Experience The Creativity

Android Web Service Access Tutorial

2011-10-25T00:04:00.002+05:30

In this post I'm going to illustrate how we can access web service in Android using ksoap2-android project that provides a lightweight and efficient SOAP library for the Android platform.

You can download the jar file from following link;
http://ksoap2-android.googlecode.com/svn/m2-repo/com/google/code/ksoap2-android/ksoap2-android-assembly/2.5.8/ksoap2-android-assembly-2.5.8-jar-with-dependencies.jar

Here is the sample code that illustrate SOAP web service call. I have access a live web service ConvertWeight from http://www.webserviceX.NET/ which convert weight from one unit to another. I have set "envelope.dotNet = true;" in Line 53 since I'm accessing .NET web service. You can comment that line if your web service is not .NET one.


package com.sencide;
 
import org.ksoap2.SoapEnvelope;
import org.ksoap2.serialization.PropertyInfo;
import org.ksoap2.serialization.SoapObject;
import org.ksoap2.serialization.SoapPrimitive;
import org.ksoap2.serialization.SoapSerializationEnvelope;
import org.ksoap2.transport.HttpTransportSE;
 
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import android.widget.TextView;
 
public class AndroidWebService extends Activity {
  
    private final String NAMESPACE = "http://www.webserviceX.NET/";
    private final String URL = "http://www.webservicex.net/ConvertWeight.asmx";
    private final String SOAP_ACTION = "http://www.webserviceX.NET/ConvertWeight";
    private final String METHOD_NAME = "ConvertWeight";
 
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
 
        SoapObject request = new SoapObject(NAMESPACE, METHOD_NAME); 
      
        String weight = "3700";
        String fromUnit = "Grams";
        String toUnit = "Kilograms";
      
        PropertyInfo weightProp =new PropertyInfo();
        weightProp.setName("Weight");
        weightProp.setValue(weight);
        weightProp.setType(double.class);
        request.addProperty(weightProp);
         
        PropertyInfo fromProp =new PropertyInfo();
        fromProp.setName("FromUnit");
        fromProp.setValue(fromUnit);
        fromProp.setType(String.class);
        request.addProperty(fromProp);
         
        PropertyInfo toProp =new PropertyInfo();
        toProp.setName("ToUnit");
        toProp.setValue(toUnit);
        toProp.setType(String.class);
        request.addProperty(toProp);
        
        SoapSerializationEnvelope envelope = new SoapSerializationEnvelope(SoapEnvelope.VER11);
        envelope.dotNet = true;
        envelope.setOutputSoapObject(request);
        HttpTransportSE androidHttpTransport = new HttpTransportSE(URL);
 
        try {
            androidHttpTransport.call(SOAP_ACTION, envelope);
            SoapPrimitive response = (SoapPrimitive)envelope.getResponse();
            Log.i("myApp", response.toString());
    
            TextView tv = new TextView(this);
            tv.setText(weight+" "+fromUnit+" equal "+response.toString()+ " "+toUnit);
            setContentView(tv);
 
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

You have to add INTERNET permission to AndroidManifest.xml as follows;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      package="com.sencide"
      android:versionCode="1"
      android:versionName="1.0">

    <application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name">
        <activity android:name=".AndroidWebService"
                  android:label="@string/app_name">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

    </application>
    
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission>
</manifest>

You can download the source code of above project (Password:sara).

I have updated my previous code in the post Android Login Screen Using HttpClient to authenticate users from web service. There I have illustrate how you can start new activity if the login is successful.

You can download the updated source code with sample .NET web service application (Password:sara).

Android Login Screen Using HttpClient

2011-06-21T23:35:00.004+05:30

I have updated this code to use web service and open new screen if the login is successful in my post Android Web Service Access Tutorial.

In Android we can use HTTP POST request with org.apache.http.client.HttpClient to post data to a URL. This sample project illustrate how we can post data to a URL and get the response.


package com.sencide;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.NameValuePair;
import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.entity.UrlEncodedFormEntity;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.View.OnClickListener;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.EditText;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class AndroidLogin extends Activity implements OnClickListener {
 
 Button ok,back,exit;
 TextView result;
 
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        
        // Login button clicked
        ok = (Button)findViewById(R.id.btn_login);
        ok.setOnClickListener(this);
        
        result = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.lbl_result);
        
    }
    
    public void postLoginData() {
        // Create a new HttpClient and Post Header
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        
        /* login.php returns true if username and password is equal to saranga */
        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://www.sencide.com/blog/login.php");

        try {
            // Add user name and password
         EditText uname = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.txt_username);
         String username = uname.getText().toString();

         EditText pword = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.txt_password);
         String password = pword.getText().toString();
         
            List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(2);
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("username", username));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("password", password));
            httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));

            // Execute HTTP Post Request
            Log.w("SENCIDE", "Execute HTTP Post Request");
            HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
            
            String str = inputStreamToString(response.getEntity().getContent()).toString();
            Log.w("SENCIDE", str);
            
            if(str.toString().equalsIgnoreCase("true"))
            {
             Log.w("SENCIDE", "TRUE");
             result.setText("Login successful");   
            }else
            {
             Log.w("SENCIDE", "FALSE");
             result.setText(str);             
            }

        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
        }
    } 
  
    private StringBuilder inputStreamToString(InputStream is) {
     String line = "";
     StringBuilder total = new StringBuilder();
     // Wrap a BufferedReader around the InputStream
     BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));
     // Read response until the end
     try {
      while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null) { 
        total.append(line); 
      }
     } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
     }
     // Return full string
     return total;
    }

    @Override
    public void onClick(View view) {
      if(view == ok){
        postLoginData();
      }
    }

}

Following code is the content of mail.xml file that is used in the above code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AbsoluteLayout
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
>
<EditText android:layout_width="150px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:textSize="18sp" android:id="@+id/txt_username" android:layout_y="132dip" android:layout_x="128dip"></EditText>
<EditText android:layout_width="150px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:textSize="18sp" android:password="true" android:id="@+id/txt_password" android:layout_x="128dip" android:layout_y="192dip"></EditText>
<Button android:layout_width="100px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/btn_login" android:layout_x="178dip" android:layout_y="252dip" android:text="Login"></Button>
<TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/lbl_username" android:text="User Name" android:layout_x="37dip" android:layout_y="150dip"></TextView>
<TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/lbl_password" android:text="Password" android:layout_y="207dip" android:layout_x="50dip"></TextView>
<TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:id="@+id/lbl_top" android:textSize="16sp" android:typeface="sans" android:text="Please Loggin First" android:layout_x="29dip" android:layout_y="94dip"></TextView>
<TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_y="312dip" android:layout_x="50dip" android:id="@+id/lbl_result"></TextView>
</AbsoluteLayout>

Following code is the content of AndroidManifest.xml file that is used in this project. There note that I have add the line <uses-permission android:name= "android.permission.INTERNET".

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      package="com.sencide"
      android:versionCode="1"
      android:versionName="1.0">

 <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
    <application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name">
        <activity android:name=".AndroidLogin"
                  android:label="@string/app_name">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

    </application>
</manifest>

You can download the source code of above project (Password:sara).

SQL Server Authentication enabling using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Management Studio

2011-06-08T12:00:00.002+05:30

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio provides integrated environment for accessing, configuring, managing, administering and developing all components of SQL Server. There you can see two authentication modes called "Windows Authentication" and "SQL Server Authentication". The Windows authentication mode only allows you to login/connect to SQL Server with Windows authentication.

If you install the Microsoft SQL Server using Windows Authentication mode, the "sa" account is disabled by default. So if you plan to use SQL Server Authentication, you have to enable the "sa" account. This tutorial tells you how to enable the "sa" account and there you must remember that the SQL Server service needs to restart to make this change effective.

1. First, Login to the SQL Server Management Studio using Windows Authentication. Right-click on the database instance, and go to Properties.

2. Then on Properties page, click on Security and select SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode, and click on OK to close the Server Properties page.

3. Now you will get dialog box saying that you should restart your SQL Server to take the changes take effect. Is is not done yet, you have to done one more thing to enable the "sa" login.

4. Now expand Security folder and go to Logins. You can see the "sa" account is disabled when you install SQL Server using Windows Authentication mode.

5. Then right-click on the "sa" account and go to Login Properties. There you can set a password for the "sa" account.

6. Click on the Status page. There you can see the "sa" account is disabled by default. Click on the Enabled button to enable it. Then click on Ok to close the "sa" Login Properties.

Now "sa" account is enabled and you can login to the SQL instance using the "sa" account after restarting the SQL Server.

Install IIS in Windows 7 or Vista

2010-10-05T15:49:00.002+05:30

This tutorial discuss how you can enable (Internet Information Service) IIS in Windows 7 or Windows Vista. I have provided screen-shots so that you can easily understand.

First go to control panel and select Programs.

Then select Turn Windows features on or off.

Then select Internet Information Services. (If you plan to run web services you have to select ASP.NET under Application Development Features as following figure)

Now you have enabled IIS and try "http://localhost" in your browser and you will get following page.

Create Simple Web Service in Visual Studio 2008 / 2010

2010-09-29T23:13:00.024+05:30

This tutorial explains how we can create simple Web Services using Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010.

If you are interested in creating web services in java, please follow my post
Create Web Service in Java Using Apache Axis2 and Eclipse

1. Create the Web Service

First create new project and select "New ASP.NET Web Service Application" and I'm giving the name "MyFirstWebService" to it, you can give any name to your project.

Now you can see auto generated code that you can add methods to create your web service. You can see simple method "HelloWorld" and in this sample code I have removed it.

I'm going to add simple method called "simpleMethod" which takes a string as an input and add "Hello" to beginning of that string. Now the code will appear like bellow.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Services;

namespace MyFirstWebService
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Summary description for Service1
    /// </summary>
    [WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
    [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
    [System.ComponentModel.ToolboxItem(false)]
    // To allow this Web Service to be called from script, using ASP.NET AJAX, uncomment the following line.
    // [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService]
    public class Service1 : System.Web.Services.WebService
    {
        [WebMethod]
        public string simpleMethod(String srt)
        {
            return "Hello "+srt;
        }

        [WebMethod]
        public int anotherSimpleMethod(int firstNum, int secondNum)
        {
            return firstNum + secondNum;
        }

    }
}

Then you can run your code and you can see the resulting page as bellow.

2. Create the Client Program

We have created our simple web service and we have to create small
client program to use this web service. There you can open another 
instant of Visual Studio and create new "Console Application" project.

Then you have to add Service Reference so that you can access your web service. Here are the screen-shots.

Here you have to give the URL of the web service we created earlier.
As I said before previously created web service application should be
running on another instant of Visual Studio.

Note that I have set the "Web reference name" as "TestWeb".

Now you can update your client program using following code. Note the line 5 "using WebServiceTest.TestWeb;".

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using WebServiceTest.TestWeb;

namespace WebServiceTest
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Service1 webservice = new Service1();
            string srt = webservice.simpleMethod("Saranga Rathnayake");
            Console.WriteLine(srt);
            Console.WriteLine(webservice .anotherSimpleMethod(4,3));
        }
    }
}

Now you can run the client program to see the result.

