TRADUCTION A FAIRE :

Description:
As many people have discovered recently, deploying Web parts is a difficult and time-consuming process. Minor typos in the web.config or the Web part definition (DWP) file could cause the infamous, “Web Part could not be displayed. It is not registered as a safe control,” error message. Conveniently, Microsoft has included a utility with SharePoint that makes deploying Web parts manually much like pulling teeth. The current methods for deploying Web parts are not fun at all. I remember my first couple of Web parts took several hours to deploy, because I was running into so many problems with the web.cofig. With the information I am going to provide in this article, all of those deployment pains are in the past.

For this deployment method, I recommend having the Web Part Templates installed as they do a significant amount of heavy lifting in this process and make life much easier, but they are not required. However, the examples in this article will be based on the Web Part Templates. For an introduction to the Web Part Templates, please see the first article in this series.

In the first article, we discussed how you can make a Web part with the Web Part Templates. Now, I am going to walk you through creating a new Web part in Visual Studio and deploying it on a SharePoint Server.

Deploying Web Parts on SharePoint is done through the use of Web Part Packs. Web Part Packs are just CAB files with a specific structure. You will use the stsadm.exe tool, included with SharePoint, to deploy the Web part to the SharePoint database. The Web Part Pack Cab file contains the Web Part Definition (DWP) file, the assembly you want to deploy, as well as a Manifest.xml file, which is used to tell stsadm.exe how to deploy the Web part pack. Luckily, all these files are created for us automatically with the Web Part Template, and all we have to do is tweak them a little.

In Visual Studio, create a new Web part library project. I named mine DeployWebPart. After that project is loaded, we need to add a new project to this solution for the deployment. In Solution Explorer, right click on the solution, and choose Add? New Project. Select Setup and Deployment Projects, and Choose Cab Project. I named mine DeployCab.



Now that the project is set up, we need to add content to the deployment project. To do this, right click on the project and choose Add -> Project output. Select Primary Output.



This will add the built assembly to the cab file. In addition, you will need to right click on the project in solution explorer once more and choose Add -> Project Output. This time, choose Content Files.



This will add the Manifest.xml and the WebPart1.dwp to the cab. The deployment cabinet will be built for you automatically the next time you build your project, but we aren’t done yet. If you build now, your Web Part Package will not work. We need to edit the Manifest.xml file. When the project is generated by the Web Part Template, the Manifest.xml is created for you with most of the information about your project. If you happen to change the name of the Web Part or assembly after creating the project, you will need to edit that information in the Manifest.xml file. Since we are using the defaults, we do not need to modify that information. However, we will need to edit the ClassResources section of the file. Because we are not including additional resources, such as JPG or GIF files, with our project, we do not need this section. You will want to remove:





From your Manifest.xml, if you were going to include additional resource files, such as images, you would edit or add the FileName lines. For the majority of projects, you will not need this section. Now we are ready to build our project, so click Build -> Build Solution.

With our Web Part Pack built and ready to go, we just need to deploy it. To deploy, you will use the included stsadm.exe tool, which is in the \program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\60\bin directory. To add a Web pack, you will use the “–o addwppack” switch and the “-filename ”switch.


(Note: I copied the DeployCab.cab to the root of C to have an easier to read command. You will find the file in the output directory of your project.)

The command copies the Web Part Pack into the SQL database and makes it available to your SharePoint sites under the Virtual Server Web Part library. You can additionally set the –url switch to deploy the Web Part Pack to a specific SharePoint Site rather than the entire Virtual Server.

If you open your SharePoint site and choose Modify Page -> Add Web Part -> Browse, click on Virtual Server Library, and you will see your Web part listed. Select your Web part and click Add.



When working with Web Part Packages, stsadm.exe also provides facilities to enumerate and remove Web part packages. To enumerate which Web part packs are currently installed on the server, use the –o enumwppacks switch. To remove a Web part from the SharePoint SQL database, use the –o deletewppack –name .


Through this process, you can deploy and test Web parts significantly easier than with the previous method of editing the web.config and DWP files manually. Instead, the Web Part templates take care of creating the DWP file for you and the Web Part Pack deployment takes care of updating the web.config.