Sharing SharePoint

I have moved my blog

Jessica Wang — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:53:59 +0000

I have moved all my blog posts to www.jessica-wang.com

Add stsadm to path

Jessica Wang — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:11:43 +0000

How to add stsadm to path so that you will not need to point it to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN to use it.

Just type in @set PATH=C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN;%PATH% in the command prompt.

Site Owner is unable to create sub sites – Access denied

Jessica Wang — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:39:45 +0000

Special thanks to Neville Pinto and Brain Farnhill who helped me with this problem.

The problem:
1. Owner of site C which is located under http://top/sites/siteC cannot create a subsite under site C
2. Owner has read only rights on http://top
3. http://top/sites inherits all permissions from parent site
4. Access denied error when creating a subsite on site C

The solution is that straight forward, just that it didn’t occur to me!!
1. The site owner needs to have contribute rights to the Site Directory.
2. Break inheritance on site list on http://top/sites and give owner of site C contributor rights

Problem solved!

I passed my 74-674 BVPS exam

Jessica Wang — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:27:49 +0000

I passed my BVPS exam on Monday 30th March. It is a bit late to blog about it but what the hell.

I found the materials on BVPS extremely helpful, especially the study guide. I guess the key to it is to be mentally prepared to read 5 case studies and when in doubt, always go back to the case study.

Custom Application.master – workflow error

Jessica Wang — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:20:49 +0000

I have a custom application.master page to customise the look and feel of the _layout page. I accidentally copied the search control onto the application.master. All works well until you try to create a workflow and it would not work, and you will recieve an error(not very friendly error). Existing workflow can be used, you just can’t create new workflows.

So if you have the same problem as I do, I hope this post saves you some time.

Make A Promise To Go Green And Get 250 GB Free File Hosting

Jessica Wang — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:43:24 +0000

I know this is not related to SharePoint in any way but we need to save the earth besides there is a bonus for you. Do your bit for the earth and pledge now.

I promise to
1. not print out documents to read whenever possible.
2. print on recycle paper and on both sides. Do you?
3. switch off all appliances (except the fridge) at the power outlet whenever they are not in use. Do you?

http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/01/20/make-a-promise-to-go-green-and-get-250-gb-free-file-hosting.html

Increase Size of Site Template using STSADM

Jessica Wang — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:20:55 +0000

To increase the size of the default sharepoint template size for Sites

Run Command Prompt, Type in

stsadm -o setproperty -pn max-template-site-size -pv 200000000

The line above will change the max size that can be saved as a site template to 20MB, the default value that is set is ony 10MB.

Display site members from AD Groups

Jessica Wang — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:12:31 +0000

I recently have to do this for a client. The web part is suppose to display a list of all users from the Sharepoint Security groups for every site. The out of the box webpart(Site Users) will display only the name of the AD group and not the members within it.

To get started, it is easier if you installed the Webpart templates for VS.NET

Created a solution using webpart template and you are ready to go.

Call this function to pass in the name of the ADgroup and it will return a list of users name.

//Query Active Directory to get users from Active Directory Groups

public StringCollection GetGroupMembers(stringstrGroup)

{StringCollection groupMemebers = new StringCollection();

try

{DirectoryEntry ent = new DirectoryEntry(LDAP://OU=youOU,DC=yourDC);

DirectorySearcher srch = new DirectorySearcher(“(CN=” + strGroup + “)”);

SearchResultCollection coll = srch.FindAll();

foreach (SearchResult rs in coll)

{ResultPropertyCollection resultPropColl = rs.Properties;

foreach (Object memberColl in resultPropColl["member"])

{DirectoryEntry gpMemberEntry = new DirectoryEntry(“LDAP://”+ memberColl);

System.DirectoryServices.PropertyCollection userProps = gpMemberEntry.Properties;

//getting user properties from AD

object obVal = userProps["displayName"].Value;

object obAcc = userProps["sAMAccountName"].Value;

if (null != obVal) {

groupMemebers.Add( “User Name:” +obAcc.ToString() + “, User login name:” + obVal.ToString() + “
”);}}}}

catch (Exception ex)

{//writer.Write(ex.Message);}

Return groupMemebers;

To get the names of the current site users from Sharepoint Security Groups:

ArrayList belongToDomain = new ArrayList();

ArrayList names = new ArrayList();

using(SPSite collSite = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.ID))

{using (SPWeb elevatedWeb = collSite.OpenWeb(SPContext.Current.Web.ID))

{//All users in the site

SPUserCollection collUser = SPContext.Current.Web.AllUsers;

SPGroupCollection collgroup = SPContext.Current.Web.Groups;

//for each item in the collection of groups

foreach (object group in collgroup){

//display all users other then the visitors

if (group.ToString() != “Visitors”){

//check that the users in the whole site collection belongs to current site group

foreach (SPUser singleuser in collUser)

{//get the list of groups that the user belongs to

foreach (SPGroup userGroup in singleuser.Groups)

{//check if it matches any of the current site groups

if (group.ToString() == userGroup.ToString())

{//check if the user from the sharepoint group is a AD group

if (singleuser.IsDomainGroup)

{//pass the name into Array that query the AD

belongToDomain.Add(singleuser.ToString());}

else{

//otherwise add into the Array that stores list of names, in case the user name is not from an AD group.

names.Add(singleuser.LoginName);

);}} }}}}}}

Now that we have the names of the AD groups from the share point security groups and query the AD for a list of user name. It is now in the names array, we need to make sure that there are no duplicate names. So call the function below and pass in the names array.