3. Publish Our Web Service in Internet Information Service (IIS)

Let's see how we can publish our web service in IIS. There first stop the web service application and go to the Solution Explore and Right Click on the project. Then select "Publish...".

Then the following window will appear and there you can directly publish to the IIS by selecting "Web Deploy" as the publishing method. But here I'm going to use the "File System as the publishing method. There you have to provide the target location. I have created new folder called "MyApp" in my D drive and selected it.

Now click "Publish" and check the "MyApp" folder. There you will be able to see Service1.asmx file, Web.config file and bin folder which contains the DLL file has been generated.

Now enable IIS in your computer and open IIS Manager. I'm going to add my service to Default Web Site. There Right Click on the "Default Web Site" and click "Add Application...".

There you will get following window. Now you can provide appropriate Alias (I have given testservice) and select the physical path of your application. There you can provide the path to the folder we created previously as following figure and click Ok.

You have to make sure that the application pool identity has Read access to the physical path. So it is better if you copy your files to the "wwwroot" folder other than keep it in separate partition. Please check the following screen-shot

Now restart the IIS and goto http://localhost/testservice/Service1.asmx. You will be able to see the Web Service running.

Now you have published your web service in IIS and you can update the Client Program by giving the new Web Reference URL using Properties Window.

Form Validation and Suggestions using JQuery & PHP

2010-02-20T20:11:00.008+05:30

In this post I’m going to describe about a practical use of my previous article JQuery AJAX. Here I’m going to discuss how to validate a form and how to add auto suggests to a form using JQuery and PHP.

Password : sara

In the above I have given you the source code of the whole project which saves the collected data to a MySQL database. It is good if you have a basic knowledge about JavaScript and PHP to understand the codes. You can learn them very easily by referring w3schools.

Since this I’m using PHP and MySQL in the above project, you have to run the code in a server like XAMP or WAMP. In this example I’m going to illustrate with WAMP. If you have the downloaded source code, you can see a folder called "jquery_form" and within that you can find folders css,js,scripts and images. Also you can see a file called index.php.

First thing you have to do is copy the "jquery_form" folder to your WAMP server’s "www" folder. Then open the "dbc.php" file inside the "scripts" folder and change its attributes. If you already haven’t a database called "userdata" and you haven’t given a password for root account, you don’t need to make any changes.

<?php
$host = "localhost";
$dbname = "userdata";
$username = "root";
$password = "";
?>

Now do the following things when the WAMP server started. 
I’ll also mention the result of the given action here.

1. First run the "sql.php" file located in the "scripts" folder. 
The only thing you need to do is give the address to the file 
in the address bar. E.g. http://localhost/jquery_form/scripts/sql.php

This should be done when the first time you run the project. I wrote 
this file to create a MySQL database with one table and needed fields 
to store the collected data. If you didn’t make changes to "dbc.php" 
file, there will be a databased called "userdata" and table called 
"details_user".

2. Then run the "index.php" file and fill the form correctly and submit.
You will see your data in the database. If you try to give the same 
login name again, you will see the suggestions related to the name 
and birthday.

Let’s see the codes and check how we can add validation and suggestions. Here the JavaScript which do the above task is "validation.js" which is located in "js" folder. I’ll put the real line numbers in following piece of codes as they appear in actual file.

<title>JQuery Ajax Form | Saranga Rathnayake</title>

<!-- CSS -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/styles.css" type="text/css"/>
<link type="text/css" href="css/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" /> 

<!-- JavaScript -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js"></script>
<script src="js/validation.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
 $(function(){
  $('#datepicker').datepicker({
   dateFormat:'dd/mm/yy',
   changeMonth: true,
   changeYear: true,
   yearRange: '-90:+0',
   maxDate: '+0'
  });
 });
</script>
</head>
<div id="container">
<form id="logform" name="logform" class="logform" method="post" action="" >
<?php if(

Above lines are from the "index.php" file, there I have linked necessary CSS and JavaScipt files. You can see a JavaScipt code which use to DatePicker.

//On blur
 name.blur(validateNameAndSuggest);
 iname.blur(validateIName);
 address.blur(validateAddress);  
 email2.blur(validateEmail);
 nic.blur(validateNIC);
 phno.blur(validatePhNo);
 email.blur(validateLoginEmailAndSuggest); 
 imgveri.blur(validateImg); 
 
 // on changed
 bday.change(validateDOB);
 
 //On key press
 //name.keyup(validateName);
 //iname.keyup(validateIName);

In the above lines I have called the validation functions in "blur" and "keyup" events. I have commented the "keyup" events, if you want them you can uncomment. Then I’ll show you how the validation works.

function validateNIC(){
  var a = $("#nic").val();
  var filter = /^[0-9]{9}[v|V]$/;
  if(filter.test(a)){
   nic.removeClass("error");
   nicInfo.text("");
   nicInfo.removeClass("error");
   return true;
  }
  //if it's NOT valid
  else{
   nic.addClass("error");
   nicInfo.text("Type a valid NIC please, format: xxxxxxxxxV");
   nicInfo.addClass("error");
   return false;
  }
 }

In the above code I have use Regular Expressions to make the validation more easier. If the Regular Expression dose not match with the input, then I have changed the CSS Class of the text box which change its color. And also I have added some information about the error. Then let’s see how suggestions work.

function suggestLogginName(){
  
  var name = $("#fname").val();
  var bday = $("#datepicker").val();
  
  if(validateName() && validateDOB()){
   $.post("scripts/isValiedName.php",  { loginName:name, birthday:bday,suggestion:"OK" },
     function(data){
     emailInfo.html(data);
   }); 
  }

 }

The above function calls if the entered login name exist in the database. It will post the Full Name and Birthday to "isValiedName.php" file and that PHP file will return suggested names.

AJAX Using JQuery Tutorial

2010-01-26T21:22:00.005+05:30

You may know that, JQuery is a JavaScript library that we can do smart things using small pease of code. This free and open source JavaScript Library has become the most famous JavaScript Library today because of its Lightweight, Cross-browser and CSS3 Compliant. Using JQuery we can do thing like Document Navigating, DOM Element Selecting, Creating Animations, Event Handling and Ajax Development very easily. You can learn more about JQuery from JQuery web site.

What this post about ?

This is about a thing that we mostly want when we design web sites. I'm going to discuss how we can get that work done better and smarter using JQuery AJAX. Look at the following picture which describes the whole task, we are going to do.

Just imaging that the above picture is the structure of our web site, when we click on the links at "C", we want to load different contents to the main div in "B". If we use different web pages for all those links and load them when user clicks on a link, we are loading the content on "A" and "C" unnecessarily. That is why we should use AJAX to load the content.

How ?

First, download the following example code that I'm going to describe.

http://www.4shared.com/file/184577187/cc718b73/JQuery_AJAX.html
Password : sara

Live Demo : Here

Open the "index.html" file in your browser and check the result by clicking links "Home", "About" and "Contact Us" on "C". Ignore the problem with last link, I'll explane that later. Now open the "index.html" using a text editor. Then you will see a code like following in the <head> </head> section.

That is how you can link the JQuey to your web site, it's the same way you link a JavaScript file. Then check the following peace of code.

$(document).ready(function() { 

    //$("#main").load("home.html");
 
    $("#link1").click(function(){
        $("#main").load("home.html");
    });
 
    $("#link2").click(function(){
        $.ajax({
            url: "about.html",
            cache: true,
            beforeSend: function(){
                $("#main").slideUp("fast");
            },
            success: function(html){
                $("#main").slideDown("slow");
                $("#main").html(html);
            }
        });
    });
 
    $("#link3").click(function(){
        $.post("boo.php",  { link_id:"link3" },
        function(data){
            $("#main").html(data);
        }); 
    }); 
 
});

In JQuery we are writing events inside $(document).ready function. In the above code I have given different IDs to links and call functions when they are clicked. There I have used three different ways to get the above task done.

First look at the 5^th line, there I have load the "home.html" file inside the main div when click the "Home" link (id is "link1"). That is the easiest way to do a AJAX request. Then check the 9^th line. There I have load the "about.html" file inside the main div when click the "About" link (id is "link2"). This method can be used to decorate our request using effects. As above code you can use beforeSend and success functions to get that work done.

If I uncomment the 3^rd line, "home.html" page will load to main div in the page load. Finally check the 23^rd line, this is different than above mentioned methods. Here I have get the data in a PHP file. I have call the "boo.php" file using POST method and display the result inside main div when "Contact Us" (id is "link3") clicked. Now I think you may noticed that AJAX is simple if you use JQuery.

Embed a Picture to Body of Gmail Message

2010-01-05T09:52:00.003+05:30

In this post I’m going to show you how to embed a picture to body of the message in Gmail without attaching. To get this work done you have to enable Image Inserting in Google Labs. Let’s see how we can enable this.

First log in to your account and go to Settings as following picture;

Then go to Labs section and there you can find Inserting Images. Enable the feature and save the settings. See the following screen shots to more clarifications.

If you have new interface you can directly go to Lab as follows.

Now you can see new icon in tool bar, using that we can embed images to body of the message as following picture.

This is a simple thing that most people dose not aware.

ADD|Update|Delete Item SharePoint Web Services

2009-12-28T17:52:00.006+05:30

In one of my previous article I discussed how we can retrieve data in a SharePoint List Using its Web Services. In this post I’m going to discuss how we can update a SharePoint list using Web Services. Please refer my previous article on "SharePoint List Web Service GetListItems" to learn how to add Web References to your project. Then you can use the following sample codes to Update SharePoint lists.

Updating Existing Items

In the following code I have update the "Tasks" list, there I have update the title of two items which has the ID 7 and 10.

    public void updateListItemsWS()
    {
        WS_Lists.Lists myservice = new WS_Lists.Lists();
        myservice.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
        myservice.Url = "http://mermoss:5050/testsara/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx";
        try
        {
            System.Xml.XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
            System.Xml.XmlElement elBatch = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Batch");

            elBatch.SetAttribute("OnError", "Continue");
            elBatch.SetAttribute("ListVersion", "1");

            string strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='Update'>" +
                  "<Field Name='ID'>7</Field>" +
                  "<Field Name='Title'>Sara1</Field></Method>" +
                  "<Method ID='2' Cmd='Update'><Field Name='ID' >10</Field>" +
                  "<Field Name='Title'>Sara2</Field></Method>";

            elBatch.InnerXml = strBatch;
            myservice.UpdateListItems("Tasks", elBatch);

        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Response.Write(ex.Message);
        }
    }

Delete Items

To delete item, use following phrase in the above code, this will delete the item which has ID of 10.

string strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='Delete'>" +
"<Field Name='ID'>10</Field></Method>";

Add New Item

To add item, use following phrase in the above code,

string strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='New'>" +
"<Field Name='ID'>New</Field>"+
"<Field Name='Title'>TestTitle1</Field>"+
"</Method>";

SharePoint List Web Service GetListItems

2009-12-17T10:01:00.004+05:30

In this post, I’ going to discuss how we can retrieve data from a SharePoint List using its Web Services. First to know about SharePoint Web Services please refer this. We can user List Web Service which provides methods for working with SharePoint Lists, Content Types, List Items, and Files to read a List. Here we are going to use GetListItems method.

