Editing a XAML build process

2011-12-012014-11-30 Andy Burns.NET, MSBuild, TFS, Visual StudioLeave a comment

So, we’ve been working on putting our SharePoint solutions through a proper build process in Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS), and I hit a bit of a snag.

I had been given a build definition that had a build process – a Workflow Foundation workflow – that I wanted to alter. The problem was that while I had the XAML file for that workflow, and the DLL that defined some custom code activities that the process used, I didn’t have a full Visual Studio project for it. No problem, I thought, I’ll just open the XAML up in Visual Studio and edit it.

Wrong.

Continue reading “Editing a XAML build process” →

Error: 'b' is null or not an object

2011-11-292014-11-30 Andy Burnsclientobjectmodel, JavaScript, SP2010 Development4 Comments

This error has caused me so much pain when trying to use SharePoint’s JavaScript client-side object model (CSOM), so, in case I have it again:

Check that the function exists.
Check that the function is named correctly.
Make sure that you’re not using “this” in the call to createDelegate, as detailed here.
- Right: Function.createDelegate(this, onSuccessMethod)
- Wrong: Function.createDelegate(this, this.onSuccessMethod)
I don’t know why this difference should cause this error, but I’ve proved it true.

If you know of other causes of this error, let me know, I’ll add it to the list. I love the experience of debugging JavaScript…

New Web Application returns HTTP 503

2011-10-172014-11-30 Andy BurnsIIS, SP2010 Admin4 Comments

For some reason a new web application on my development VM always returns a 503 Service Unavailable when you go to it.

It turns out that this is due to the app pool supporting 32 bit applications! Change the setting in IIS (App Pool > Advanced Settings > Enable 32 Bit applications should be false)

Allowing logging for a particular app pool

2011-10-142014-11-30 Andy BurnsLogging, SP2010 AdminLeave a comment

I had a problem that one of our development machines had been configured in a ‘Least Privileges’ configuration – and it was a bit too least. The content app pool could not write to the logs. OWSTimer and WebAnalytics both could, but there was nothing from W3WP for that web app.

Just a reminder to myself…

Well, the solution was to add the app pool account to the ‘Performance Log Users’ group in AD. You find it under BUILTIN. Reset ISS. Voila!

Setting a Timer Job's Description

2011-09-152014-11-30 Andy BurnsSP2010 Development, SPJobDefinition1 Comment

A curious problem – Timer Jobs have a Title (which you can set), and a description, which you can’t set – as it has no setter:

This is a shame, as I like that you can see a description about the time job in Central Admin:

The solution – strange as it seems, override the Description property in your new timer job.

Annoying Navigation in Search Centers

2011-09-122014-11-30 Andy BurnsSite Definition, SP2007 Search, SP2010, SP2010 Search3 Comments

I had two of my colleagues come to me with the same complaint – that the Basic Search Center site template in SharePoint 2010 doesn’t have any navigation to get ‘back’ to the rest of the site collection:

I pointed out to them that there are good reasons to consider having the Search Center separated from the rest of your content. I’d even suggest a separate Site Collection if using the Enterprise Search Center. (This uses the publishing features, and you might not want them turned on in your existing site collection).

However, my colleagues didn’t need all that, and really did just want a simple search center in the same site collection as their content. For example, a departmental site collection needed its own search center and search experience. But they’d really like users to be able to navigate back to the rest of the site collection.

So, I set forth to fix this dire state of affairs for them. Continue reading “Annoying Navigation in Search Centers” →

Further notes on SmartAssembly Obfuscation

2011-09-092014-11-30 Andy Burns.NET, Obfuscation, SmartAssemblyLeave a comment

Some further notes on things I’ve learnt using SmartAssembly on some of our products.

Constants do not get obfuscated. Use static readonly variables in their place if the constant contains sensitive information.
Run Reflector (or reflection tool of your choice) against your assembly after obfuscation, to check what is visible. Then go back and make the bits you accidentally left public internal or private.
Make as many classes and methods as you can Internal
Do read the instructions on the attributes you can apply to control obfuscation.
Do use Pruning if you want to remove parameter names for methods. That can leak a lot of information about what a class is doing.

Obfuscation, Code Analysis, and Check-In policies

2011-09-072014-11-30 Andy Burns.NET, Code Analysis, Development, Obfuscation, TFSLeave a comment

As mentioned before, we’ve started to use SmartAssembly to obfuscate some of our products. We also use Team Foundation Server (TFS) as source control and build server. Using obfuscation with code analysis caused some issues, which were compounded by our check-in policies. Continue reading “Obfuscation, Code Analysis, and Check-In policies” →

Adding SmartAssembly obfuscation to a Visual Studio Project

2011-09-052014-11-30 Andy Burns.NET, Development, MSBuild, Obfuscation, SmartAssembly, Visual Studio6 Comments

We’ve started to use SmartAssembly to obfuscate the code for some of the SharePoint products that we’ve been working on, and I’d had a few problems with it. Continue reading “Adding SmartAssembly obfuscation to a Visual Studio Project” →

WSPBuilder 2010 and TFS2010

2011-08-192014-11-30 Andy BurnsSP2010 Development, TFS, Visual Studio, WSPBuilderLeave a comment

With SharePoint 2007, WSPBuilder became our standard packaging tool for SharePoint solutions. It was simple, powerful, and a damn site easier than trying to write your own manifest.

Well, SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 followed later, and Microsoft introduced much better tooling of their own. However, we’ve still got a lot of code being packaged by WSPBuilder, and we didn’t want to have to refactor all those projects just to package them for 2010.

Fortunately, Carsten Keutmann wrote a 2010 version (still in ‘BETA’, but it works fine). It offers many of the same extensions to Visual Studio as the previous version did.

However, I recently had to automate (in Team Foundation Server 2010) the build of one of our WSPBuilder based solutions, and that’s where things got more interesting… Continue reading “WSPBuilder 2010 and TFS2010” →

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