//remove duplicate users name Function

public ArrayList RemoveDups(ArrayList items)

{

ArrayList noDups = new ArrayList();

foreach (string strItem in items)

{

if (!noDups.Contains(strItem.Trim()))

{

noDups.Add(strItem.Trim());

}

noDups.Sort();

return noDups;}

Display Current User Name in a page

Jessica Wang — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:01:04 +0000

I had to display the current user name in a page within Sharepoint, So I created this javascript to get the name from the welcome link.

1. Enter the javascript within the page.aspx

There are 2 ways which you can get the Id which is highlighted in red.

1. Right the page and view source to get the ID

2. Using IE Developer Toolbar, click on the Name

XPath Operators

Jessica Wang — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:43:43 +0000

XPath Queries

Operator	Description
/ (child operator)	Refers to the root of the XML document when used at the beginning of the XPath expression. The child operator is used to specify the next child to select. The expression “/Employees/Employee”, for, example says, start at the root of the XML document, select the Employees node and then select all the Employee child nodes within the Employees node. This will return the two Employee nodes in the sample XML document.
// (recursive descendant operator)	The recursive descendant operator indicates to include all descendant nodes in the search. Using the operator at the beginning of the XPath expression means you start from the root of the XML document. The expression “//LastName” starts at the root and finds any LastName node. The expression “/Employees//LastName” selects the Employees node and then, within that node, finds any LastName node. It yields the same result, but searches in a different way.
* (wildcard operator)	The wildcard operator finds any node. The expression “/” finds any node under the root, which in our case is Employees. The expression “/Employees/” means find any node under the Employees node, which in our case results with the two Employee nodes. Now what is the difference between the “/Employees” and “/Employees/” expression? The first expression returns the Employees node but the second node finds any node under the Employees node, meaning it returns the two Employee nodes. The expression “//” means to select any node including descendant nodes, so it will effectively list every single node in the complete XML document.
. (current context operator)	The current context operator refers to the current context. For example, you have written some code that selected the Employees node and then from there you run the expression “./Employee”, which means it starts out from the currently selected Employees node and then selects the two Employee nodes. The expression “Employee” would yield the same result because it also starts out from the current context. Similar the expression “.//LastName” means start from the current context, the Employees node, and find any LastName node including any descendant nodes.
.. (parent operator)	The parent operator refers to the parent. For example, the expression “/Employees/Employee/..” returns the Employees node because you navigate down to the Employee nodes and then tell it to return its parent, which is the Employees node.
@ (attribute operator)	The attribute operator refers to an attribute instead of an element. The expression “/Employees//@ID” selects any ID attribute it finds under the Employees node. Now, keep in mind that the XPath query always returns the selected node. In the case of an attribute, the node below it is its value. So, the expression really two returns nodes, each with the value of each selected attribute. Furthermore, you can use the wildcard operator with attributes, so “/Employees//@*” means any attribute underneath the Employees node.
[ ] (filter operator)	You can apply a filter operator to filter the selected nodes. This works with attributes and with elements. The expression “/Employees/Employee[@ID=1]” returns any Employee node under the Employees node that has an ID attribute with the value one. You also can apply filters that just say that an attribute or element with that name needs to be present. For example, the expression “/Employees/Employee[WebAddress]” returns Employee nodes that have a WebAddress node as child. The expression “/Employees/Employee[FirstName='Klaus']” returns the Employee node that has a FirstName node with the value Klaus.
text() function	The “text()” function refers to the text of the selected node or attribute. The expression “//Employee//text()” does not list all the descendant nodes of all Employee nodes but rather the value for each descendant node. The expression “//Employee/FirstName[text()='Klaus']” lists all FirstName nodes which have a value of Klaus.
[ ] (collection operator)	When your expression returns more then one node with the same name, you have a collection returned. The expression “//Employee” returns two Employee nodes, which is nothing more than a collection of Employee nodes. You can apply a collection operator and specify which item from the collection you want to select. Keep in mind that the index starts at one. The expression “//Employee[2]” returns the second Employee node. The order of the selected nodes is the same order as in the XML document. You can use the collection operator in any blend, such as “//Employee[1]/LastName”, which selects the first Employee node and then from there the LastName node.
( ) (group operator)	The collection operator can sometimes have some odd side effects. Assume you have two Employee nodes and each has two Job nodes. What does the expression “//Employee/Job[1]” return? It returns the first Job node for each selected Employee node. But, using the group operator allows you to apply explicit precedence to selections. The expression “(//Employee/Job)[4]” first selects all Job nodes for all Employee nodes and from that collection it returns the fourth node. The group operator can only be applied to the top level expression; for example, “//Employees/(Employee/FirstName)” is invalid.
comment() function	Returns a comment node. The expression “//comment()” returns any comment node in the XML. The expression “/Employees/comment()” returns the comment nodes under the Employees node.
node() function	XML documents consist of elements, attributes, and their values, each being a node. So, in XPath expressions you can use a node() function instead of a node name or the text() function. It is a generic way to address a node. The expressions “//Employee/JobTitle/node()” and “//Employee/JobTitle/text()” return the same result, the value of both JobTitle nodes. But, “//Employee//node()” will not just return the elements but also the values of each element, because both are nodes.
\| (union or set operator)	Returns the union of one or more location paths. The expression “//LastName \| //FirstName” returns all the LastName and FirstName nodes. It preserves the order of the elements as in the XML and does not return any duplicates. The two location paths “//Employee[@ID=1] \| //Employee[FirstName='Klaus']” return the same nodes but the union of these two returns just the one unique node.