Design patterns using XSL to generate web part user interfaces

Paul Galvin, SharePoint MVPSlalom Consulting (www.slalom.com)

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Design patterns using XSL to generate web part user interfaces (DEV300)

Paul GalvinBrightStarr

(www.brightstarr.com)

Welcome to SharePoint Saturday—The Conference

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Agenda• About Paul and Slalom (brief)• What’s the End Goal?• Code Review

• Setup (“Pretend Announcements”)• Announcements Collection and individual announcements• Web part structure and properties• XSL helper class• Review actual XSL• Demonstrate debug, simple and “fancy” XSL views• Demonstrate using XSL from a document library

• Wrap-up

Slalom Consulting is a national business and technology consulting firmwith more than 1,500 employees across 10 offices in North America.

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About Paul Galvin• Microsoft MVP since July 2008• Just completed book on SharePoint Designer

Workflow• “Paul Galvin Workflow” on Amazon.com

• Working with SharePoint since January 2007(MOSS just came out)

• Twitter: @pagalvin• Email: galvin.paul@gmail.com• Blog: www.mstechblogs.com/paul

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About Slalom

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Slalom is Hiring• Pick up some glossies

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Concept - XSL• XSL is “extensible style sheet”• XML goes in …

• A parser consumes the XML and emits transformed XML.

• Whatever you want comes out• In this case, HTML comes out

• Other uses:• XSL to generate / supplement XML messages• Microsoft BizTalk

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Demo Setup• Visual web part

• Could be old style web part

• “Pretend” Announcements• Announcements collection of individual announcements

• The collection and the individual announcements “know” how to generate an XML representation of themselves as strings

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The XML<AllPretendAnnouncements Count="3"> <AnAnnouncement> <title>SharePoint Saturday India</title> <location>Virtual Event</location> <description><![CDATA[<a target=_new href='http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/india/default.aspx‘>Click here to view the event details.>]]</description> </AnAnnouncement> <AnAnnouncement> <title>BrightStarr Cookout</title> <location>New Jersey, USA</location> <description>BrightStarr is holding its annual summer cookout.</description> </AnAnnouncement> <AnAnnouncement> <title>Test Announcement</title> <location>Test location</location> <description>This is a test announcements.</description> </AnAnnouncement></AllPretendAnnouncements>

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<![CDATA[ … ]]>• What is that token for?

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Web Part Properties• XSL File

• URL• As you’ll see, this can be in “layouts”, a document library

or any URL to which the user has access at runtime

• Encode results? • If true, results are html-encoded• This is useful for debugging

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Helper Class• Method for pulling XSL files into a string• Method to transform XML into HTML using

that XSL

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Demo Time• Let’s do a demo

• Review the code• Run the code• Try out different XSL files and links

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Summary• Use XSL because…

• It separates the user interface from the c# logic• It makes you think about the data first, which is always helpful• You can separate roles.

• Developers to do the hard C# coding• Designers and even end users to edit and manage XSL

• XSL can do more…• Embed jQuery• Embed advanced CSS • Reference nodes, attributes, sort results, define variables

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Questions?Paul’s contact information:• galvin.paul@gmail.com• Twitter: @pagalvin• www.mstechblogs.com/paul

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