Recently I faced very interesting scenario where I have configured everything as mentioned in this article https://blogs.msdn.com/echarran/archive/2006/09/11/749707.aspx for the Forms Authentication using Active Directory Membership Provider. After doing so, whenever I tried to login I was getting “Access Denied” error and was not able to login via any user.  To check the configuration validity in Web.Config of my web application I did the following:

1.     Opened Central Administration Web site.

2.     Clicked on the Application Management tab, and then clicked on Policy for Web application.

3.     Ensured that the correct Web application is selected; it is displayed in the upper-right corner. Clicked Add Users.

4.     In the Zones list, clicked the appropriate zone for which I was setting up the FBA.

5.     On the Add Users page, clicked the address book icon to open the People Picker dialog box

6.     In the People Picker dialog box, typed the username (user from membership datastore)in the Find box, and then clicked the search button.

7.     I was not getting any user in the result which meant that there is some problem in web.config file.

I looked at the Authentication Provider page carefully and here is what I figured out which was missing in my configuration:

Above screen says that you need to do the same configuration in Central Admin site’s web.config as well. That was the missing part. I did the same modification in the Central Admin’s web.config which I did it for my web application.

I followed the steps 1 – 7 listed above and this time was I was seeing the users. You should also notice that the account name is displayed in the format that SharePoint uses internally to keep track of it: MembershipProviderName:accountName. In this scenario, that means the account name for username is ADProvider:username.

Then I did few additional steps:

1.     Double-clicked username to add it to the Add box, and then clicked OK.

2.     Selected Full Control

3.     Click Finish to save the changes.

Logged-in back to my web application using the FBA and with the same user, this time I was able to login without any error.

Hope this will be useful to someone who is also facing similar issue.

Cheers !!!!

Fortunately while trying lot of different options I have tried restarting the SharePoint Timer Service and that worked finally. It seems SharePoint Timer Service (OWSTimer) is caching the DLLs and not releasing the reference even after restarting the IIS.

So for all my workflow related DLLs I follow below steps:

1.       UnGAC the application specific DLL

2.       IISRESET

3.       Restart SharePoint Timer Service

4.       GAC the DLL

5.       IISRESET

6.       Restart SharePoint Timer Service

Someone might have different experience and want to share, please do so …

Cheers !!!

For Example, There is a Page Layout (let’s name it as SamplePL) which is bind to the Content Type (let’s name is as SampleCT). User creates pages using SamplePL. Now, if there is a requirement to add new field to the SamplePL, we need to first add that field to the SampleCT and then add that field to the SamplePL. If the deployment is happening through feature deployment (automated deployment) then the SampleCT will never be refreshed on the server.

To overcome this problem there are two approaches (as far as I know):

1.      Manual Changes:

a.      Admin has to manually delete the content which is created using the SamplePL.

b.      Admin has to manually add the column to the Content Type via the SharePoint UI Interface.

c.      Add that newly added column to the SamplePL and then only the SamplePL will start showing that new field.

2.      Via Object Model:

If the content is huge and if it’s practically impossible to delete that content to change the Content Type, the other way is to write a small utility which can do the job for you without even deleting the content. Here is the example, i am deleting a field from the SampleCT:

string contentTypeName = "SampleCT";

try

      {

      SPContentType contentType = site.RootWeb.ContentTypes[contentTypeName]; // site is the SPSite object

if (contentType == null)

            {

                  // display error message

return;

}

            else

            {

                  // Getting Fileds collection from the Site Columns Gallery

                  SPFieldCollection fileds = site.RootWeb.Fields;

                  if (fileds.ContainsField("FieldName"))

{

                        // SPField field = fileds.GetField("FieldName"); // This method will get the object of the field

                        // Checking for the field in SampleCT

                        if (!contentType.Fields.ContainsField("FieldName"))

                        {

// In this example I am deleting a Field from the Content Type

                            contentType.FieldLinks.Delete("FieldName");

                            contentType.Update(); // Updating Content Type is very important otherwise changes will be reflected

}

                    }

}

}

You can put the entier code block inside the RunWithElevatedPrivileges statement if you are facing permission issues:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate(){

});

Hope this blog helps all those who are wondering the behaviour of the Content Types.

