Comments on Chris O'Brien: Considerations when using Features to deploy Share...

I've just sent a question from a few minutes.....

2009-07-22T18:16:25.028+01:00

I've just sent a question from a few minutes.. I just wanted to add and say that I'm using anonymous access too to the site in case this might make a difference in your response.

I'd really appreciate if you reply.. Thank you in advance

Cheers Chris. I hadn't read that post but that's t...

2009-05-20T03:16:01.403+01:00

Cheers Chris. I hadn't read that post but that's the exact situation that seems to result in this behavior. I have posted a question to Waldek so we will see if he has come across this issue.

Hi, I think you mixed ghosted and unghosted. Cust...

2009-05-19T08:31:00.000+01:00

Hi,

I think you mixed ghosted and unghosted. Customizing a file means to ghost a file. A file that is not changed after being deployed is unghosted.

The other option is that you write a littel command line tool to unghost all ghosted files before deploying your WSP package. That is what we are doing...

Kr, Peter.

Nick, Thanks for following up - this is interesti...

2009-05-18T23:02:00.000+01:00

Nick,

Thanks for following up - this is interesting. I can't think of any reasons why this would happen, but clearly it is.

My suggestion would be to ask Waldek if he ran into it when he was doing this - see http://blog.mastykarz.nl/provisioning-publishing-pages-features-declarative-markup/.

I'll try and follow the investigation there!

Cheers,

Chris.

Hi Chris, Yes to the first paragraph questions. T...

2009-05-18T06:23:00.000+01:00

Hi Chris,

Yes to the first paragraph questions. Two features are being used, a site scoped one for the page layouts then a web scoped one for the page instance.

I actually did the test 'fix' using SharePoint designer to dettach/reattach the page from/to the layout. It also works if you RevertContentStream() via a reghost command like Gary's. Comparing the SPFile properties to see what changes wasn't very fruitful...

Hi Nick, Interested in what you're reporting here...

2009-05-13T19:37:00.000+01:00

Hi Nick,

Interested in what you're reporting here - so do you mean that your using a Feature to deploy the page layout but also a page instance, and that updates to the layout aren't reflected in the page instance until you do your workaround?

Not sure I have any explanation for this I'm afraid, but I am interested! In terms of your workaround, how are you "detaching and reattaching" the page to the layout? Do you mean by doing a "Revert to site definition"?

Cheers,

Chris.

Hi Chris, First up cheers for the content deployme...

2009-05-11T00:50:00.000+01:00

Hi Chris,
First up cheers for the content deployment tool - always using it and it has been a real asset to the toolkit!

I'm hoping you might be able to shed light on a 'quirk' of files deployed via features.

When deploying pages via a feature I have found that updates to the page layouts referenced by that page do not cascade to these feature pages. Pages create via the UI or other API will reflect the changes but the feature deployed pages are locked to the original physical file that was used to deploy them. Updating this file also does not make any difference...

e.g.
<File Url="default.aspx" Name="summary.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="True">
<Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/somelayout.aspx, Layout Description" />
... rest of properties ...
</File>

However detaching and reattaching the page to the layout seems to 'fix' the page layout connection. This isn't much of a workaround if there are a lot of pages deployed like this so I was hoping you may be able to suggest the reason behind this behavior or a better method of deployment?

@Jason, Am guessing you're updating the Module/Fi...

2009-04-30T22:23:00.000+01:00

@Jason,

Am guessing you're updating the Module/File element in your Feature - I wouldn't recommend trying to version things in this way, the framework isn't designed to support it. The only way I think you could get metadata to update in this way is if you deleted the files before reactivating the Feature, but obviously this isn't possible in real-life usage.

My suggestion would be to version your aspx files in your main source control system instead.

HTH,

Chris.

Chris, I am pushing out some publishing pages via...

2009-04-26T15:01:00.000+01:00

Chris,

I am pushing out some publishing pages via a Feature. The problem I am running into is that properties in the master gallery are not being updated. So I change the aspx and push out the Feature I see all the changes.