To use the above method we should know the GUIDs of the target list and view. Please follow my article on SharePoint List GUIDs to see how we can get them.

This is how you can Add Web Reference; I’ll get created Web Site Project in Visual studio to illustrate. Actually it is simple, first click on Add Web Reference and give the URL to the Web Service.

This is a sample code to read SharePoint list,

    public void getListData()
    {
        WS_Lists.Lists myservice = new WS_Lists.Lists();
        myservice.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
        myservice.Url = "http://merdev-moss:5050/testsara/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx";
        try
        {
            /* Assign values to pass the GetListItems method*/
            string listName = "{5C65CB1A-2E1B-488A-AC07-B115CD0FC647}";
            string viewName = "{75E689B4-5773-43CB-8324-58E42E1EB885}";
            string rowLimit = "100";

            // Instantiate an XmlDocument object
            System.Xml.XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
            System.Xml.XmlElement query = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Query");
            System.Xml.XmlElement viewFields = xmlDoc.CreateElement("ViewFields");
            System.Xml.XmlElement queryOptions = xmlDoc.CreateElement("QueryOptions");

            /*Use CAML query*/
            query.InnerXml = "<Where><Gt><FieldRef Name=\"ID\" />" +
            "<Value Type=\"Counter\">0</Value></Gt></Where>";
            viewFields.InnerXml = "<FieldRef Name=\"Title\" />";
            queryOptions.InnerXml = "";

            System.Xml.XmlNode nodes = myservice.GetListItems(listName, viewName, query, viewFields, rowLimit, null, null);

            foreach (System.Xml.XmlNode node in nodes)
            {
                if (node.Name == "rs:data")
                {
                    for (int i = 0; i < node.ChildNodes.Count; i++)
                    {
                        if (node.ChildNodes[i].Name == "z:row")
                        {
                            Response.Write(node.ChildNodes[i].Attributes["ows_Title"].Value + "</br>");
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Response.Write(ex.Message);
        }
    }

In the above code I have use CAML queries to get the result. It will return all the result because I’m searching for Items which has ID greater than 0. It is always true. If you want to know how to write CAML quires easily please refer my article on CAML & SPQuery in SharePoint.

SharePoint List GUIDs, How to Find?

2009-12-16T12:51:00.004+05:30

In this post I’m going to discuss about an easiest way to find GUID of a SharePoint list and a View. If you are using the MOSS 2007 there is straight forward way to get the List GUID, these are the steps.

1. Access the list via your browser.

2. Go to Settings --> List Settings and right-click on the "Information management policy settings" links and choose Copy Shortcut.

3. Paste the URL and you can see the GUID surrounded with "{" and "}".

If you are using WSS 3.0 follow these steps, you can use this method to find the View GUID in MOSS 2007

1. Access the list via your browser and select the View you want to find the GUID.

2. Select "Modify this View" and copy the URL.

3 You will get a URL like this,

http://mysite:5050/testsara/_layouts/ViewEdit.aspx?List=%7B5C65CB1A%2D2E1B%2D488A%2DAC07%2DB115CD0FC647%7D&View=%7B75E689B4%2D5773%2D43CB%2D8324%2D58E42E1EB885%7D&Source=http%253A%252F%252Fmysite%253A5050%252Ftestsara%252FLists%252FTasks%252FAllItems%252Easpx

There you can find,

List=%7B5C65CB1A%2D2E1B%2D488A%2DAC07%2DB115CD0FC647%7D
View=%7B75E689B4%2D5773%2D43CB%2D8324%2D58E42E1EB885%7D

Replace "%7B" with "{"
Replace all "%2D" with "-"
Replace "%7D" with "}"

You are now left with the GUIDs, in the above example;

List ID is {5C65CB1A-2E1B-488A-AC07-B115CD0FC647}
View ID is {75E689B4-5773-43CB-8324-58E42E1EB885}

You can use SharePoint Tips Utility Pack if you need to get the GUID of List columns. There in menu bar, select "List Management --> Change Field Settings" and load your site.

Add User To SharePoint Group Programmatically

2009-12-10T11:31:00.012+05:30

Let’s see how we can programmatically add a user to existing SharePoint user group . You can use the following method which has two string parameters, one for group name and other for user login name for get the above task done.

public void addUserToGroup(string groupName, string userLoginName)
{
    string strUrl = "http://mysite:5050/";
    using (SPSite site = new SPSite(strUrl))
    {
        using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
        {
            try
            {
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                SPUser spUser = web.EnsureUser[userLoginName];

                if (spUser != null)
                {
                    SPGroup spGroup = web.Groups[groupName];
                    if (spGroup != null)
                    spGroup.AddUser(spUser);
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw ex;
            }
            finally
            {
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
            }
        }
    }
}

Here you should provide the login name in correct format (DomainName\UserName). For example you can call this method like follow,

addUserToGroup("Test Group", "SA\\saranga.rathnayaka");

Add Item To List With LookUp Column Programmatically

2009-12-09T15:53:00.010+05:30

In my previous posts on "Working With SharePoint List" I have discussed how we can Read, Add and Update SharePoint List. If you have to add new Item to a list which has lookup column, you have to follow a different procedure.

If you look at the following figure, you can easily understand what I'm going to do. I'm going to add a new record to List_B, which has a lookup column from List_A's Title Field.

This is a sample code to get the above task done,

        
    public void addToLookUp()
    {
        /* open the web */
        SPSite site = new SPSite("http://merdev-moss:5050/testsara");
        SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();

        string targetList = "List_B";
        string sourceList = "List_A";
        string sourceListField = "Title";

        /* we are going to add new row to List_B,
        * It (List_B) has a lookup column called "A_Column",
        * It (A_Column) get data from Title field of List_A.
        * (List_A has value called "test2" in Title field)
        */

        SPListItemCollection listItems = web.Lists[targetList].Items;
        SPListItem item = listItems.Add();
        item["Title"] = "New Title";
        int ID = get_ID(web, sourceList, sourceListField, "test2");
        if (ID != 0)
            item["A_Column"] = ID;
        item.Update();
    }

    public static int get_ID(SPWeb web, string list, string field, string itemname)
    {
        int id = 0;
        SPList sharedDocumentList = web.ServerRelativeUrl.Equals("/") ? web.GetList(web.ServerRelativeUrl + list) : web.GetList(web.ServerRelativeUrl + "/" + list);
        SPListItemCollection listItems = sharedDocumentList.Items;
        foreach (SPListItem item in listItems)
        {
            if (item[field].ToString() == itemname.ToString())
                id = item.ID;
            break;
        }
        return (id);
    }

Create SharePoint List View Programmatically

2009-12-08T17:50:00.007+05:30

In this post I’m going to describe how you can programmatically add a view to SharePoint list or Document Library. You can get this work done by using SPViewCollection.Add Method (Microsoft.SharePoint), here is a sample code,

        public void createListView()
        {
            SPSite site = new SPSite("http://merdev-moss:5050/testsara");
            SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
            SPList list = web.Lists["Tasks"];

            SPViewCollection allviews = list.Views;
            string viewName = "Test View";

            System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection viewFields = new System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection();
            viewFields.Add("Title");
            viewFields.Add("Priority");

            string myquery = "<Where><Gt><FieldRef Name='ID' /><Value Type='Counter'>0</Value></Gt></Where>";
            allviews.Add(viewName, viewFields, myquery, 100, true, false);
        }

Above code creates a view in the collection with the specified name "Test View" and added view fields. Query string will return all items, because always ID is greater than 0. Row limit is 100 and the view displays items page by page. Last Boolean mean it is not the default view.

Please refer my article on CAML & SPQuery in SharePoint to find out easy way to write CAML quires used in above code.

Add View Using Existing View

You also can create new List View with the help of existing one, this sample code will create new View which has another field using above created View.

        public void _createListView()
        {
            SPSite site = new SPSite("http://merdev-moss:5050/testsara");
            SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
            SPList list = web.Lists["Tasks"];

            SPViewCollection allviews = list.Views;
            string viewName = "New Test View";

            System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection viewFields = list.Views["Test View"].ViewFields.ToStringCollection();
            viewFields.Add("Status");

            string myquery = "<Where><Gt><FieldRef Name='ID' /><Value Type='Counter'>0</Value></Gt></Where>";
            allviews.Add(viewName, viewFields, myquery, 100, true, false);
        }

Add Permission Level To SharePoint User Group

2009-12-08T12:33:00.006+05:30

In this post I'm going to discuss how you can add a permission level (Read, Contribute, Full Control, etc) to a SharePoint user group. Here is a sample code,

        public void addPermissionToGroup()
        {
            SPSite site = new SPSite("http://mysite:5050/");
            SPWeb spWeb = site.OpenWeb();
            string permissionName = "Read";
            string groupName = "Project Manager";

            try
            {
                spWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                SPRoleAssignment roleAssignment = new SPRoleAssignment(spWeb.SiteGroups[groupName]);
                roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add(spWeb.RoleDefinitions[permissionName]);

                if (!spWeb.HasUniqueRoleAssignments)
                    spWeb.BreakRoleInheritance(false);

                spWeb.RoleAssignments.Add(roleAssignment);
                spWeb.Update();
            }
            catch (Exception _exception)
            {
                throw _exception;
            }
            finally
            {
                spWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
            }
        }

You can view RoleDefinitions defined for your site by visiting to Site Settings --> Advanced Permissions.

Add Menu Bar To Blogger Blog

2009-12-02T16:35:00.015+05:30

I was able to add a nice multilevel dropdown menu to my blog. In this post I’m going to discuss how you also can add it to your blogger blog. Here I’m using pure CSS multilevel menu generated by Free CSS Drop Down Menu Generator.

You can’t use the code directly in blogger without some modifications; I’ll describe how you can edit the code to use it in blogger to get a menu bar like above picture (Figure 1).

Create the Menu

First get the following code and save it as .html file. Then edit the styles and links as you want. If you like this style, you only need add links for menus and sub menus.

Note : If you use the above mentioned Menu Generator in the HTML code you must replace "<![if gt IE 6]></a><![endif]>" using "</a>", otherwise it will not work in the Blogger.

