Something that has bothered me repeatedly in the past is that ListViewWebParts didn’t seem to allow their titles to be set via CAML. The View element for a site (i.e. in the ONET.xml file) doesn’t have a title element, and the ‘Name’ and ‘DisplayName’ elements don’t set the web part’s title. Instead, the ListViewWebPart always seemed to pick up the name of the list it referred to. This was a problem if you had a page that showed two ListViewWebParts refering to the same list. E.g.:

<View List="Lists/Tasks" BaseViewID="7" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="5" />
<View List="Lists/Tasks" BaseViewID="9" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="6" />

would result in:

How can we set those titles to be different?

With other web parts, it wouldn’t be a problem. When adding them to a page in the ONET.xml file, you specify what the webpart’s assembly, class and properties all are:

<AllUsersWebPart List="301" WebPartZoneID="BlogNavigator" WebPartOrder="2">
 <![CDATA[
 <WebPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2">
 <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
 <TypeName>Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.BlogMonthQuickLaunch</TypeName>
 <Title>My Title Here</Title>
 </WebPart>
 ]]>
</AllUsersWebPart>

Great. But nothing in the CAML documentation says that you can do this with a <View> element, just within <AllUsersWebPart> elements. But what if you can? I did a regex search over 14 Hive, and found the following example:

<View List="303" BaseViewID="0" WebPartZoneID="BlogNavigator" WebPartOrder="1">
 <![CDATA[
 <webParts>
 <webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3">
 <metaData>
 <type name="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.XsltListViewWebPart,Microsoft.SharePoint,Version=14.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
 <importErrorMessage>Cannot import this Web Part.</importErrorMessage>
 </metaData>
 <data>
 <properties>
 <property name="AllowConnect" type="bool">True</property>
 <property name="ChromeType" type="chrometype">None</property>
 </properties>
 </data>
 </webPart>
 </webParts>
 ]]>
</View>

Ooo – interesting. This isn’t quite what I need – it’s using the XsltListViewWebPart, and unfortunately I’m dealing with an old SharePoint 2007-type list. I wondered, though – would the same approach work with the ListViewWebPart?

Well, a quick search turned up the answer – a definite yes – and I wish I’d known about this 3 years ago. The following form of web part declaration:

<View List="Lists/Tasks" BaseViewID="7" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="5">
 <![CDATA[
 <WebPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2">
 <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
 PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
 <TypeName>Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ListViewWebPart</TypeName>
 <Title>Enquiry Tasks</Title>
 </WebPart>
 ]]>
</View>
<View List="Lists/Tasks" BaseViewID="9" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="6">
 <![CDATA[
 <WebPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2">
 <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
 PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
 <TypeName>Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ListViewWebPart</TypeName>
 <Title>Request Specific Tasks</Title>
 </WebPart>
 ]]>
</View>

results in …

Perfect! Problem solved, and now I can control all sorts of other settings (such as Chrome, or allowing close) for these web parts too!

EDIT: I just found another example, this time on MSDN. It’s even more minimal than the one I found in 14 – it doesn’t define an assembly or class. However, it does not work. I tested it, and got the error:

The <Assembly> element is required. Add this element to the Web Part file (.dwp), and then try to import the Web Part.

That’s a pretty clear error. So, do not follow that article, but use the fuller forms shown above.

EDIT 2: I also note that the properties in my old-fashioned 2007 ListViewWebPart aren’t the same as in the 2010 XsltListViewWebPart – Sandeep lists some of the properties available here.