToString();
  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
  {
   return Guid.Empty;
  }
 
  return new Guid(value);
 }
 
 public static bool InheritCustomMasterUrl(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__InheritsCustomMasterUrl", false);
 }
 
 public static bool InheritAlternateCssUrl(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__InheritsAlternateCssUrl", false);
 }
 
 public static bool IsInheritingAvailableWebTemplates(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  return GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__InheritWebTemplates", false);
 }
 
 public static bool IsInheritingAvailablePageLayouts(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  string value = GetValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__PageLayouts").ToString();
  if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
  {
   return value.Equals("__inherit", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase);
  }
 
  return false;
 }
 
 public static string[] GetAvailablePageLayouts(SPWeb web)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
 
  List list = new List();
 
  string value = GetValueFromPropertyBag(web, "__PageLayouts").ToString();
  if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
  {
   SPWeb rootWeb = web.Site.RootWeb;
 
   var pageLayouts = XElement.Parse(value).Elements("layout");
   foreach (var pageLayout in pageLayouts)
   {
    string itemUrl = null;
 
    string id = null;
    XAttribute guidAttribute = pageLayout.Attribute("guid");
    if (guidAttribute != null)
    {
     id = guidAttribute.Value;
    }
 
    // first try to find pagelayout by id
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(id))
    {
     SPFile file = rootWeb.GetFile(new Guid(id));
     if (file != null && file.Exists)
     {
      itemUrl = file.ServerRelativeUrl;
     }
    }
 
    // if no pagelayout is found by id, try the url
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(itemUrl))
    {
     string url = null;
     XAttribute urlAttribute = pageLayout.Attribute("url");
     if (urlAttribute != null)
     {
      url = urlAttribute.Value;
     }
 
     SPFile file = rootWeb.GetFile(url);
     if (file != null && file.Exists)
     {
      itemUrl = file.ServerRelativeUrl;
     }
    }
 
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(itemUrl))
    {
     list.Add(itemUrl);
    }
   }
  }
 
  return list.ToArray();
 }
 
 private static object GetValueFromPropertyBag(SPWeb web, string key)
 {
  if (web == null)
  {
   throw new ArgumentNullException("web");
  }
  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(key))
  {
   throw new ArgumentException("The argument can't be null or a empty string.", "key");
  }
 
  object value = null;
 
  // First check the AllProperties collection
  if (web.AllProperties.ContainsKey(key))
  {
   value = web.AllProperties[key];
  }
 
  // Still empty, check also the Properties collection
  if (value == null)
  {
   if (web.Properties.ContainsKey(key))
   {
    value = web.Properties[key];
   }
  }
 
  return value;
 }
 
 private static bool GetBooleanValueFromPropertyBag(SPWeb web, string key, bool defaultValue)
 {
  string value = GetValueFromPropertyBag(web, key) as string;
 
  bool ret;
  if (!bool.TryParse(value, out ret))
  {
   ret = defaultValue;
  }
 
  return ret;
 }
}

Using LINQ to query SharePoint collections

I came across a challenge when I wanted to using LINQ on several SharePoint collection classes and I noticed that it wasn't possible to do this....So why not? LINQ lets you query any collection implementing the IEnumerable interface and after some research I found that most of the SharePoint collections don't implement this interface.

Ok, how to overcome this challenge? Arrays implement IEnumerable....Copy the items from the collection to an array! SharePoint collections implement the ICollection interface which provides the method: void CopyTo(Array array, int index), so this should not be a problem. Well it does!

SharePoint collections derive from a class called SPBaseCollection and this class implements ICollection. But because the explicit implementation of CopyTo, this method is private.

For this I wrote a little helper extension method that makes it possible to copy a SharePoint collections (or any class that implements ICollection) to an array of a particular type and validate for null at the same time.

public static class Helpers
{
 public static T[] CopyToArray(this ICollection collection)
 {
     if (collection == null) { return new T[0]; }

     T[] array = new T[collection.Count];
     collection.CopyTo(array, 0);

     return array;
 }
}

Now it is possible to make Linq queries like this:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://demosite"))
{
 using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
 {
     // Get all webs ordered by Title
     var items1 = web.Webs.CopyToArray< SPWeb>().OrderBy(p => p.Title);
     foreach (var item in items1)
     {
         Console.WriteLine(item.Title);
     }

     // Get all content types grouped by group and ordered by group and name
     var items2 = web.ContentTypes.CopyToArray< SPContentType>().GroupBy(p => p.Group).OrderBy(g => g.Key);
     foreach (IGrouping<> group in items2)
     {
         Console.WriteLine(group.Key);

         foreach (var item in group.OrderBy(p => p.Name))
         {
             Console.WriteLine(item.Name);
         }
     }

     // Get a list by name and not by title
     var list = web.Lists.CopyToArray< SPList>().SingleOrDefault(p => p.RootFolder.Name.Equals("pages", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase));
     if (list != null)
     {
         Console.WriteLine("List: {0} found!", list.Title);
     }
 }
}