Friday, March 21, 2008

Zach Rosenfield has a nice post on calling WebServices from PowerShell. The steps are pretty simple: generate a proxy cs file, compile it into a DLL and then load that DLL up into Powershell AppDomain.

Well I've been doing some work with quite a few of the WebServices and I wanted to compile all the proxys into a single DLL.

Use Zach's post to setup the PowerShell environment variables needed to call the Visual Studio SDK utilities wsdl.exe and csc.exe

Heres the script to compile all the available SharePoint Webservice's into one DLL.

It simply enumerates all the ASMX files in the ISAPI directory and passes each item in that list to WSDL.exe which generates the proxy cs files.

You need to change the URL in this script to point to a valid SharePoint site and make sure there are no other .cs files in the directory before running this script.

$asmxlist= dir "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI" *.asmx | select name

$asmxlist | foreach-object {
write-host "Generating SharePoint Proxy Library for $($_.name)" -foregroundcolor green 

$outputfilename="FlexnetConsult.SharePoint.$($_.name).cs"
$namespace=[IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($_.name)

wsdl "http://portal.contoso.com/matters/sites/_vti_bin/$($_.name)" /o:$outputfilename /namespace:$namespace

}

write-host "Compiling SharePoint Proxy Library" -foregroundcolor green 
csc /t:library /out:FlexnetConsult.SharePoint.WebServices.dll *.cs 

 

So the output should be something like this

 

image

 

Now three of the WebServices generate an error SlideShow.asmx. FormserverProxy.asmx and contentareatoolboxservice.asmx but as I'm unlikely to use them I'm not going to worry about those.

So now we have a DLL called FlexnetConsult.SharePoint.WebServices.dll in our directory that we can use to call the (almost) any SharePoint Web Service.

I've attached the compiled dll and script.

In my next post I'll use the DLL to do something I've wanted to do for ages and that's list, add and delete Web Parts on a page using PowerShell.

Now your probably shouting, hey why not just call the object model and GetLimitedWebPartManager, yep but that doesn't work as without a web.config and possibly a HttpContext all you get back are Error WebParts as the WebPart safecontrollist cannot be accessed.

 

 

Friday, March 21, 2008 7:59:44 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
 Thursday, March 20, 2008

There is an issue outstanding in WSS that is causing a few of the people who download our free Flash Web Parts grief. 

The issue shows up when anonymous users hit a web page with our Web Parts on it and they get authentication prompts.

I've gone into detail into how we get SharePoint data into flash here. We call owssvr.dll via HTTP get, pass it some parameters and get the xml data back. Great, this has been around and working since 2001. Unfortunately in WSS 3 (and MOSS) an authentication request is sent back for anonymous users even if all the settings are configured correctly. SP1 doesn't fix this either.

The issue has been open with PSS since late last year with no progress. Another conversation this week assured me this be actioned..still waiting.

Its a dismal situation and I apologise to anybody who has wasted time on trying to get our Web Parts to work.

I'm trying not to think about the resources been expended on Office 14 when issues like this remain outstanding.

Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:32:25 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, March 18, 2008

While preparing for the presentation on Silverlight and SharePoint next week I've just discovered that the current Beta 1 of SilverLight 2 is unable to call SharePoint's native webservices.

The technical reason is that the WSDL SharePoint generates includes an asd:any declaration which is translated by the proxy generator as requiring the XmlElement class but Silverlight does not support this class. So you're not able to call GetList or GetListItems in Lists.asmx for instance.

I've posted on the Silverlight forums about this but the reply I got from Yavor Georgiev (Program Manager - Connected Services) was not clear as to whether this is a planned feature for SL 2.

There are a few ways around this which I'll go into in the presentation but none are very pleasant prospects.

There's probably still time to get this feature in v2. The best thing is to let MS know this is an important issue by adding support on the thread. Also worth keeping an eye on the Silverlight Web Services blog.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:29:36 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
 Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I'm really stoked to be presenting at the UK SharePoint user group meeting in Basingstoke on the 27 March about Silverlight and SharePoint.

This presentation will explain what Silverlight is, what the benefits are over standard web development and how Silverlight can be hosted in and integrate with SharePoint.
With few slides and plenty of demos I'll walkthrough the creation of a Silverlight 2.0 video browser application that uses data from SharePoint and then deploy it to SharePoint. I'll also show how a commercial Silverlight 2.0 product for SharePoint is put together.

The other presentations are

Architecting a Highly Available MOSS Farm - by Lewis Baldwin, ICS,  Head of Infrastructure and Support

Governance: Protecting your SharePoint Investment by Symon Garfield, ICS,  SharePoint Practice Lead

The good folks at ICS solutions are hosting us at their offices in Basingstoke (http://www.icssolutions.co.uk/pages/howtofindus.aspx).

Just post a reply with your full name on this thread http://suguk.org/forums/thread/8918.aspx (registration required)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 1:06:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, March 08, 2008

Picture this, you're a IT bod working for Thomson Financial, you've got I don't know how many sites subscribing to your global financial news feed, you need to check that your latest update is working, so you key a test message in the system, hmm that's funny nothing coming out on the test feed reader.

Try a second one, and a third and you just keep on going...