View Code

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
ul.cssMenu ul{display:none}
ul.cssMenu li:hover>ul{display:block}
ul.cssMenu ul{position: absolute;left:-1px;top:98%;}
ul.cssMenu ul ul{position: absolute;left:98%;top:-2px;}
ul.cssMenu,ul.cssMenu ul{
 margin:0px;
 list-style:none;
 padding:0px 2px 2px 0px;
 background-color:#d8d8d8;}
ul.cssMenu table {border-collapse:collapse}ul.cssMenu {
 display:block;
 zoom:1;
 float: left;}
ul.cssMenu ul{
 border-left:2px solid #444444;
 border-bottom:1px solid #444444;
 border-right:1px solid #444444;
 border-top:0px;
 z-index:9999;}
ul.cssMenu li{
 display:block;
 margin:2px 0px 0px 2px;
 font-size:0px;}
ul.cssMenu a:active, ul.cssMenu a:focus {outline-style:none;}
ul.cssMenu a, ul.cssMenu li.dis a:hover, ul.cssMenu li.sep a:hover {
 display:block;
 vertical-align:middle;
 background-color:#d8d8d8;
 text-align:left;
 text-decoration:none;
 padding:4px;
 _padding-left:0;
 font:normal 11px Verdana;
 color: #444444;
 text-decoration:none;
 cursor:default;}
ul.cssMenu span{
 overflow:hidden;
 font-weight:bold;
 background-position:right center;
 background-repeat: no-repeat;
 padding-right:11px;}
ul.cssMenu li {    float:left;}
ul.cssMenu ul li {float:none;}
ul.cssMenu ul a {
 text-align:left;
 white-space:nowrap;}
ul.cssMenu li.sep{
 text-align:center;
 padding:0px;
 line-height:0;
 height:100%;}
ul.cssMenu li.sep span{
 float:none;    
 padding-right:0;
 width:5;
 height:16;
 display:inline-block;
 background-color:#AAAAAA;    
 background-image:none;}
ul.cssMenu ul li.sep span{width:80%;height:3;}
ul.cssMenu li:hover{position:relative;}
ul.cssMenu li:hover>a{
 background-color:#eeeeee;
 font:normal 11px Verdana;
 color: #000000;
 text-decoration:none;}
ul.cssMenu li a:hover{
 position:relative;
 background-color:#eeeeee;
 font:normal 11px Verdana;
 color: #000000;
 text-decoration:none;}
ul.cssMenu li.dis a {color: #AAAAAA !important;}
ul.cssMenu img {border: none;float:left;_float:none;margin-right:4px;width:16px;height:16px;}
ul.cssMenu a:hover ul,ul.cssMenu a:hover a:hover ul,ul.cssMenu a:hover a:hover a:hover ul{display:block}
ul.cssMenu a:hover ul ul,ul.cssMenu a:hover a:hover ul ul{display:none}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<ul class="cssMenu">
 <li><a href="#" title="test title"><span>SEO</span><!--[if gt IE 6]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->
  <ul>
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">Your Site in Google</a></li>
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">Selecting Good Title</a></li>
  </ul>
 <!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li>
 <li><a href="#" title="test title"><span>Blogger Tips</span><!--[if gt IE 6]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->
  <ul class="cssMenum">
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">Expandable Blogger Posts</a></li>
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">Blogger Title Tip</a></li>
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">Adding META Tags</a></li>
  </ul>
 <!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li>
 <li><a href="#" title="test title"><span>SharePoint</span><!--[if gt IE 6]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->
  <ul class="cssMenum">
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">What is SharePoint</a></li>
   <li><a href="#" title="test title"><span>Create Custom Features</span><!--[if gt IE 6]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->
    <ul class="cssMenum">
     <li><a href="#" title="test title">Removing Features</a></li>
    </ul>
   <!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li>
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">CAML in SharePoint</a></li>
   <li><a href="#" title="test title">User Groups</a></li>
  </ul>
 <!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

Add Menu to Blog

1. Now you have to edit the HTML in your blogger template. To do that first go to "Edit HTML" (Figure 2). (Before editing your template, download the full template)

Find "b:section class='header'" and set the value of "maxwidgets" to 3, if it is less than it (Figure 2). Set "showaddelement" to "true",

2. Then Find the </head> tag in your template and paste the styles just before that tag. Make sure you should include <style type="text/css"> and </style> tags.

3. Now you can add new "HTML/JavaScript" Gadget to your blogger header and paste the code between <body> and </body> from the .html file you created using my code given in the top of this post (Figure 3). There do not give a Title for the Gadget.

Now every thing is ok and view your blog to see the new Gadget.

Add Lookup Column to SharePoint List Programmatically

2009-11-26T13:53:00.014+05:30

In one of my previous article I discussed how to create a SharePoint list programmatically in C#. There I didn’t discuss how we can add lookup field for our newly created list. Let’s see how, this is a sample code.

        public void createList()
        {
            // choose your site
            SPSite site = new SPSite("http://merdev-moss:5050");
            SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
            SPListCollection lists = web.Lists;

            // create new Generic list called "My List"
            lists.Add("My List", "My list Description", SPListTemplateType.GenericList);

            SPList newList = web.Lists["My List"];

            // create Text type new column called "My Column"
            newList.Fields.Add("My Column", SPFieldType.Text, true);

            /*create lookup type new column called "Lookup Column"
            * Here I am going to get the information from the "Title"
            * column of a list called "User Roles"
            */
            SPList targetList = web.Lists["User Roles"];

            newList.Fields.AddLookup("Lookup Column", targetList.ID, false);
            SPFieldLookup lkp = (SPFieldLookup)newList.Fields["Lookup Column"];
            lkp.LookupField = targetList.Fields["Title"].InternalName;
            lkp.Update();

            // make new column visible in default view
            SPView view = newList.DefaultView;
            view.ViewFields.Add("My Column");
            view.ViewFields.Add("Lookup Column");
            view.Update();
        }

In the above code I have created Generic list and lookup column. You can use whatever list type and field type according to your requirement. To learn more about SharePoint lists, follow "SharePoint List C# Part 1".

Remove Event Receiver in Sharepoint List

2009-11-23T14:39:00.011+05:30

In this post I’m going to describe how you can remove an Event Receivers from SharePoint List programmatically. This will be very useful if you have deployed and active custom features, because if you create a custom feature for a custom list, that feature will be added to all the custom lists. Then if you want to create list dynamically and don’t want to add those features you can use this code to remove unwanted events.

public void  removeEvents()
{
 // choose your site
 string strUrl = "http://mysite:5050/";
 using (SPSite site = new SPSite(strUrl))
 {
  using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
  {
   SPListCollection lists = web.Lists;
   SPList list = web.Lists["My List"];
      
   SPEventReceiverDefinitionCollection erdc = list.EventReceivers;
   List <SPEventReceiverDefinition> eventsToDelete = new List <SPEventReceiverDefinition>();
      
   foreach (SPEventReceiverDefinition erd in erdc)
   {
    if (erd != null)
    {
     try
     {
      eventsToDelete.Add(erd);
     }
     catch (Exception e)
     {
      Console.Write(e.ToString());
     }
    }
   }
   foreach (SPEventReceiverDefinition er in eventsToDelete)
   {
    //if(er.Type == SPEventReceiverType.ItemAdded)
    er.Delete();
   }  
  }
 }
}

Before delete the Event Receiver, if you want you can check the type and delete. In the above code I have commented that part. So if you use the above code as it is, it will remove all the Event Receivers.

SharePoint charting (Chart inside web part)

2009-11-13T18:32:00.023+05:30

In my article on "SharePoint Web Part Development Tutorial" I discussed how we can develop and deploy custom SharePoint web part with visual designing. Now let’s see how we can add a chart for that web part. Finally you will be getting a result like following picture.

To create the above chart I’m getting data from a SharePoint list as follow.

You can see I’m showing the chart inside my custom web part called "My first custom Web Part". There I used the code from "Free Google Chart SharePoint Web Part" and customized it as I want. These are the steps to add nice chart to your web part for free.

First Create your custom web part, don’t deploy at this stage.

Then add a Class called “Chart.cs” and replace the code using following code.

View Code

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace ProjectView{
public class Chart{

protected string _BGColor = "FFFFFF";
protected string _ChartColor = "0099ff,ff0000";
protected int _ChartHeight = 400;
protected LegendPositions _ChartLegend;
protected string _ChartTitle = "Burn Down Chart";
protected ChartTypes _ChartType;
protected int _ChartWidth = 720;
protected string _DataField = "Planned Effort,Actual Effort";
protected string _LabelField = "Title";
protected string _ListName = "";
protected string _SiteName = "http://merdev-moss:5050/";
protected string _ViewName = "";

public enum ChartTypes{
Line,
VerticalBar,
Pie,
Pie3D,
HorizontalBar
}
public enum LegendPositions{
horizontal_top, 
vertical_left,
horizontal_bottom,
vertical_top,
vertical_bottom,
vertical_right
}
public string createChartString(string listName){
_ListName = listName;

string str = "";
string str2 = "";

SPSite site = new SPSite(this._SiteName);
SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
try{
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this._ListName)){
SPList list = null;
SPListItemCollection items = null;
try{
string[] strArray3;
int num5;
list = web.Lists[this._ListName];
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this._ViewName)){
SPView view = list.Views[this._ViewName];
items = list.GetItems(view);
}
else{
items = list.Items;
}
string str3 = "";
float num2 = 0f;
int num3 = 0;
bool flag = true;
char[] separator = new char[] { ',', ';' };
string[] strArray = this._DataField.Split(separator);
string[] strArray2 = new string[strArray.Length];
foreach (string str4 in strArray){
str2 = str2 + "<br>Series=" + str4;
if (!list.Fields.ContainsField(str4)){
str = str + "<p>Data List column not specified or not found:" + str4 + "</p>";
flag = false;
}
}
if (!list.Fields.ContainsField(this._LabelField)){
str = str + "<p>Label List column not specified or not found:" + this._LabelField + "</p>";
flag = false;
}
if (!flag){
goto Label_0868;
}
foreach (SPListItem item in items){
num3++;
try{
int index = 0;
foreach (string str5 in strArray){
string[] strArray7;
IntPtr ptr2;
float num = Convert.ToSingle(item[str5]);
if (num > num2){
num2 = num;
}
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strArray2[index])){
string[] strArray6;
IntPtr ptr;
(strArray6 = strArray2)[(int)(ptr = (IntPtr)index)] = strArray6[(int)ptr] + ",";
}
string str6 = num.ToString().Replace(",", ".");
(strArray7 = strArray2)[(int)(ptr2 = (IntPtr)index)] = strArray7[(int)ptr2] + str6;
index++;
}
}
catch{
str = str + "<p>Data column error:" + this._DataField + "</p>";
}
try{
if (str3 != ""){
str3 = str3 + "|";
}
if ((this._LabelField != "LinkTitle") && (item.Fields[this._LabelField].FieldValueType == typeof(DateTime))){
str3 = str3 + ((DateTime)item[this._LabelField]).ToString("MMM yyyy");
}
else if (item[this._LabelField] != null){
str3 = str3 + item[this._LabelField].ToString();
}
continue;
}
catch{
str = str + "<p>Label column error:" + this._LabelField + "</p>";
continue;
}
}
string str7 = "";
string str8 = "";
string str9 = "";
string str10 = "";
string str11 = "";
string str12 = "";
string str13 = "";
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str3)){
str3 = str3.Replace("&", "%26");
}
string str14 = num2.ToString().Replace(",", ".");
switch (this._ChartType){
case ChartTypes.Pie:
str7 = "p";
str9 = str3;
str12 = "0," + str14;
goto Label_051D;

case ChartTypes.Pie3D:
str7 = "p3";
str9 = str3;
str12 = "0," + str14;
goto Label_051D;

case ChartTypes.Line:
str7 = "lc";
str8 = "x,y";
str10 = "0:|" + str3;
str11 = "1,0," + str14;
str12 = "0," + str14;
goto Label_051D;

case ChartTypes.VerticalBar:
str7 = "bvg";
str8 = "x,y";
str10 = "0:|" + str3;
str11 = "1,0," + str14;
str12 = "0," + str14;
str13 = "a";
goto Label_051D;

