Ajax and JQuery libraries with Microsoft CDN

This is the wonderful announcement from Microsoft that they have placed the Ajax and JQuery libraries with Microsoft CDN[Content Delivery Network]. This will surely save huge amount of bandwidth all over the net as ajax and jquery is using by most of the people on the net. Now, it will download faster as it is coming from the cache. They have placed these libraries on the domain ajax.microsoft.com. So, if your site is on the net then use the urls from CDN and use them. Your browser downloads these files real quick than ever.

Example script for downloading jquery minified version:

<script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

For more details: http://www.asp.net/ajax/CDN/

Isn't it nice? Don't you say wow after reading it? It really saves so much of bandwidth. Please provide your comments on this announcement.

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Detect asynchronous postback in ASP.NET

Everyone need to know about this. When no Ajax implementation in ASP.NET [older versions] asp.net developers know about only one post back. That is full page postback. We have a property to detect it in c# code with Page.IsPostBack. But, day to day technology is growing and we need to know/follow everything up to date. This is not new one or I didn't find it just recent. All these posts are my experience and part of sharing information.

Now a days everyone knows what is Ajax and how it will work. Everything is Asynchronous calls. So, in developing Ajax integrated applications in ASP.NET we need to know which is page full post back and which is asynchronous partial post back. So, This post will help you to understand it well.

As we know, ASP.NET Page Object has a property named IsPostBack, ScriptManager class also has a property named IsInAsyncPostBack and which returns true if page raised the async partial postback event.

Now, take a look at the usage of both.

//Checking for page postback
if (IsPostBack)
{
if (ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page).IsInAsyncPostBack)
{
//Aynchronous postback raised.
}
else
{
//Normal page full postback.
}
}

Remember, Here whatever postback raised like full page postback or async partial postback IsPostBack set to true in both cases.

Hope you understood well about the both postback types and how to know which one raised. Please add your valuable comments.

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Steps to add a Web service 2.0 in SharePoint 2007

Today at my work, I need to implement JQuery in SharePoint on a module. I need to make AJAX calls to get the data from the database depending on the value in a text box. So, I choose JQuery, because I know it well and it will take very less time to implement. But for JQuery I need to create page web methods. But SharePoint doesn’t support Page web methods because SharePoint is completely built upon ASP.NET 2.0.

So, what is the solution, how can I make a call to the server and get the data from DB? After thought some time about it, finally I got a brilliant and better idea of using web services. Please follow the steps below to implement Web services in SharePoint.

• We are using client side technologies like JQuery etc to call Web service to get the data from server. By default, it is not supported. For that, we need the supporting DLL's[System.Web.Script.Services] for the Web service script on the SharePoint server. These DLL's are needed to process the web service request and send the response[JSON]. For those DLL, you need to install the Ajax extensions 1.0.
• Create a web service using Visual studio. It will generate two files webservice.asmx and webservice.cs. Write all the web methods required inside the webservice.cs file. I will explain you with an example more detail later in this post.
• Now, we need a location to keep our *.cs [webservice.cs] file. So, for that, create App_Code folder in the SharePoint site file system virtual directory root [c:\inetpub\…\wss\virtualdirectories\portnumber]. You can find the advantages of using App_code folder, in SharePoint web application in this post.
• By default SharePoint won't allow the script handlers and http modules. For this reasons, we need to make the web.config changes as explained in this post.
• Change the settings in central admin to remove asmx extension from blocked file types. See it here.

After you are ready with all the above steps, then please follow the steps below.

• Check the related dll’s are added in the system, after installed Ajax extensions. Below are the namespaces you required in the webservice.cs file.

using System.Web.Services;
using System.Web.Script.Services;

• Copy the webservice.asmx file to the SharePoint website virtual directory file system path [c:\inetpub\…\wss\virtualdirectories\portnumber\].
• Copy the file webservice.cs file, and paste it in the app_code folder of the SharePoint web site.
• Please follow the post web.config changes as explained.
• Central administration changes as explained above.

There we are done with the process. This is really working great and we can solve really very difficult problems like all scenarios where we need to communicate with DB without doing post back etc. This is very smooth and fast way of retrieving results. I like to hear feedback. This is the one of the best solutions I found. Please post any problems if you face while implementing this process.

Isn't this a valuable find?

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Fixing the error Permission denied to get property XULElement.selectedIndex in Mozilla Firefox

When working with Mozilla Firefox browser, I usually come across the error below many times.

Usual exception details: Permission denied to get property XULElement.selectedIndex

Error because of my own javascript function:
Permission denied to get property XULElement.popupOpen

I want to write this post because, for me it took long time to solve the issue. May be most of the people may get this error when working with Mozilla Firefox.

Why it is coming? What are the possibilities?

This will come if you are making AJAX calls with a input type text box, then firebug will throw this error. This is because it is a autocomplete functionality. To fix this what you need to do is, just add an attribute to input control as shown below.

<input type="text" autocomplete="off" />

This will stop Firefox from attempting to complete the content in the box.

That's it!!!

Is this helpful?

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JQuery integration in SharePoint

As we are well experienced with the JQuery in ASP.NET applications, JQuery is a client side script for executing really impressive logics, calling server-side methods, animations, smooth rendering etc.

SharePoint is a platform and which is built upon ASP.NET, so we can do all the stuff in SharePoint which we implemented in ASP.NET applications. Here is a small walk through of how to integrate the JQuery in SharePoint applications. We usually write lot of logics by using JQuery to get data from server using Ajax implementation by calling Page Web methods and render the data by using JTemplates etc… But We can’t implement the same in SharePoint because we can’t wriite page web methods. Reason behind is SharePoint don’t support page web methods because it is build with ASP.NET 2.0 version. Other than that you can implement all the logics in SharePoint as well.

