Development

Dealing with SPListItemVersion and his cousin SPFileVersion during SPFile or SPListItem copying

Vitendy — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:23:07 GMT

Since I spent so many hours on this, I figured I'll post this to remember...

When copying SPFiles from one doc library to another, a few things to keep in mind:

SPFileVersion will not let you get a reference to the SPFile (per MSDN) so don't do this: SPWeb.GetFile(SPFileVersion.Url) because SPFile.Item will be null
SPFileVersionCollection (SPFile.Versions) is not in sync with SPListItemVersionCollection. SPFile.Versions actually does NOT return the current version. So, iterate through all SPFileVersions and use SPFile.Versions.GetVersionFromLabel(SPListItemVersion.VersionLabel)
To keep the check in comments with each version, use the following method to add a file to the target library: SPList.RootFolder.Files.Add(url,bytes,true,SPFileVersion.CheckInComments,false)
Iterate through versions via a SortedDictionary by Created date property -- the goal is to use SPListItemVersion information to update the newly created SPFile meta data.
SPFile.Item.Update() will create a new version; UpdateOverwriteVersion() will not; use the latter with SPFileVersions; use the former when adding a new SPListItem, to set values and incremenet versions.
Upload the current version of SPFile outside the SPListItemVersions loop
Be mindful that SPListItemVersion returns Modified and Created values as non-local time, so convert it.

Consider disabling item events during copy.

A good reference:

http://www.k2distillery.com/2007/10/copy-version-history-with_5.html

Subtext refuses to send e-mail via the contact form

Vitendy — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:00:01 GMT

SubText is my choice blogging app for this Blog. It's .Net based, open source, and just nifty. Yesterday I had a cow with it though. The contact form refused to send notification e-mails. No error was generated. That was confusing, discouraging and frustrating -- since potential clients contact me via this blog.

There were only two places that I knew of where changes could be made to the e-mail delivery mechanism. web.config file to set the smtp server and the contact form code to execute the delivery.

The mystery deepened when I could setup SubText on a couple of spare servers. Contact form worked just fine. What gives?

Well apparently during setup SubText requests an OPTIONAL e-mail address when setting up a user account for a blog. That e-mail address is used to deliver e-mail messages to from the contact form. Here all this time I was thinking it was the HostEmailAddress in web.config that these messages would be routed to.

After setting the e-mail address in the subtext_Config table in SQL. Messages started to work. Oh how magical!

All this to say, as a developer, I was just given a glimpse at what users may sometimes experience when I fail to clearly establish expectations for the operation of a system. Lesson learned!

More MOSS search crawler issues

Vitaly — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:45:33 GMT

"The crawler could not communicate with the server. Check that the server is available and that the firewall access is configured correctly.."

This error sometimes shows up in the Crawl Log in the SSP.

The issue in my case was a custom database that the crawler account did not have access to. Of course an easy way to figure this out is to login to the website as the crawler account -- to see what it sees... It worked. A quick adjustment of SQL permissions and voila, we're crawling again.

MOSS Search Crawler not crawling content on Devevelopment machine

Vitaly — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:09:43 GMT

Pesky little thing. MS introduced a loopback security check for websites accessed locally on the server.

To fix:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.

Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.

In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

Do you know your LDAP string?

Vitaly — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:16:59 GMT

You should. But here is a tool that can help get it:

http://www.infopathdev.com/files/folders/help_files/entry25827.aspx

SharePoint Timer Service and custom jobs

Vitaly — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:17:57 GMT

When deploying custom SPOneTimeSchedule job definitions sometimes the timer service (OWSTIMER.EXE) just sorta sits there. Your job definition is created, but isn't executed. It will most likely eventually run, but I have better things to do than sit around wait for it. Setting the time for the job in the past seems to move things along faster.

// Create new job
CustomJob MyJob = new CustomJob(Constants.JOB_NAME, webApp, properties.Definition.DisplayName);
MyJob.Title = Constants.JOB_TITLE;

// Set up the job to run once
MyJob.Schedule = new SPOneTimeSchedule(DateTime.Now.AddHours(-4));
MyJob.Update();

CLR .Net Versions

Vitaly — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:09:30 GMT

Do you know the difference between .Net CLR versions? Is 2.0.50727.1433 newere than 2.0.50727.42? What's the difference?

Here is a nice reference:

http://alt.pluralsight.com/wiki/default.aspx/Keith/DotnetVersionWiki.html

Import Excel Sheet to SQL Server 2005 database

Vitaly — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:20:42 GMT

What should be a simple engagement turned into a headache this evening. Importing from Excel in Sql 2005 has become more cumbersome due to various 'issues' with the import/export wizard. So here is a good solution:

SELECT * INTO XLImport4 FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0','Excel 8.0;Database=C:\test\xltest.xls', [Customers$])

May have to enable Ad Hoc Remote queries in SAC.

May have to place the Excel file on the SQL server's file system.

Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321686/en-us

Setting up Google Analytics with Subtext

Vitaly — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:46:56 GMT

UPDATE: There is another way, it's a Sitewide Tracking code, under Options, Configure, in your SubText management UI. (version 2.0+)

SubText is the blog engine of my choice. Skinning is simple, it's free, it's written in .Net and it's feature rich. Now if I we could only get some visitor stats. Google Analytics to the rescue.

JavaScript tracking code is what makes GA work. Adding the tracking code to SubText was simple enough. DTP.asxp is the page that SubText uses to dynamically render content. So we just insert the JavaScript snippet right above the </body> tag and we're all set.

GA takes a few hours for the stats to show up... still waiting.

References:

http://idunno.org/archive/2007/04/21/Adding-Google-Analytics-to-Subtext.aspx

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55488&topic=11126

Free Image Gallery DNN Module

Vitaly — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 09:13:02 GMT

I thought the name for this module is perfect. It's a gallery module that lots you page a single folder with arrows. I'll improve the basics at some point, but for now, it is what it is.

Download theOh So Simple Gallery all zipped up and ready to go.

Warning: download and use at your risk. you should be comfortable with vb.net to fix anything or to make improvements.