case ChartTypes.HorizontalBar:
str7 = "bhg";
str8 = "x,y";
strArray3 = str3.Split(new char[] { '|' });
str3 = "";
num5 = strArray3.Length - 1;
goto Label_04DE;

default:
str7 = "p";
goto Label_051D;
}
Label_04AE:
if (str3 != ""){
str3 = str3 + "|";
}
str3 = str3 + strArray3[num5];
num5--;
Label_04DE:
if (num5 >= 0){
goto Label_04AE;
}
str10 = "1:|" + str3;
str11 = "0,0," + str14;
str12 = "0," + str14;
str13 = "a";
Label_051D:
if (str == ""){
object obj2 = str;
str = string.Concat(new object[] { obj2, "?chs=", this._ChartWidth, "x", this._ChartHeight });
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this._ChartTitle)){
string str15 = this._ChartTitle.Replace(" ", "+");
str = str + "&chtt=" + str15.Replace("&", "%26");
}
str = (str + "&cht=" + str7) + "&chts=000000,17" + "&chd=t:";
int num6 = 0;
string[] strArray8 = strArray;
for (int i = 0; i < strArray8.Length; i++){
string text1 = strArray8[i];
if (num6 > 0){
str = str + "|";
}
str = str + strArray2[num6];
num6++;
}
str = str + "&chf=bg,s," + this._BGColor;
if (this._ChartColor != ""){
str = str + "&chco=" + this._ChartColor;
}
if (str9 != ""){
str = str + "&chl=" + str9;
}
if (str8 != ""){
str = str + "&chxt=" + str8;
}
if (str10 != ""){
str = str + "&chxl=" + str10;
}
if (str11 != ""){
str = str + "&chxr=" + str11;
}
if (str12 != ""){
str = str + "&chds=" + str12;
}
if (str13 != ""){
str = str + "&chbh=" + str13;
}
str = str + "&chg=" + ((100.0 / ((double)num3))).ToString("F") + ",20";
if (strArray.Length > 1){
str = str + "&chdl=";
int num7 = 0;
foreach (string str16 in strArray){
if (num7 > 0){
str = str + "|";
}
str = str + str16;
num7++;
}
str = str + "&chdlp=";
switch (this._ChartLegend){
case LegendPositions.horizontal_top:
str = str + "t";
break;

case LegendPositions.horizontal_bottom:
str = str + "b";
break;

case LegendPositions.vertical_top:
str = str + "tv";
break;

case LegendPositions.vertical_bottom:
str = str + "bv";
break;

case LegendPositions.vertical_left:
str = str + "l";
break;

case LegendPositions.vertical_right:
str = str + "r";
break;
}
}
str2 = str2 + "<br>" + str.Replace("&", "<br>&");
str = "http://chart.apis.google.com/chart" + str;
}
}
catch{
str = this._ListName + ": Sharepoint List not found!";
}
}
else{
str = "No Sharepoint List defined!";
}
}
catch (Exception){
str = "<br>Site not found:" + this._SiteName;
}
Label_0868:
return str;
}
}
}

Now change the variable names according to your site, list and columns.

Then Add this line to your .ascx file.

Now replace your "Page_Load" method as follows.

Now you can built and deploy your web part to see the result. You can get VerticalBar,Pie,Pie3D and HorizontalBar charts by changing the "ChartType" in the above code.

Create SharePoint list programmatically C#

2009-11-13T15:44:00.009+05:30

In this article I’m going to discuss how we can create a SharePoint list programmatically in c# and how we can add columns to the created list. Actually this is very simple task; this is a sample code.

        public void createList()
        {
            // choose your site
            SPSite site = new SPSite("http://merdev-moss:5050");
            SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
            SPListCollection lists = web.Lists;

            // create new Generic list called "My List"
            lists.Add("My List", "My list Description", SPListTemplateType.GenericList);

            SPList list = web.Lists["My List"];

            // create Text type new column called "My Column" 
            list.Fields.Add("My Column", SPFieldType.Text, true);

            // make new column visible in default view
            SPView view = list.DefaultView;
            view.ViewFields.Add("My Column");
            view.Update();
        }

In the above code I have created Generic list and normal Text column. You can use whatever list type and field type according to your requirement. To learn more about SharePoint lists, follow "SharePoint List C# Part 1".

If you want to add lookup columns please refer "Add Lookup Column to SharePoint List programmatically".

To learn how to create List View, refer "Create SharePoint List View Programmatically".

Use Custom Workflow Actions in SharePoint Designer

2009-11-10T17:21:00.002+05:30

In my previous article on "SharePoint Workflow Actions for Designer in Visual Studio" I discussed how to create and deploy a custom workflow action to use in the SharePoint designer.In this article I’m going to discussed how you can use the added action in the SharePoint Designer.

First open your site in the SharePoint Designer and create new workflow as shown in following figure.

Then select the SharePoint list that the workflow should attached to and selects the start option of the workflow as following figure.

Now you can find the newly deployed custom action in the "Extras" category. Chose it and click the "Add" button. Then you have to specify the parameters if your custom action asked for them as follow.

Now everything is done and you can test your work flow. To do this, go to selected list and click on the arrow appear when you put the mouse on title of a list item. Then select the "Workflows" option.

Follow my article on "SharePoint Workflow Actions for Designer in Visual Studio" to learn how to create and deploy a custom workflow action to use in the SharePoint designer.

SharePoint Workflow Actions for Designer in Visual Studio

2009-11-06T23:30:00.019+05:30

Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can design workflows without writing custom code. Microsoft has provided an article on Create a Workflow which helps you to get started by explaining some key design considerations and providing a basic procedure, but the problem is there are only few limited actions available in SharePoint Designer 2007 to develop your custom workflows (Figure 1).

You can develop custom actions using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or higher and deploy in your SharePoint server. Then you will see your custom action when you click More Actions (Figure 1).

In this article I’m going to show you how to add custom actions to SharePoint site and use it in SharePoint Designer 2007 to develop SharePoint workflows. For your ease here I have included all the necessary screen shots and coding step by step.

Building Custom Workflow

First create new project in Microsoft Visual Studio, there select Project Type as workflow and template as Workflow Activity Library (Figure 2). I have given "MyFirstWorkflow" for the name.

Then Add reference to the "Microsoft.SharePoint.dll" and "microsoft.sharepoint.WorkflowActions.dll". They can be found in your SharePoint server’s ISAPI folder (Figure 3 & 4).

You should copy those files from the same directory to a directory on your local computer if you are developing your project on a machine not having SharePoint or MOSS.

Now you can give a name to your Activity, Here I gave "SampleActivity" as Figure 5 and drag-and-drop codeActivity from Toolbox (Figure 6).

Now replace your Activity1.cs file using following code. If you are using different name spaces and class names, you have to change this code according to those names.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.ComponentModel.Design;
using System.Collections;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Compiler;
using System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Serialization;
using System.Workflow.ComponentModel;
using System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Design;
using System.Workflow.Runtime;
using System.Workflow.Activities;
using System.Workflow.Activities.Rules;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.Diagnostics;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions;

namespace MyFirstWorkflow
{
    public partial class SampleActivity : SequenceActivity
    {
        SPList _list;
        private EventLog _log;

        public SampleActivity()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }
        public static DependencyProperty __ContextProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("__Context", typeof(WorkflowContext), typeof(SampleActivity));

        [DescriptionAttribute("__Context")]
        [BrowsableAttribute(true)]
        [DesignerSerializationVisibilityAttribute(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)]
        public WorkflowContext __Context
        {
            get
            {
                return ((WorkflowContext)(base.GetValue(SampleActivity.__ContextProperty)));
            }
            set
            {
                base.SetValue(SampleActivity.__ContextProperty, value);
            }
        }

        public static DependencyProperty ListIdProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ListId", typeof(string), typeof(SampleActivity));

        [DescriptionAttribute("ListId")]
        [BrowsableAttribute(true)]
        [DesignerSerializationVisibilityAttribute(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)]
        public string ListId
        {
            get
            {
                return ((string)(base.GetValue(SampleActivity.ListIdProperty)));
            }
            set
            {
                base.SetValue(SampleActivity.ListIdProperty, value);
            }
        }

        public static DependencyProperty ListItemProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ListItem", typeof(int), typeof(SampleActivity));

        [DescriptionAttribute("ListItem")]
        [BrowsableAttribute(true)]
        [DesignerSerializationVisibilityAttribute(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)]
        public int ListItem
        {
            get
            {
                return ((int)(base.GetValue(SampleActivity.ListItemProperty)));
            }
            set
            {
                base.SetValue(SampleActivity.ListItemProperty, value);
            }
        }

        protected override ActivityExecutionStatus Execute(ActivityExecutionContext executionContext)
        {
            _log = new EventLog("Add Description");
            _log.Source = "Share Point Workflows";

            try
            {
                //Execute method as a elevated method
                SPSecurity.CodeToRunElevated elevatedExecuteMethod = new SPSecurity.CodeToRunElevated(ExecuteMethod);
                SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(elevatedExecuteMethod);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                _log.WriteEntry("Error" + ex.Message.ToString(), EventLogEntryType.Error);
            }
            return ActivityExecutionStatus.Closed;
        }

        private void ExecuteMethod()
        {
            try
            {
                //retrieveing the Site object
                SPSite _site = new SPSite(__Context.Site.Url);

                //retrieveing the Web object
                SPWeb _web = (SPWeb)(__Context.Web);

                //retrieveing the list object
                _list = _web.Lists[new Guid(this.ListId)];

                //retrieveing the list item object
                SPListItem _listItem = _list.GetItemById(this.ListItem);

                _site.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                _web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

                _listItem["Description"] = "This is sample description";

                _listItem.Update();
                _list.Update();

                _site.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
                _web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
            }
        }
    }
}

In the above code you can see some methods to get the current Site, Web, List and List Item. You don’t need to change those things. In the above simple example I have fill the "Description" column using my custom action written inside the "ExecuteMethod()" method. You can write any custom event which cannot be done using given actions in SharePoint designer.

Signing your Project

To deploy this custom workflow to GAC and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, we should assign a Strong Name key and sign the control.

To do this, right click the "MyFirstWorkflow" node in Solution Explorer and select Properties. Then select the Signing tab from the choices on the left. Check the "Sign the assembly" box and select from the "Choose a strong name key file" drop down list (Figure 7).

There give a key file name and click ok. Now you can build your project and ready to deploy.

Deploying to Server

To deploy your custom workflow action to the SharePoint server, follow these simple steps.

Drag and drop the compiled DLL (You can find it in your project folder's bin folder) into the Global Assembly Cache. The Global Assembly Cache is a special folder located at %WINDIR%\assembly where %WINDIR% is the full path to your Windows folder (e.g. C:\Windows or C:\Winnt).

Get the publicKeyToken property of our assembly. You can find it by right click on the file and select properties in "assembly" folder (Figure 8).

Update the "web.config file" by inserting fillowing line between <authorizedTypes> and </authorizedTypes> tags. (You can find your site’s web.config file in SharePoint server’s "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\<your_site_port>" directory).

<authorizedtype Assembly="MyFirstWorkflow, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8f2766b10f337a33" Namespace="MyFirstWorkflow" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />

Update the WSS.ACTIONS file by adding following line between

<Actions Sequential="then" Parallel="and"> and </Actions> tags. (You can find WSS.ACTIONS file in SharePoint server’s "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\1033\Workflow" directory).