Follow the steps below to integrate JQuery into SharePoint.

• Open your SharePoint site in SharePoint designer.
• It’s always better to organize your data and files in good structure. So create a folder for placing all scripts named “Scripts” if it does not exist.
• Now copy the Jquery script file to this folder. I am using the file jquery-1.3.1.js.
• Create an ASPX page in your pages folder of the site if it is a published web site template otherwise create a page in the root of site. [However, any place it works.]
• This page is not a web part page, we are just creating a simple ASPX page for JQuery integration.
• Here, add a reference to the JQuery java script file to the head tag of the page.
• Add the below code to test the Jquery functionality to body of the page.
• <script type="text/javascript">
      $(document).ready(function() {
          $("#cb").live('click', function() {
          $("#lblMessage").text("you clicked on CheckBox, selected = " + $("#cb").attr('checked'));
          });
      });
  </script>

  <input type="checkbox" id="cb" />
  <label id="lblMessage"></label>

• We just wrote a very small piece of code snippet for testing the JQuery functionality. This post main goal is to integrate the JQuery plug-in for SharePoint. The same way you can add reference to the master page of the site to get the advantage of JQuery in all pages of the web site.

• We can apply the master page to the current ASPX page by following this post. This will give you the same look and feel as other pages.

• We have plenty of ways to do this. For example, for simple integration purpose i explained you to place the JQuery file in scripts folder of the root of the web site. But good way of doing is, placing the file in Layouts folder of 12 hive in SharePoint system. This way you can access the file in any site and on any page through out the SharePoint. Because Layouts is the common sub site exist for all the sites.

• Adding script reference to all the pages in a site:

1. Add the script reference to the <HEAD> tag of the master page of the site. So that all pages have the reference to the JQuery script and you can use it any where.
2. Syntax: <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/_layouts/scripts/jquery-1.3.1.js”></script>

• Add script reference to specific pages:

1. For this we have a good and nice web part to add html/script/css. That is nothing  but Content Editor Web part. We can add a content editor web part on the page [most probably on the top of page] and we will add the script reference code to it. Now the JQuery is available only for the pages where you added the code.

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Ajax,Master page problem in Sharepoint 2007 [MOSS]

Problem:
Ajax is not working as expected in SharePoint 2007.

Solution:
1. First we need to install Ajax extensions on the SharePoint server.
2. After installed Ajax, We need to add the corresponding entries in web.config file to know the web application that the script manage, ajax requests etc... For this we need to change the configuration.
3. Copy all the ajax dlls to GAC and then follow the instructions below.

There are plenty of problems while integrating Ajax into SharePoint when i was very new to SharePoint. I solved those problems after a long research on Masterpage and Java scrpt.

Here are the steps i followed.
Before change any of the file as mentioned below please take the backup of every file and save it in some safe location.

When i was new to learn SharePoint, i implemented this. I am not completly sure that we need to change the authorizedTypes Tag in web.config of my site ot not, but it works.
The changed section looks like below.

Web.Config changes

<authorizedTypes>
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Workflow.Activities, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" Namespace="System.Workflow.*" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Workflow.ComponentModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" Namespace="System.Workflow.*" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Workflow.Runtime, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" Namespace="System.Workflow.*" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Transactions, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System*" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System*" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow" TypeName="SPWorkflowActivationProperties" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow" TypeName="SPWorkflowTaskProperties" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow" TypeName="SPWorkflowHistoryEventType" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Workflow.Activities, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" Namespace="System.Workflow.*" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Workflow.ComponentModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" Namespace="System.Workflow.*" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow" TypeName="SPWorkflowActivationProperties" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow" TypeName="SPWorkflowTaskProperties" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow" TypeName="SPWorkflowHistoryEventType" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System" TypeName="Guid" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System" TypeName="DateTime" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System" TypeName="Boolean" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System" TypeName="Double" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System" TypeName="String" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System.Collections" TypeName="Hashtable" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System.Collections" TypeName="ArrayList" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System.Diagnostics" TypeName="DebuggableAttribute" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System.Runtime.CompilerServices" TypeName="CompilationRelaxationsAttribute" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System.Runtime.CompilerServices" TypeName="RuntimeCompatibilityAttribute" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System" TypeName="Int32" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System" TypeName="TimeSpan" Authorized="True" />
<authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System.Collections.ObjectModel" TypeName="Collection`1" Authorized="True" />
</authorizedTypes>

Master page changes:
Second, i removed the onload function from BODY tag. This was causing problem, i am not sure that whether we need to remove or not!!! But it's working as expected.

I removed following section from BODY of master page.
onload="javascript:if (typeof(_spBodyOnLoadWrapper) != 'undefined') _spBodyOnLoadWrapper();"

JAVASCRIPT CHANGES:
Third, Go to init.js file in 12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033 folder.
find the method spFormOnSubmitWrapper()
in this function, just remove the line return false; in
if (_spFormOnSubmitCalled) statement;
this is because, if that page is already posted back, sharepoint won't post it back again.
but to work AJAX calls, we need to disable it. Because Ajax sends the XmlHttpRequests many times depends on user requests, SharePoint ignore all the calls except the very first call. This is the reason when very first time you integrate Ajax into SharePoint the first call always successful and from the second call no response.
Hope it helps. Read More...