Creating lists with VSeWSS

This is the first article in a series aimed at explaining the process of creating a MOSS site using SharePoint features. For the full series contents, see my introduction.

Here, we'll look at creating SharePoint lists. For something so simple and core to SharePoint, they're surprisingly difficult to create as a feature. Fortunately Visual Studio extensions for WSS simplifies the process dramatically. If you've not come across this yet I'd recommend trying it - WseWSS is basically a huge help for some SharePoint development scenarios. The following articles are good background:-

• Inside Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint by John Holliday



• http://sharepointsolutions.blogspot.com/2006/11/walkthrough-windows-sharepoint.html

Briefly, the process of creating a list in VSeWSS is as follows:

1. Create a blank Visual Studio project. N.B. if you're actually creating a SharePoint site definition, you should select 'Team Site Definition' or 'Blank Site Definition', as WSeWSS will set you up with provisioning code which will execute whenever a site gets created from this definition.


2. Select 'Add New Item' on the Project menu, then select 'List Definition' from the SharePoint section.


3. Typically you should select 'Custom list' as the base list definition from the dropdown. Only select another choice if you're actually extending that list type and want to retain the original's columns. Assuming you want to create the actual list in addition to a list template (more on this later), check the 'Create an instance of this list' box. Note also the option to 'Add with event receiver' - this sets up code which which can be used to handle events on the list, for example when list items are added/edited/deleted.
   
   
   

   



4. After clicking OK in the dialog, name your list appropriately. My recommendation would be to avoid spaces or other characters which might get encoded somewhere - the list will have a display name which you can be freer with.
   
   WSeWSS has now created several files in your VS project.
   
   
   
   
   We can see the following:-
   
   
   
   
   • some aspx files, the pages users will use to work with your list. Note these can be customised if you want to deviate from the standard behaviour.
   
   
   • instance.xml - this is the file to edit to add initial data to your list. Since this file is automatically linked to the appropriate schema, it's fairly straightforward to edit as VS will tell you the valid nodes as you type (shown below).
   
   
   • two .cs files containing method stubs for event handlers. These are ready for you to your implementation to.
   
   
   • schema.xml - this contains the CAML which dictates which content types the list stores, any custom views and also has references to the .aspx files we mentioned
     
5. If you want to add default items to your list (and you probably do if you created an instance of it), you can edit the instance.xml file. This is made simple because VSeWSS has hooked up instance.xml to the appropriate XML schema (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML\wss.xsd), and you can then take advantage of VS's Intellisense which is inferred from the schema as you type:-
   
   


6. After making any customisations such as editing instance.xml to add list items, go to the properties of your VS project and examine the 'SharePoint Solution' tab. Here you'll see VSeWSS has generated two features for each list. One is for the list instance, the other is for the list template. This can be used by users to create new lists on the site, using the columns you've defined.


7. Go to the 'Debug' tab on the project properties, and enter the URL of your SharePoint development site. The solution will be deployed to this URL so it's important this value is entered.
   


8. Hit F5 and WSeWSS will create and deploy the solution. Note that the .wsp file gets generated in the bin\Debug or bin\Release directory of your project. Keep an eye on the VS status bar in the bottom left to monitor progress. If the deploy succeeded, your list should now be visible in the site specified on the 'Debug' tab.
   

To anyone who has created SharePoint solutions/features by hand, VSeWSS offers a compelling alternative. No messing around with ddf files and makecab.exe, just hit F5. However, there are a couple of irritations:-

• Since VSeWSS rewrites the feature.xml file on each deploy, there's no way to customise this file to add something which can't be entered on the 'SharePoint Solutions' area of the project properties. The major example is a feature receiver class to specify code which should run when the feature is activated/deactivated, should you want to do something here. Of course, you could edit the file at the end of the development cycle, but you know damn well there's always further tweaks and re-pasting the XML into feature.xml gets tiresome.
  


• VSeWSS recreates the feature GUIDs on each deployment. This is great for development, but means you cannot have other features with feature dependencies on your list features. This can be a pain if you're trying to create a feature hierarchy or rationalise your features so that activating one will activate all required features for a given part of your solution.

Nevertheless, you now have your solution with a feature for each list you added. Well actually you have 2 features for each list you added. Why? Because one is for the list instance and the other is for the list template. Note that you can deactivate the feature for the list template if you don't want your users to be able to create lists from this one.


Next in the series - how to create site columns (fields) which get their data from lists.