Now you did check its the test system you were logged in to?

 

Test Please Ignore

 

Its even harder to ignore on some other sites...looks like they might have lost ignore 1 and ignore 2 though, maybe they meant these to go around the world :-)

 

ThisIsATest2 - Copy

WTF
Saturday, March 08, 2008 7:47:50 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Wednesday, March 05, 2008

 

The Silverlight 2 Beta 1 downloads have been released!

via Micheal Sync

  • Silverlight 2 (beta1) runtime (download)
  • Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 Software Development Kit Beta 1 (download)
  • Source Code and Unit Tests for Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Controls (download)
  • Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 Software Development Kit Beta 1 Documentation (download)
  • Silverlight 2 (beta1) MSDN (view online)
  • Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 (download)

Additional Tools ~

  • Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview (download)

 

Now you have a chance to run the samples that have been posted at the Silverlight 'blueprints' for SharePoint website at a couple of days ago that nobody could run without the runtime above. They say Software+Services blueprints, I say a bunch of code samples.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008 8:10:59 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Its pretty easy to add list items to SharePoint with Powershell so here's a quick sample

 

[void][System.reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint") 
 
# Add an new item to the announcements list
 
$site    =     new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://teams.contoso.com")                                                        
$web     =    $site.rootweb                                                                                                
 
$list    =    $web.Lists["Announcements"]                                                                              
 
$newitem=    $list.items.Add()                                                                                                  
                                                                                                  
$newitem["Title"]=    "New CFO Appointed";                                                                                          
$newitem["Body"]=    "Our new CFO is Harry Varden, money still not recovered from previous appointee, legal action is ongoing";                                                                                          
$newitem["Expires"]=     [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(5)
 
$newitem.update() 
 
$web.Dispose()
$site.Dispose()                                                                                                      

This could easily be turned into a function

Here I've referenced the field names by text but I could have used SharePoint's built-in list of field Id's using the SPBuiltInFieldId class.

In that case the fields are referenced by using the syntax [Microsoft.SharePoint.SPBuiltInFieldId]::Title

To get a list of fields in the class you can use this PowerShell command

[Microsoft.SharePoint.SPBuiltInFieldId] | get-member -static | select name | more

get-member is a handy class that reflects over a given object and returns the list of properties, fields and methods.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:44:06 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 

Deleting a list item with PowerShell is pretty easy also

If you know or can find out the ID of the list item use the GetItemById method of the list itself

 

[void][System.reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint") 

# Delete an item from the announcements list by Item ID

$site    =     new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://teams.contoso.com")                                                        
$web     =    $site.rootweb                                                                                                

$list    =    $web.Lists["Announcements"]                                                                              

$deaditem=    $list.GetItemById(2)
$deaditem.Delete()

$web.Dispose()
$site.Dispose()                                                                                                      
 
Another way to delete items is to run a CAML query and delete items from the collection
This code sample deletes all those announcements that have expired dates before yesterday
 

# Delete an item from the announcements list by using a CAML query [void][System.reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint") $site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://teams.contoso.com") $web = $site.rootweb $list = $web.Lists["Announcements"]

$DeleteBeforeDate = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility]::CreateISO8601DateTimeFromSystemDateTime([DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1)) $caml=' <Where> <Lt> <FieldRef Name="Expires" /> <Value Type="DateTime">{0}</Value> </Lt> </Where> ' -f $DeleteBeforeDate $query=new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPQuery $query.Query=$caml $col=$list.GetItems($query) # Pipe results to a loop and delete each element $col | % { $_.Delete() } $web.Dispose() $site.Dispose()

 

Be very careful with this as a badly formed CAML query will return ALL the items in a list thus deleting all items in the list, use a line like $col | select Title instead of the delete to double check the results before you run the function. Using the invaluable CAML Builder utility from U2U for these queries is a good idea, just remember to remove the <Query> tags from the result.

The third way is to use some of Powershell's powerful string matching feature. This article gives a simple overview of the like and match commands in Powershell

Using like or match we could compare any field in a list and delete on that basis.

For instance lets say we need to delete all Announcements that had CEO in the title. This sample does that

 

[void][System.reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint") 

# Delete announcements that match a string pattern

$site    =     new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://teams.contoso.com")                                                        
$web     =    $site.rootweb                                                                                                

$list    =    $web.Lists["Announcements"]                                                                              

$list.get_items() | where { $_.Title -like '*CEO*' } | % { $_.Delete() }
                                                                                              

$web.Dispose()
$site.Dispose()      

 

Note the get_items() syntax as PowerShell has a problem with Items as a property so we have to use the assessor directly.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:43:55 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, February 25, 2008

I forgot to post this before but Microsoft has created a virtual lab based on my blog postings. If you're interested in Powershell and SharePoint its definitely worth checking out

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032346304&EventCategory=3&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

As noted on Ben Pierce's blog Powershell is now a CER common engineering requirement for all products released in 2009 and beyond, that should mean as Office 14 is due for release in 2009 PowerShell should be a mandatory feature in SharePoint.

Thats good news and a big change as when I'd asked the question about PowerShell support in SharePoint to Mike Fitzmaurice back in February last year the answer was they had no plan to do so.

Monday, February 25, 2008 12:12:27 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |