14 hive directory structure in SharePoint 2010

In this post I will list down some important directories or folders used with SharePoint 2010 server. The 14 hive is located under "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14". If you explore the 14 hive you would see below folder structure.

Lets Start with some directories which are related to SharePoint 2010 installation,Configration and its files,

• C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss - Directory for default location of IIS SharePoint websites
• C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0 - default installation directory for SharePoint 2010 binaries and data.

Frequent usable 14 Hive directory folders are as follow,

ADMISAPI	Contains the soap services for Sharepoint 2010 Central Administration
CONFIG	Contains files used to extend IIS Web sites with SharePoint Server
Help	Contains Html Help file used by configuration wizard
ISAPI	Contains all the standard Web Services for SharePoint and some additional DLL’s, resources and configuration files that the web services use
LOGS	Contains all SharePoint related logs will see. This is important when any problem or error occur in SharePoint you have to trace the logs files in this folder to get the error message
TEMPLATE	Contains the core web site functionality like the features, templates, configurations, resources of a web site
WebServices	Contains where the SharePoint back-end Web services are hosted, for example, Excel and Search

Following files are undergo with appropriate directories listed down,

ascx in web part/user controls - 
14\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES\ProjectNamespace\usercontrols.nameUserControl

aspx in master pages - 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS. 
Identical copies in  14\TEMPLATE\GLOBAL

      css in master page - 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES\     OR 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES\Themable

         js in master page  - 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033

      css in webpart styling - 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\STYLES

            js in webpart scripting  - 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\

        feature.xml in a feature - 14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\FeatureName\ 

     

      dll in custom assembly -14\BIN\

     

      xslt in ItemStyle - 14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\XSL

Enjoy !

Connecting Visual Web Parts programmatically  

Visual web parts allow developers to easily design the user interface as they are doing in conventional ASP.Net applications. The main advantage of connected Web Parts is to exchange data between web parts at run time. Here we are going to use two visual web parts one is called Tags as provider web part and other one is called Items as  consumer web part.

Tags web part retrieve all the items from tag list. Tags list have two columns which are tag and connection which is shown below

Items web part which is act as filtering web part to retrieve filtering items from Items List. Item List is shown below.

Now,  When we click tag from item web part, particular connection for the selected tag should pass to the items web part and filtered from Item A and Item B. For this first I m going to create tags web part to get all tags and connection properties from Tags List. (Note - Bind all the tags in link button and pass connections as command argument of this link button in Grid View ). Tags Webpart is shown below

Interface 

Now lets set the connection provider attribute to Tags web part. First define the Interface that will specify the data we wanted pass or exchange from one web part to another web part.

    public interface ITagString

    {

        string TagString { get; set; }

    }

Tag web part - Provider web part

Now in the Tag web part class, you need to implement the TagString property which is a string as you defined in the Interface. Actually the webpart will load the user control to its control collection in the CreateChildControls. 

1- Implement the ItagString Interface

2- Implement the get and set methods of the TagString property of ITagString Interface

3- ConnectionProvider property after the CreateChildControls subroutine. which will expose the interfacing  data to the Consumer web part.

Here you can pass the connection string using Link button command events

Items web part - Consumer web part

In the Item web part , create an object for Interface “ITagString”. The purpose of this variable is to receive/consume data from the other web part. So you can create a web part variable in user control and a user control variable in the web part code and inside CreateChildControls method, assign the web part variable 

1. User control variable to pass the value to ItemsUserControl class

2. Method will get the Interface ref and returns the value passed by provider web part

Now filter the Item list based on this parameter.

1- Reference from Items web part class

2- Label to print passed parameter

3- Filter the Items list based on parameter

Configure the web parts to enable connection (After deployed)

Following steps are shown how to enable the connection from tag web part and items web part.

When you are done, you will end up with 2 web parts on a web parts page that will communicate with each other as you make click on tags.

Enjoy!

SharePoint Application Development Life Cycle

SharePoint Application Development Life Cycle is the basic concept for every share Point developer. The SharePoint Application development has some additional important methodologies when compared with the usual software project life cycle.

SharePoint Development Life Cycle Process

•  Capture Business Requirements
• Solution Architecture
• Development and Build
• Testing
• Quality Assurance
• Deployment

Capturing  Business Requirements in SharePoint Projects

The SharePoint Business Analyst will work directly with business users to document requirements, analyze business problems and implement solutions. This requirement capturing process mainly covers, requirements elicitation, analyzing requirements, validating requirements,documenting requirements.

How does it happen ?

• Conduct an analysis of the existing SharePoint systems to ensure all functional requirements are understood and captured
• Using wireframes and UI mockups for describing business processes and expected functional modules
• Verifying all SharePoint procedures and limitations
• Educate stakeholders in SharePoint
• Document validated requirements, improvements and issues

Solution Architecture

The Solution architect is the most important role in the SharePoint Project Life cycle because he defines the structure of the ‘Solution Design ’of the Project. In this phase reference Architecture, reference implementations and tools for faster development of prototypes are defined

How does it happen ?

• Information Artifacts – (define data flow, use cases and managing artifacts)
• Information Architecture

o   How to organize the information in SharePoint Projects

o   Governance (Ownership, Retrieval and Security)

o   Contents and content types

o   Navigation and meta data

o   Users

o   Look and feel / SharePoint branding/Search

• Logical Architecture

o   Which features will be used and for what

o   Logical design of proposed solution

o   Service levels and administrative policies

• Capacity planning and physical architecture (network Requirements and storage managements)

Approaches in Development and Build

The term “SharePoint Development” always brings up some difficult discussions when combined  with “Developers” who use Visual Studio, write managed code (C#/VB.NET) and “Developers” who use SharePoint Designer and write client side code (HTML/JavaScript/XSLT) to build their applications. Essentially these are both forms of SharePoint Development.

How does it happen ?

• Analysis, design, development, and deployment in SharePoint
• Conformance to the coding guidelines
• Team development
• Standalone development environment
• Shared development SharePoint Server
• Team Foundation Server

Approaches to Testing and Quality Assurance

Since SharePoint is a collaborative platform due to the wide range of rich features, configuration options and the functionalities it provides, it becomes obligatory to test and track applications with systematic understanding in terms of functionality, usability, security, performance and various platform layers.

How does it happen ?

• Build Test Environment
• Use Test Tools and Automated Testing
• Use Mocking Frameworks
• Unit Tests and UI Tests
• User Experience
• Quality testing in each phases

Deployment

Deployment is the final step of the entire SharePoint Project Life cycle.

• Standardize deployment
• Deployment using Power shells