Tuesday, May 26, 2009

MOSS 2007 Content Type Field Authorization

In MOSS 2007 you have authorization control over an entire content type, but not over a single field or combination of fields. This requirement comes up often with some of my clients, so I decided to whip up a quick authorization container control that could be wrapped around fields in a page layout to control who has access to the fields. This will work both for content editing and for content viewing.

First you need to create a custom ASP.NET control that can act as a container. While this is fairly easy, one item that often catches people unaware is the ParseChildren attribute. You need to set the ParseChildren to "false" in order for the custom ASP.NET control to interpret nested tags as separate controls rather than as properties. Setting the ParseChildren attribute to "true" will cause the control to think that the nested tags contain values that should be set to the matching properties of the control.

The complete code for the finished control is listed below:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Text;

using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

namespace MyCompany.SharePoint
{
[DefaultProperty("Groups")]
[ParseChildren(false)]
[ToolboxData("<{0}:AuthorizationContainer runat=server>")]
public class AuthorizationContainer : CompositeControl
{
private const string groupsCategory = "SharePoint";
private const string groupsViewState = "Groups";

[Bindable(false)]
[Category(groupsCategory)]
[DefaultValue("")]

[Localizable(false)]
public string Groups
{
get
{
string groups = (string)ViewState[groupsViewState];
if (groups == null)
{
groups = string.Empty;
}
return groups;
}
set
{
ViewState[groupsViewState] = value;
}
}

protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output)
{
try
{
SPWeb web = SPControl.GetContextWeb(this.Context);
SPUser user = web.CurrentUser;
bool isInGroup = false;

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.Groups))
{
string[] items = this.Groups.Split(',');
foreach (string item in items)
{
if (this.IsInGroup(user, item.Trim()))
{
isInGroup = true;
break;
}
}
}
else
{
isInGroup = true;
}

if (isInGroup)
{
base.RenderContents(output);
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
output.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
}

private bool IsInGroup(SPUser user, string name)
{
foreach (SPGroup group in user.Groups)
{
if (group.Name == name) return true;
}
return false;
}
}
}

As you can see the code is fairly simple. There is a property for setting the comma separated list of SharePoint group names that are authorized to view the content of the control, and a render method that checks to make sure that the current user is a member of one of the specified groups.
Using this new control to filter authorized users is super easy. Open up the page you want to edit in SharePoint Designer and edit the page layout of the page. The page layout will contain placeholder controls for the content type fields. Wrap the new AuthorizationContainer around the sections that you want to control. An example of this is listed below.

<MyControls:AuthorizationContainer runat="server" Groups="Approvers">
<table id="MSO_ContentTable" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%">
<tr> <td>
<div class="pageContent">
<PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField id="content" FieldName="PublishingPageContent" runat="server"/>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</MyControls:AuthorizationContainer>

While this code sample is simple in nature, you could extend it in many ways. It could filter authorization by audience membership or by custom logic based on database stored values. Feel free to turn it into whatever you want, just make sure to share the goods with me.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Announcing the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) v2.0

Microsoft and HiSoftware are pleased to announce the release of the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) v2.0. The AKS v2.0 provides an accessible development framework and significantly reduces the level of effort and knowledge needed by customers and partners to improve the accessibility of SharePoint based sites and applications.
You can download from url:http://www.hisoftware.com/

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Propagate Content Type Changes

There is a common problem of propagating changes to content types deployed via a Feature.
I found solution for this problem by extended stsadm wroted by Søren to propagate changes.
You will find extended stsadm in this url:
http://stsadm.blogspot.com/2008/05/propagate-content-type-changes.html

Sunday, March 1, 2009

ValidationGroup in SharePoint 2007

The situation

You have an ASP.NET control that contains validation controls in the masterpage or page layout for a publishing site (an ASP.NET login control for example). When you try to edit and check in a publishing page you receive the following error.
This page contains content or formatting that is not valid. You can find more information in the affected sections.

The problem
Even if you fill in all the required fields on the publishing page, the validation controls on the other ASP.NET controls prevent the page from saving.

The solution:
You have 2 solutions:
1. Put your control in EditModePanel
<PublishingWebControls:EditModePanel runat=server id="EditModePanel1" PageDisplayMode="Display">
<------------Your Control --------------->
</PublishingWebControls:EditModePanel>

2. Hide your validators in edit mode:
WebPartManager wp = WebPartManager.GetCurrentWebPartManager(Page);
if(wp.DisplayMode == WebPartManager.BrowseDisplayMode)
{
yourvalidator.Visible = true;
}
else
{
yourvalidator.Visible = false;
}

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Deleting content Types in Sharepoint 2007 (The content type is in use)

Sometimes when you try to delete content type you faced error: The content type is in use.

Finding Lists/Libraries using the Content Type:
  1. We need a tool like the SharePoint Explorer for WSS 3.0 (needs to be run on the WSS server itself) to figure out what the SiteCollection ID is.
  2. We need the ContentTypeID of the content type we want to delete, the easiest way to get this is right out of the URL when you go to delete (or edit) the content type (Site Settings->Site Content Types->Click on your content type).

    Here's a sample URL.
    http://w2k3-tyler-virt/_layouts/ManageContentType.aspx? ctype=0x010700037B79D2DD41C24A8F55D82FC6B71FAC&Source=http%3A%2F% 2Fw2k3%2Dtyler%2Dvirt%2F%5Flayouts%2Fmngctype%2Easpx
    In this example the Content Type ID is 0x010700037B79D2DD41C24A8F55D82FC6B71FAC
  3. Now connect content database
    run stored procedure
    [proc_ListContentTypeInUse] [SiteCollectionId], [ContentTypeId]Or in out case:
    [proc_ListContentTypeInUse] 'D2F8C831-4CA7-41C0-8497-82F897B61B2B', 0x010700037B79D2DD41C24A8F55D82FC6B71FAC

or run query:
SELECT SiteId, sys.fn_varbintohexstr(ContentTypeId) AS ID, WebId, ListId, IsFieldId, Class
FROM ContentTypeUsageWHERE (sys.fn_varbintohexstr(ContentTypeId) LIKE '[ContentTypeID]%')

Remove these records and error appears when you try to delete will disappear.