<action Name="Add Description"
ClassName="MyFirstWorkflow.SampleActivity"
Assembly="MyFirstWorkflow, Version=1.0.0.0,
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8f2766b10f337a33"
AppliesTo="all"
Category="Extras">

<ruledesigner Sentence="Add Description to %1">
<fieldbind Field="ListId,ListItem" Text="this list" Id="1" DesignerType="ChooseListItem" />
</RuleDesigner>

<parameters>
<parameter Name="__Context" Type="Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkflowActions.WorkflowContext" Direction="In" />
<parameter Name="ListId" Type="System.String, mscorlib" Direction="In" />
<parameter Name="ListItem" Type="System.Int32, mscorlib" Direction="In" />
</Parameters>
</Action>

Now deploying is completed, reset IIS and you can use your newly added custom action in the SharePoint Designer by going to "More Actions…" (Figure 1) when creating a workflow.

If you want more details on how to use custom actions when creating workflows follow my article "Use custom actions in SharePoint Designer".

How to Select a Title for My Article

2009-11-05T12:21:00.005+05:30

Your article title plays major role to driving long term search engine traffic. For the Title you have to give the overall idea of your article in simple phrase. The most important thing in article is making sure the title contains a strong keyword phrase.

Here I’m going to show you very simple way to select a best title for your article which contains a strong keyword phrase. I always use Query Suggestions in Google when selecting a title for my articles.

For example if I want to select a title for my article on developing SharePoint web part in visual studio, I’ll first search terms related to my article in Google. There as following picture you will be able to see what the things people search most are.

Then based on those results you can select the perfect title for your article by combining them. You can make this easier by using Google Keyword Tool. In the above example I selected my title as SharePoint Web Part Development Tutorial which contains most of keywords.

How To Make My Site Appear In Google Search

2009-11-04T13:02:00.009+05:30

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

If you search the above topic, in many articles you will see the same things like content is king, write unique content, get more back links etc. I was able to get significant traffic in to my blog within a 3, 4 weeks after starting it, because I used something really different than what you saw in other articles about SEO. This is how I did it.

Is the Content King?

Content is impotent but the king is website optimization. So you have to consider on both to get more traffic. You need to have good content but there the important thing is it should be different.

How to Optimize Your Pages?

First consider about Title tag of a particular page, your articles in that page should have a topic containing same key words appear in the Title. You can use bold and italics to highlight the keywords that are relevant to the article. If it is possible try to add those key words in to your main page.

If you are going to add META description tag and the META keywords tag they should have the same keywords that are relevant to the article's topic. Put your article related keywords in between H1, H2 and H3 tags. Use the ALT tag for images is always best practice.

Select the Correct Title for your Article

Here you should consider more about tour article’s title, keywords and header tags. They should match popular search keywords. I have discussed a simple way to do this in my article How to select a Title for my Article.

Back links, How I can Get Them?

Here one way back links plays major role in increasing link popularity. Two way links might be useful but one way back links have much higher weight. By submitting your website to forums, comments on blogs and using social networking websites you can get back links for your web site freely. I will write separate article on this topic soon.

Internal Linking

Internal links are very important. Here the tip is to let the internal link's anchor text contain the same keywords your original article has. For example when linking to your article that is called “ABC” from another page give the same link title as “ABC”.

Frequency of Update, Is It Important?

Yes, search engines give very high weight to frequently updated pages. Your search engine ranking will increase if your website gets updated frequently. More content gives more traffic, which is always true.

My Article Is New; Will It Appear in Search Result?

Yes, time doesn’t matter. You can see some new websites showing up in the top of Google search results after 3 or 4 weeks of their creation, you also can follow these things to achieve that. But remember old pages are always respected by search engines than newer ones.

Event Handling In Android

2009-10-29T22:27:00.007+05:30

In my previous article I discussed about how to create user interfaces in Android. Here I’m going to show you how you can add event handler to that UI. To do that, first add these two lines between package and class declaration.

import android.view.View;
import android.widget.Button;

Now replace your onCreate method using following code.

import android.view.View;
import android.widget.Button;

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
 super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
 setContentView(R.layout.testview);
 Button ok = (Button)findViewById(R.id.btn_testview_ok);
 ok.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
  public void onClick(View v){
   moveToMain();
  }
 });
}
private void moveToMain() {
 // TODO Auto-generated method stub
 setContentView(R.layout.main);
}

In the above code "btn_testview_ok" is the id of the "Ok" button in previous article. When you click that button, the moveToMain(); method will be called and content view will changed as "main.xml". I will discuss more about this topic in my next posts.

Android User Interface Design

2009-10-29T01:13:00.007+05:30

In one of my previous post I discussed about Creating Android Databases. In this tutorial I’ll discuss simple way to create Android UI using Eclipse and DroidDraw tool which support drag-and-drop of widgets like buttons, labels, text boxes, etc.

Displaying the user interface is done by Activity, the fundamental unit of an Android application. The setContentView() method of the Activity class load the XML UI located in the res/layout folder in the onCreate() event.

An Activity has Views and ViewGroups. Here View is a widget and collection of one or more View can be considered as ViewGroup. ViewGroup plays a major role by providing us layout to arrange the appearance and sequence of views. Well, let’s built our first User Interface in Android.

1. First create simple Android project.

2. Then using DroidDrow design your interface (show steps) and click "Generate" button at the top left corner.

First open DroidDrow and select AbsoluteLayout because using that layout you can easily place widgets as you want.

Then drag–and-drop widgets you want to the design surface.

You can change properties of your widgets using "Properties" tab. There if you want to change the Id, change the things after "@+id/".

Finally click "Generate" button to get the XML code to the "output" textbox.

3. Now add new XML file to "layout" folder as follows. There I’ll give the file name as "testview.xml". Don’t use capital letters for the name.

4. Then click on "testview.xml" tab and replace existing code by generated code from the DroidDrow tool.

5. Now replace the "setContentView(R.layout.main);" using "setContentView(R.layout.testview);". Now your "onCreate" method should appear as follows.

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  setContentView(R.layout.testview);
}

Finally save all and run the project to see your interface in Android.

If you are interested please refer Event Handling in Android to learn how to handle events for these widgets.

Add META Tags To Blogger

2009-10-27T13:08:00.007+05:30

META tags provides information about a web page such as who created the page, what the page is about and which keywords represent the page content. They do not affect how the page is displayed. Many search engines use this information when building their indices.

By default blogger does not contain META tags. In this tutorial I’m going to tell you how you can add META tags to your blog without causing problems. If you simply add these tags you will get "Duplicate meta descriptions" HTML suggestion as following picture.

Let’s see how we can add these tags without causing problems.

1. First log into your blog and from dashboard go to the "Layout --> Edit HTML" page as follows;

2. Then locate the <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>, you can find it between <head > and </head> tags as following picture;

Then paste this code just after that code.

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='Insert description here' name='description'/>
<meta content='Insert your keywords here' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='Insert Your Name' name='author'/>
</b:if>

Description : Limit it for maximum 200 characters.

Keywords : Do not repeat more than three times. The maximum number of keywords we recommend for this tag is 20.

Blogger Post Title Tip (SEO)

2009-10-26T14:45:00.010+05:30

By default in blogger the blog title appears first before appear your post title. If you consider Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is not a good practice. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to make the blogger post title come first as following picture.

You can follow these simple steps to swap the title and post title in blogger for a better Search Engine Optimization.

1. First log into your blog and from dashboard go to the "Layout --> Edit HTML" page as follows;

2. Then locate the <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>, you can find it between <head > and </head> tags as following picture;

3. Then replace that code by following code; It is always good if you download the Full Template before editing.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

Finally save template and you will see the result immediately in your browser title and after few days in search results.

Expandable Blogger Posts

2009-10-24T17:40:00.033+05:30

This tip can be used in your blog or web site to hide long posts or articles. Inserted of navigating to another page, using this tip you can wrap things like screen shots and source codes that reader doesn’t want to see at the page load.

Bellow is the demo of what we are going to do. Click the "Show All" link to unhide the things. You may notice without a page refresh you can simply get your work done.

Show All

Note: This text was hidden; you have unhide it by clicking "Show All". If you want to hide this note, then click the "Show All" link again.

Now let’s see how we can do this;

First paste this code between <head> and </head> tags in your HTML code. To see how you can do it in blogger click here.

1.First go to "Edit HTML" page,

2.Then find the <head> and </head> tags,

<style type='text/css'>
 .commenthidden {display:none}
 .commentshown {display:inline}
</style>
<script type='text/Javascript'>
function togglecomments (postid) {
 var whichpost = document.getElementById(postid);
 if (whichpost.className=="commentshown") {
  whichpost.className="commenthidden"; }
 else { whichpost.className="commentshown"; 
 }
}
</script>

Then as bellow I have Add the "Show All" link before add the content I'm going to hide ;

<a aiotitle="click to expand" href="javascript:togglecomments('yourDivId')">Show All</a>

Then put the things that you want to hide between

<div class="commenthidden" id="yourDivId"> and </div>

In the above example I did it as bellow;

<div class="commenthidden" id="yourDivId">
Note: This text was hidden; you have unhide it by clicking "See All". If you want to hide this note, then click the "See All" link again.
</div>

Note: Here "yourDivId" should be unique one. That means if you are going to use this more than one time, you have to replace "yourDivId" using unique name.

Sort Object ArrayList in C#

2009-10-14T16:07:00.031+05:30

You can easily sort an arraylist using its "sort()" method, but how can you sort an ArrayList of Objects? You can get this task done very easily with "IComparer" Interface.

As an example let’s get a "Person" object which contains two attributes called "ID" and "Name". Now we need to sort these objects by "ID" or "Name". By looking at the following picture, you can get very clear idea about what we are going to do now.

You may notice in "Sort 2" first I have sort by "ID" and then by "Name". I’ll give you the C# code for the above task using simple console application.

