Category Archives: ECM

Access and Manipulate Navigation Settings via SharePoint Client Object Model

Overview

SharePoint Server OM provides  PortalNavigation class that represents navigation for portal pages and other portal navigation objects. In turn the PublishingWeb class  is used to access the navigation settings (PortalNavigation type).

What about Client Object Model? Unfortunately it is not supported to access and manipulate Navigation settings via CSOM since there is no PublishingWeb Client Object  in SharePoint 2010. But still it possible to accomplish via Client Object Model.

Retrieving Web Client Object with Properties

PortalNavigation class uses internally SPWeb.AllProperties property to store Navigation settings and the same type also exist as a Client Object – Web.AllProperties

ClientObject provides a base class for objects on a remote client, the full list of  client objects available in SharePoint 2010 could be found on MSDN page.

When accessing client objects there are some differences that concern how object properties are initialized. According to the MSDN, in the server object model, when you return an SPWeb object, all of its properties become available for use in code. But to improve performance in the client object model, when you return a Web object (JavaScript: Web) certain properties are not included, and you must explicitly retrieve them.

The following example is aimed to demonstrate how to retrieve Web client object with it properties:

Access and manipulate Navigation settings via CSOM

The following class represents Client Object Model (CSOM) implementation of PortalNavigation class:

The following example  demonstrates how to print and update navigation settings using ClientPortalNavigation class :

Summary

Since  Publishing API is not supported in Client Object Model of SharePoint 2010, there is no way to manage  the navigation settings for a publishing site the same way as in Server Object Model. But as was demonstrated in this article it could be accomplished via Web Client Object and Web.AllProperties property.

In turn, in SharePoint 2013 Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Publishing.Navigation namespace was introduced, in particular WebNavigationSettings class for managing the navigation settings for a publishing site.

References

How to to retrieve and display Social Ratings in Content Query web part

Overview

In this post we will continue the discussion of accessing Social Data in Content Query web part that we started in the previous post. But this time we are going to customize Content Query web part in order to retrieve and display Social Ratings.  Our goal here to retrieve and display social ratings using the same way that they are being displayed  in List View.

When Ratings is enabled in List settings, the rating field is rendered in List View as shown below

ListViewWithRatings

and the customized Content Query web part for displaying Ratings control  will look like this

CBQWithSocialRatings

Prerequisites:

Implementation

So, lets start with the implementation of XSL stylesheet for rendering the Ratings control.

Social Ratings fields in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 comes with the following fields for Social Ratings:

  • AverageRating
  • RatingCount

For rendering AverageRating field in List View the  TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\XSL\fldtypes_ratings.xsl is used. We will utilize templates from this file, but in order to make it work properly with CQWP, some modifications should be applied.

Ratings XSL stylesheet for CQWP

Templates definitions for the client side initialization and for rendering of of Ratings manager

Main XSL stylesheet

Custom ContentQueryMain.xsl is used, in which  the template for client side initialization of Ratings control is invoked

Source

Item XSL stylesheet

Custom ItemStyle.xsl is used, in which  the template for rendering Ratings control per page is invoked

Source

Ratings XSL Parameters

Parameter values are retrieved from resource file  and are passed via ParamaterBindings web part property

Let’s summarize.

In order to configure CQWP  for displaying Social Ratings , the following steps should be accomplished:

References

Metadata Navigation in SharePoint 2010: customizing KeyFilters control

As described in Metadata navigation overview (SharePoint Server 2010), metadata navigation  includes the following user controls:

  • Navigation hierarchies   Use and expand the capabilities of list views to navigate hierarchies of folders, content types, choice fields, or managed metadata term sets. This allows users to use list views to filter on a metadata hierarchy just like navigating folders
  • Key Filters   This control appears below the site hierarchy control and can consist of several fields such as date, choice, content type, single and multi-value fields, currency, yes / no, and user fields. Any number of key filters can be applied in combination with a selected navigation hierarchy.

Navigation hierarchies and KeyFilter user controls registration  and also rendering templates for KeyFilter control are defined in MetadataNavTree.ascx and MetadataNavKeyFilters.ascx files.

Our goal here to show possible ways on how  KeyFilters control could be customized from the UI perspective.

Below is represented diagram on how KeyFilters control is rendered.

KeyFilters control diagram

Depending on field type different rendering templates for composite field are applied as shown in table below.

Composite field rendering template name Field type
KeyFiltersCompositeFieldRangeCapable for range capable field  such as Choice
KeyFiltersCompositeFieldUser User
KeyFiltersCompositeFieldDefault default rendering template for key filters composite field

But KeyFilter control has some limited functionality regarding customizing List Field Iterator  and composite field templates, for example it is not possible to specify alternative templates for composite field templates.

One of the possible ways for making KeyFilters control UI customization more flexible is to extend it by allowing to specify custom templates  for composite fields.

Project with custom Key Filters control implementation  is located here.

Resulting page with custom KeyFilters control and custom rendering templates applied  is shown below. In this example control field label and value in composite fields rendering templates are rendered  in one row mode.

KeyFilters Control

References

Source code