Cheers!!!!

<Where>

      <Eq>

         <FieldRef Name="Title" />

         <Value Type="Text">title</Value>

      </Eq>

</Where>

I am using object model from my Webpart to load this CAML query and get the results back:

SPList list = web.Lists[“ListName”];

SPQuery spQuery = new SPQuery();

spQuery.Query = “” //CAML Query String from the Top;

SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(spQuery);

if (items != null)

{

if (items.Count > 0)

      {

            … do something …

      }

} 

Works fine, isn’t it? Examine the CAML query carefully, I have not used <Query></Query> block in the Query.

Important Note:- Whenever you build a CAML Query and supply it to the SPQuery object make sure that the CAML query doesn’t have <Query></Query> block as starting and ending statement, otherwise SPQuery will always return empty result set. This is valid when we are using SPQuery object in the context of Web. If you are doing the same from a windows utility then <Query></Query> block should not create any issue.

Most developer face this issue first time they interact with CAML Query, hopping they find this blog useful.

Need help building CAML query? Visit this blog https://blogs.msdn.com/nidhishd/archive/2007/05/03/tool-to-auto-generate-caml-queries-in-moss.aspx    

Cheers...

Technical WhitePaper - Working with SPGridView.zip

URL to Down load the tool:

https://www.u2u.info/SharePoint/U2U%20Community%20Tools/Forms/AllItems.aspx

URL on how to use this tool:

https://www.u2u.info/Blogs/Patrick/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1252

Thanks to the owner which has made the life simpler of CAML query writter..

Cheers !!!

Function which will help retriving Active Directory Object:

       private DirectoryEntry GetActiveDirectoryObject(string filter, string domain, string[] properties)
        {

            /// Running LADAP query to get the directory entry
            DirectoryEntry adsRoot = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" + domain, null, null, AuthenticationTypes.Secure);

            DirectorySearcher searcher = new DirectorySearcher(adsRoot);
            searcher.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree;
            searcher.ReferralChasing = ReferralChasingOption.All;
            searcher.PropertiesToLoad.AddRange(properties);
            searcher.Filter = filter;

            SearchResult result = searcher.FindOne();
            DirectoryEntry directoryEntry = result.GetDirectoryEntry();

            return directoryEntry;
        }

        Parameters one has to pass to GetActiveDirectoryObject funtion:

string filter = string.Format("(&(ObjectClass={0})(sAMAccountName={1}))","person", username);

string domain = Current User's Domain

string[] properties = One can pass string array of properties, for Example: string[] properties = new string[] { "memberOf" };

Retriving data from the DirectoryEntry object:

      DirectoryEntry directoryEntry = GetActiveDirectoryObject(filter, domain, properties);
      if (directoryEntry != null)
      {
                    directoryEntry.AuthenticationType = AuthenticationTypes.None;
                    string displayName = directoryEntry.Properties["displayName"][0].ToString();
                    string firstName = directoryEntry.Properties["givenName"][0].ToString();
                    string lastName = directoryEntry.Properties["sn"][0].ToString();
                    string email = directoryEntry.Properties["mail"][0].ToString();
       }

I have also attached the sample code. For more information on the System.DirectoryServices please refere MSDN, it has detailed description about it.

 Cheers!!!!

DomainUsreInfo.zip

Two dropdown controls, country and province/state.  When you select a country, the province list should be refreshed (without a postback) with the list of provinces for that country.  Developers using the control should be supply the country data, and the province data should either be a list of all provinces for all countries, or alternatively have a call back to the server to get the list of provinces for the country that the user just selected (maybe using partial postback method, or some AJAX feature).   The control should have public properties for Country and Province so that the developer can pick up the selections that were made.

A Control has been created for the same purpose. Please download the source code attached.  Control has a Boolean property called as AddScriptManager.  The user needs to set the value as false if a instance of the script manager is present at the page level. If we have multiple instances of the control on the same page, the first instance should have the AddScriptmanager property as true and all other instances will have that property as false.

TestParentChildControl.zip