Create new class called "Person" and paste this code;

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace SortArrayList
{
    class Person
    {
        private int id;
        public int ID
        {
            get { return id; }
            set { id = value; }
        }
        private string name;
        public string Name
        {
            get { return name; }
            set { name = value; }
        }
        public int CompareTo(Person psn2, ObjCompare.ComparisonType comparisonType, Person psn1)
        {
            int returnValue;
            if (comparisonType == ObjCompare.ComparisonType.ID)
            {
                if (psn1.ID == psn2.ID)
                {
                    returnValue = Name.CompareTo(psn2.Name);
                }
                else
                {
                    returnValue = ID.CompareTo(psn2.ID);
                }
            }
            else if (comparisonType == ObjCompare.ComparisonType.Name)
            {
                returnValue = Name.CompareTo(psn2.Name);
            }
            else
            {
                returnValue = ID.CompareTo(psn2.ID);
            }
            return returnValue;
        }
    }
}

Create new class called "ObjCompare" and paste this code;

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections;

namespace SortArrayList
{
    class ObjCompare : IComparer
    {
        public enum ComparisonType
        {
            ID, Name
        }
        private ComparisonType compMethod;
        public ComparisonType ComparisonMethod
        {
            get { return compMethod; }
            set { compMethod = value; }
        }
        public int Compare(object x, object y)
        {
            Person psn1 = (Person)x;
            Person psn2 = (Person)y;
            return psn1.CompareTo(psn2, ComparisonMethod, psn1);
        }
    }
}

Now update your "Programme.cs" as bellow;

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections;

namespace SortArrayList
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            ArrayList lst = new ArrayList();

            Person psn = new Person();
            psn.Name = "Jack"; psn.ID = 15;
            lst.Add(psn);

            Person psn1 = new Person();
            psn1.Name = "David"; psn1.ID = 18;
            lst.Add(psn1);

            Person psn2 = new Person();
            psn2.Name = "Daniel"; psn2.ID = 12;
            lst.Add(psn2);

            Person psn3 = new Person();
            psn3.Name = "Owen"; psn3.ID = 20;
            lst.Add(psn3);

            Person psn4 = new Person();
            psn4.Name = "Colin"; psn4.ID = 16;
            lst.Add(psn4);

            Person psn5 = new Person();
            psn5.Name = "Aiden"; psn5.ID = 18;
            lst.Add(psn5);

            Console.Write(" ---before sort --- \n");
            foreach (Person item in lst)
            {
                int id = item.ID;
                string ttl = item.Name;
                Console.Write(id + " " + ttl + "\n");
            }
            /* sorting */
            ObjCompare objcom = new ObjCompare();
            objcom.ComparisonMethod = ObjCompare.ComparisonType.ID;
            lst.Sort(objcom);

            Console.Write(" ---after sort -- \n");
            foreach (Person item in lst)
            {
                int id = item.ID;
                string ttl = item.Name;
                Console.Write(id + " " + ttl + "\n");
            }
        }
    }
}

You will get the output as "Sort 2" in the picture. If you don't want to sort by "Name" you can do it by editing "Person" class. There I have check whether "psn1.ID == psn2.ID", by commenting that part you can get the result as "Sort 1".

Hide Columns in SharePoint Part 2

2009-10-12T15:05:00.020+05:30

Note : Before going to use this method you have to make sure all the columns are added to the list.Otherwise you have to remove the added custom form the SharePoint Designer (described in the post) and add it again after adding new column. It is better to use this way if you want hide and change control modes of fields. Also keep in mind to add at least one list item before use this method.

You can try SharePoint Tips Utility Pack if you are not sure whether you need to add columns in future or not.

In the first part of this post I discussed how to hide a column in SharePoint list. By using "Content Types" you cannot hide column in single form. Here I’m going to discuss how you can hide a column only in one (Edit, Display or New) mode using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007.

As an example I’m going to use the “Tasks” list and there I’ll remove “Due Date” column in Edit Mode.

First open your site using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 as in Figure 1 (File --> Open Site…, in Site Name field give URL to your site without “default.aspx”. e.g. http://mysite:5050/testsite).

Then double click the displaying window and mark the "layout" hidden as in figure 2.

Then click once on area 1(Figure 3) and insert your custom list form. There select “Tasks” and “Edit item form”, because we are going to change the edit form of task list (Figure 4).

Then select the row you want to hide and comment the HTML code (Figure 5).

Further if you want to display the raw in edit mode and you don’t want to allow editing it, you can change the Control mode property (Figure 6).

There keep in mind you can change control mode, if the column is not default one. That mean, to change the control mode using SharePoint Designer, you have to create your own column using "Settings –> Create Column".

Now save all and see, you will see the "Due Date" column is hidden and you cannot edit “Test Col” column (Figure 7).

Hide Columns in SharePoint Part 1

2009-10-12T12:15:00.016+05:30

In SharePoint lists, sometimes we have to use hidden columns for our programming purposes. In this tutorial I’m going to discuss, how you can hide a column in SharePoint.

First let’s see how to hide a column in any list view. Here you should have permission to see some menus, if you cannot see them; you have to contact your administrator.

Open your list and go to List Settings (Figure 01).

At the bottom of the page select your view, which you want to hide a column (Figure 02). I'm going to select "All Items" view.

Then unmark all columns you want to hide in that view and click OK (Figure 03).

Now you can see, unmarked columns are not shown in "All Items” view.

Note : By selecting manage content type item in list settings, you can hide a column in New, Edit and Display forms. To do that go to the content type item and select the field you want to remove from your forms. Then choose “This column is hidden (will not appear in forms)”.

To hide a column in New, Edit or Display mode using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 please refer second part of this post.

Delete item from SharePoint List

2009-10-06T10:38:00.015+05:30

In my previous post SharePoint List C# Part 1 I discussed how we can add items to SharePoint list. We also have to delete items from a list. Following C# code can be used in your custom webpart or feature to delete item from SharePoint list. Here I am going to find the items to delete using CAML query.

public void  DeleteListItem()
{
 // choose your site
 string strUrl = "http://mysite:5050/";
 using (SPSite site = new SPSite(strUrl))
 {
  using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
  {
   SPList list = web.Lists["List_A"];
   SPListItemCollection itemCollection;
 
   SPQuery oQuery = new SPQuery();
   oQuery.Query = "<where><eq><fieldref Name='Title' /><value Type='Text'>ABC</Value></Eq></Where>"; 
   itemCollection = list.GetItems(oQuery);
 
   List<splistitem> valuesToDelete = new List<splistitem>();
 
   foreach (SPListItem item in itemCollection)
   {
    valuesToDelete.Add(item);
   }
   web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
   foreach (SPListItem itm in valuesToDelete)
   {
    itm.Delete();
   }
   list.Update();
   web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false; 
  }
 }
}

In the above example I have use a CAML query to delete items in the Task list which title equal to ABC. As above you have to maintain separate list to stote items that you are goint to delete, otherwise it will not work.

What is SharePoint ?

2009-10-05T22:44:00.009+05:30

SharePoint, the fastest-growing product in the history of Microsoft is a collection of products and software elements which can be configured to run Intranet, Extranet and Internet sites.

WSS stands for Windows SharePoint Services and it is light document management system which helps you to organize your documents inside your organization using file sharing and intranet. MOSS stand for Microsoft SharePoint server and it contain all the things in WSS and more advanced things like people search, workflows, site templates and business intelligence.

There are many applications like Portals, Content Management, Indexing, Search, Business Intelligence and Collaboration built in to SharePoint and Sites, Pages, Lists, Libraries and webparts can be considered as building blocks.

SharePoint most commonly use as intranet portals and it allow users to login to their intranet web site and see the information like announcements and news. Using SharePoint you can build a collaboration environment quickly and easily. That will improve team productivity while managing documents and ensuring integrity of content.

CAML & SPQuery in SharePoint

2009-10-02T14:28:00.031+05:30

Using Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) queries with SPQuery and SPSiteDataQuery is a faster and more efficient way of retrieving items based on known criteria compare with for each on the SPListItemsCollection and checking for the criteria.

In this tutorial I’m going to discuss how you can write CAML queries for retrieving items in SharePoint List.

Operators

These are some common operators you can use with CAML queries.

Eq--Equals
Neq--Not equal
Gt--Greater than
Geq--Greater than or equal
Lt--Lower than
Leq--Lower than
IsNull--Is null
BeginsWith--Begins with
Contains--Contains

Get All Items

This is discussed in SharePoint List C# Part 1. There you can write the query as follows. There you can get all the items in the list.

myquery.Query = "";

Single Criteria

Using following query you can get all the tasks where “ID” is equal to 5.

<Where>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='ID' />
<Value Type='Counter'>5</Value>
</Eq>
</Where>

You can get Value Types for different common type of columns using following list

e.g. Use Value Type "Text" for column type "Single line of text".

Single line of text--Text
Multiple lines of text--Note
Choice (menu to choose from)--Choice
Number (1, 1.0, 100)--Number
Date and Time--DateTime
Lookup (information already on this site)--Lookup/LookupMulti
Yes/No (check box)--Boolean
Person or Group--User

Using AND

This will give you the items where ID = 5 and Title = "ABC".

<Where><And>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='ID' />
<Value Type='Counter'>5</Value>
</Eq>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='Title' />
<Value Type='Text'>ABC</Value>
</Eq>
</And></Where>

OR

This will give you the items where ID = 5 or Title = "ABC"

<Where><OR>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='ID' />
<Value Type='Counter'>5</Value>
</Eq>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='Title' />
<Value Type='Text'>ABC</Value>
</Eq>
</OR></Where>

It is different if you want to use more than one "AND" or "OR" operator. As a example if you want to get items where ID = 5 and Title = "ABC" and created by "John", then you can write this.

<Where>
<And>
<And>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='ID' />
<Value Type='Counter'>5</Value>
</Eq>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='Title' />
<Value Type='Text'>ABC</Value>
</Eq>
</And>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name='Author' />
<Value Type='User'>John</Value>
</Eq>
</And>
</Where>

To get the correct FieldRef Name write accurate queries you can use U2U CAML Query Builder.

Remember though you rename a column the FieldRef Name will hold same value.

SharePoint User Groups

2009-10-02T09:53:00.009+05:30

Check User Group in SharePoint

To store and manage permissions we can create User Groups in SharePoint. In this article I’ll discuss how you can check whether the current user is in a particular group using C#. This method will return Boolean value "true" if the user in the given group. You can use this method in your custom webpart.

        public bool isMemberInGroup(string groupName)
        {
            string siteUrl = "http://mysite:5050/";
            SPSite site = new SPSite(siteUrl);
            SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();

            bool memberInGroup = web.IsCurrentUserMemberOfGroup(web.Groups[groupName].ID);

            return memberInGroup;
        }

If you want to compare the current user in "Person or Group" column type, then you can also get the current user’s user name using "web.CurrentUser.Name".

Deleting Features from SharePoint

2009-10-01T12:53:00.004+05:30

In one of my previous article I discussed about creating and deploying custom features to SharePoint server. Here I’m going to describe how you can remove a feature from SharePoint.

First log into your server and go to SharePoint central administration site (Figure 1).

Then move to “Operations” tab and select "Solution management" (Figure 2).

Now you can select the feature that you want to remove. If it its status is "Not Deployed", you can simply click "Remove Solution" (Figure 4) and for the “Deployed” solutions first you have to click “Retract Solution” (Figure 3) and then remove.

To me it didn’t work when I remove my solution and redeploy using same name.

SharePoint Web Part Development Tutorial

2009-09-30T14:42:00.027+05:30

It is hard to find out simple way to create SharePoint web parts with visual designing. After looking at custom features, in this article I'm going to show you how to create custom SharePoint web part using Web User Control in Visual Studio.

Creating the Web Part

First Create New Project called "ProjectView" and select ASP.NET Web Application (Figure 1 & 2). Don’t use shortcuts.

Then Add new Web User Control called "ProjectViewControl" to your project (Figure 3 & 4).

Then Add reference to the “Microsoft.SharePoint.dll”. It can be found in your sharepoint server’s ISAPI folder (Figure 5 & 6).

You should copy this file along with “Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.dll” and “Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.xml” from the same directory to a directory on your local computer if you are developing your project on a machine not having SharePoint or MOSS.

Then go to your SharePoint site’s folder (You can find it in SharePoint server) and create a folder called “usercontroles” if does not exist (Figure 7).

Find your site’s “Web.config” file within the same folder and open it (Figure 7).

Then add new Class called “WebControl.cs” which inherits from “WebPart” Class to your project (Figure 8) and paste this code there.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

namespace ProjectView
{
    public class WebControl : WebPart
    {
        protected string UserControlPath = @"~/usercontrols/";
        protected string UserControlName = @"ProjectViewControl.ascx";

        private ProjectViewControl mycontrol;
        private string exceptions = "";

        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            try
            {
                mycontrol = (ProjectViewControl)this.Page.LoadControl(UserControlPath + UserControlName);
                Controls.Add(mycontrol);
            }
            catch (Exception CreateChildControls_Exception)
            {
                exceptions += "CreateChildControls_Exception: " + CreateChildControls_Exception.Message;
            }
            finally
            {
                base.CreateChildControls();
            }
        }
        protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter writer)
        {
            try
            {
                base.RenderContents(writer);
            }
            catch (Exception RenderContents_Exception)
            {
                exceptions += "RenderContents_Exception: " + RenderContents_Exception.Message;
            }
            finally
            {
                if (exceptions.Length > 0)
                {
                    writer.WriteLine(exceptions);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

There don’t forget to add following two lines to the top, now your “WebControl.cs” Class should like above.

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

Then drag and drop a text box and two buttons to ProjectViewControl.ascx. Double click those buttons to add custom code (Figure 9 & 10).

Signing your web part project

To deploy this Web Part and Web User Control to GAC and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, we should assign a Strong Name key and sign the control.

To do this, right click the “ProjectView” node in Solution Explorer and select Properties. Then select the Signing tab from the choices on the left. Check the "Sign the assembly" box and select from the "Choose a strong name key file" drop down list (Figure 11).

There give a key file name and click ok. Now you can build your project and ready to deploy.

Deploying the Web Part and Web User Control

Here is deploying steps;

1. Copy the "ProjectViewControl.ascx" file to the created usercontroles folder (Figure 7).

2. Drag and drop the compiled DLL (You can find it in your project folder's bin folder) into the Global Assembly Cache. The Global Assembly Cache is a special folder located at %WINDIR%\assembly where %WINDIR% is the full path to your Windows folder (e.g. C:\Windows or C:\Winnt).

3. Get the publicKeyToken property of our assembly. You can find it by right click on the file and select properties in "assembly" folder (Figure 12).

4. Update the "Web.config file"

4.1 Insert these three lines between <SafeControls> and </SafeControls> tags.

<SafeControl Assembly="ProjectView, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=9a73871474819663" Namespace="ProjectView" TypeName="WebControl" Safe="True" />
<SafeControl Assembly="ProjectView, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=9a73871474819663" Namespace="ProjectView" TypeName="ProjectViewControl" Safe="True" />
<SafeControl Assembly="ProjectView, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=9a73871474819663" Namespace="ProjectView" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />

4.2 Insert this line between <assemblies> and </assemblies> tags.

<add assembly="ProjectView, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=9a73871474819663" />

5. Insert new XML file called "myprojectview.webpart" (Figure 13) and paste this code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<webParts>
    <webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3">
        <metaData>
            <type name="ProjectView.WebControl, ProjectView, Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=9a73871474819663" />
            <importErrorMessage>Cannot import this Web Part.</importErrorMessage>
        </metaData>
        <data>
            <properties>
                <property name="Title" type="string">My first custom Web Part</property>
                <property name="Description" type="string">
                    webpart created by using web user controles
                </property>
                <property name="ChromeType">TitleOnly</property>
                <property name="ChromeState">Normal</property>
                <property name="ItemLimit" type="int">15</property>
                <property name="ItemStyle" type="string">Default</property>
            </properties>
        </data>
    </webPart>
</webParts>

6. Upload the "myprojectview.webpart" file to Share Point's Web Part gallery. (You should have permission to see the Site Action tab and upload) (Figure 14, 15, 17, 18 & 19)

Use your Web Part

To use your Web Part in a page, follow these steps;

1. Edit a SharePoint page (Figure 19, 20 & 21)
2. Select a zone into which you want to place your Web Part
3. Add the Web Part to the zone
4. Exit from the Edit mode

Remember that you cannot copy DLL from MyDocument folder. So first copy the DLL to some location in SharePoint Server and then drag and drop it into assembly folder.

If you are interested you can try SharePoint charting (Chart inside web part) to see how you can add nice chart inside to this web part. Also try custom features.

Creating SharePoint Features

2009-09-29T13:17:00.017+05:30

In this article I’m going to describe how to create SharePoint feature before look at custom web parts . Here I’m going to use Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to create my feature.

Creating the Feature

First create new SharePoint Empty project as shown in Figure 1. There select Fully Trust (Deploy to GAC) when prompt.

Then Add new SharePoint Event Receiver as shown in Figure 2 & 3.

And select the list to add event receiver. Here I’ll select Custom List (Figure 4).

Then open ItemEventReceiver.cs to write whatever you want when something happen, like Add new item, Update item and Delete item from the list. You can find commented methods for insert your code. I’ll show how you can get the ID of newly added item (Figure 5).

Deploying the Feature

Using Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint you can easily deploy your feature to the SharePoint server. To do this you have to be in the server and you can deploy by right clicking on the project (Figure 6).

Then activate the "ProjectUpdateEventItemEventReceiver" at Site Settings --> Site Features.

To me, it did not work when I tried to change the code and redeploy it. I had to use different name when I want to change the code.

After Deploying the feature you can check the result using EventReceiver-Installer for SharePoint.

You may notice new feature is activated for all the custom lists as above picture, now you can use same EventReceiver-Installer to delete unwanted events in other custom lists.

SharePoint List C# Part 2

2009-09-29T13:05:00.011+05:30

In my previous post SharePoint List C# Part 1, I wrote how to retrieve data from SharePoint list. In this post also I'm going to show you how to retrieve data from SharePoint list which has look up fields. You can use this code in your custom webpart ot feature.

        public void getData()
        {
            // choose the site
            SPSite site = new SPSite("http://mysite:5050/");
            SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();

            // choose the list "Task Categories"
            SPList list = web.Lists["Task Categories"];
            SPListItemCollection itemCollection;

            // pass query to get status
            SPQuery oQuery = new SPQuery();
            // get all items
            oQuery.Query = "";
            itemCollection = list.GetItems(oQuery);

            foreach (SPListItem item in itemCollection)
            {
                if (item != null)
                {
                    // get data in "Sub Category(s)" lookup column
                    if (item["Sub Category(s)"] != null)
                    {
                        SPFieldLookupValueCollection subItemColl = ((SPFieldLookupValueCollection)item["Sub Category(s)"]);
                        foreach (var subitem in subItemColl)
                        {
                            // do something
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

SharePoint List C# Part 1

2009-09-29T12:48:00.022+05:30

Here I'm going to show you how you can use the SharePoint object model to read sharepoint list using C#.

To do this in your custom webpart or feature first you have to add the reference to Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll (Then in your code use "using Microsoft.Sharepoint;"). And also if you are going to run the program, you have to be in the server.

Read SharePoint List

public void getData()
{
    // choose your site
    string strUrl = "http://mysite:5050/";
    using (SPSite site = new SPSite(strUrl))
    {
        using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
        {
            // choose the list
            SPList list = web.Lists["insert your list Name"];

            SPQuery myquery = new SPQuery();
            myquery.Query = "insert your query here";

            // if you dosent insert query (myquery.Query ="") you will get all items

            SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(myquery);

            foreach (SPListItem item in items)
            {
                // check the item for null
                if (item != null)
                {
                    // do something
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Adding Item

string strUrl = "http://mysite:5050/";
            using (SPSite site = new SPSite(strUrl))
            {
                using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
                {
                    SPListItemCollection listItems = web.Lists["List_Name"].Items;
                    SPListItem item = listItems.Add();
                    item["Title"] = "New Item Title";

                    item.Update();
                }
            }

You can use U2U CAML Query Builder to write queries you want.

If you want to get information from lookup field, please refer SharePoint List C# Part 2, for delete items please refer Delete items from SharePoint list.

Create Android Database

2009-09-29T12:14:00.024+05:30

This sample code illustrates how we can use Android SQLite Database to store data in Android. Following example will give output as Saranga/22 since I have created a text view and set the out put to it. If you want to add your own fields, first drop the existing table using given source code.

import android.app.Activity;
import android.database.Cursor;
import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import android.widget.TextView;
public class DBTest extends Activity {
 /** Called when the activity is first created. */
 @Override
 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

  SQLiteDatabase myDB= null;
  String TableName = "myTable";

  String Data="";

  /* Create a Database. */
  try {
   myDB = this.openOrCreateDatabase("DatabaseName", MODE_PRIVATE, null);

   /* Create a Table in the Database. */
   myDB.execSQL("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS "
     + TableName
     + " (Field1 VARCHAR, Field2 INT(3));");

   /* Insert data to a Table*/
   myDB.execSQL("INSERT INTO "
     + TableName
     + " (Field1, Field2)"
     + " VALUES ('Saranga', 22);");

   /*retrieve data from database */
   Cursor c = myDB.rawQuery("SELECT * FROM " + TableName , null);

   int Column1 = c.getColumnIndex("Field1");
   int Column2 = c.getColumnIndex("Field2");

   // Check if our result was valid.
   c.moveToFirst();
   if (c != null) {
    // Loop through all Results
    do {
     String Name = c.getString(Column1);
     int Age = c.getInt(Column2);
     Data =Data +Name+"/"+Age+"\n";
    }while(c.moveToNext());
   }
   TextView tv = new TextView(this);
   tv.setText(Data);
   setContentView(tv);
  }
  catch(Exception e) {
   Log.e("Error", "Error", e);
  } finally {
   if (myDB != null)
    myDB.close();
  }
 }
}

You can download source code here
Password: sara
Tested with Android 2.3.3 Platform SDK.

If you are interested please refer Android User Interface Design to learn simple way to Designing interfaces.

VanCafe, My Android Project

2009-09-29T09:27:00.003+05:30

Using Andriod we have built a solution for delivery van based Cafeteria. The overall process that targeted here is as follows. There is a main center cafe and there are delivery vans which would be assigned to different places. They sell goods to customers and the customers can order things via the mobile network using their smart phones. The vans are delivering the goods to the appropriate location.

Main focus on this system is towards a cafeteria which possesses number of delivery vans which do selling within different service areas and in the same time provides the customer with the facilities to make orders through their smart phones.

The Cafeteria has multiple delivery vans to sell and deliver food items to customers within the service area. Cafe Manager defines the service area which is fixed for a longer period of time. Vans are filled every morning and are allowed to come to the Cafeteria at any time to do refilling. Vans are expected to stay within their service area and an “Area Boundary Notification” shall be generated when the van crosses the defined boundary.

Customers can use the mobile device to view available items, view promotions and to order items. The customer location shall be automatically sent with the order. When an order is placed it shall be assigned to the van closest to the customer, depending on the stock availability. In addition to the order delivery vans can do direct sales on the road. Vans can also take orders from customers on the road.

The main features of this system is the usage of the facilities in the mobile environment. In spite of that, consumer friendly applications would be implemented to help the customer and the business (i.e. delivery van or the manager) with their day-to-day activities.