However in the properties I try to change something like the Title or the Version and that change is NOT reflected in the master gallery list.

Any ideas why? I would like to be able to support versioning when I push out a new updated publishing page .aspx.

Thanks,
Jason

Hi Arun,

That's a good question. Personally...

2008-06-23T14:21:00.000+01:00

Hi Arun,

That's a good question. Personally I think the solution is to ensure your lists have the same GUIDs in all environments. This then removes the need to somehow 'fix-up' list GUIDs in DataForm/ListView web parts etc. If you used content deployment (either from the standard functionality or my SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard) to transfer the lists in the first place, they will have the same GUIDs (need to check 'retain object IDs' checkbox in my tool).

Personally this is my preferred approach for transferring files which are content items, rather than filesystem items. Features are great, but IMHO are suited more towards one-time provisioning rather than scenarios such as WCM where updatability is required.

HTH,

Chris.

Hi Chris,

I have a doubt on SharePoint Desi...

2008-06-17T14:31:00.000+01:00

Hi Chris,

I have a doubt on SharePoint Designer and page customization.

I have created customized pages for a list’s NewForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx and DispForm.aspx. These are created using SharePoint Designer. Now my requirement is to pack my site as Feature along with these customized pages. Since the Data Form Webpart included in these pages have hard coded GUIDs of associated lists, these SPD generated pages are not functioning in the target machine where I install my feature since these IDs are dynamically assigned while provisioning site. Please let me know how I can make these SPD generated files working when deployed as a featue.

I’ve successfully packaged the following SharePoint artifacts into features; the only problem is with the SPD customized pages.

Content Types
List Definitions
List Instances
Feature Receivers

Please help

Thank you,
-Arun

Hi Tyler,

Yes, unfortunately the Feature/So...

2008-03-30T17:15:00.000+01:00

Hi Tyler,

Yes, unfortunately the Feature/Solution framework doesn't really cater for files in the web application directory. We only have the 'Module' element in a Feature (deploys to Feature folder as you say), or the 'TemplateFile' deploys to \12\Template directory) and 'RootFile' (deploys to \12\ directory) in a Solution.

One option could be to write code in a Feature receiver for this file, or otherwise use some other scripted approach where you can access this location. Annoying I know.

HTH,

Chris.

Chris,

When it comes time to deploying conf...

2008-03-27T01:05:00.000Z

Chris,

When it comes time to deploying configuration files that I'd like to sit in the same directory as the web.config am I out of luck? All of the feature syntax for deploying unghosted files seem to want to put it in the \TEMPLATE\FEATURES\FeatureName directory. In addition they potentially provide URLs to the content (something I don't want to do). I've seen people set up timer jobs to copy around resource files but isn't there something simpler?

The file i'm copying is the entlib.config from the enterprise library.

I'd love to hear your opinion.

Best,
Tyler

Colin,

Hopefully you've seen this by now, b...

2007-11-05T13:54:00.000Z

Colin,

Hopefully you've seen this by now, but I've commented on this at master pages/page layouts deployed as Feature not updating.

HTH,

Chris.

Chris -

I asked this in your feature articl...

2007-10-31T14:26:00.000Z

Chris -

I asked this in your feature article, as well:

How do you tell if a particular file has been unghosted? My intranet site, when opened in SharePoint designer does not show the customized icon for any of my custom pages, yet my deployment of the feature is behaving as if they were: the files in the feature folder are updated, but the files in the master page gallery on the site are not.

This is a content publishing site and there are a fair number of pages now using the layouts I'm trying to update, so I don't want to use my previous brute force method of deleting all pages using the layouts, then deleting the layouts, etc..

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Ah OK - in that case it should be possible, assumi...

2007-10-30T14:54:00.000Z

Ah OK - in that case it should be possible, assuming the database record for the file has a link to the correct physical file.

I would try using SPD to 'revert' the file (right-click on file in left pane, there should be an option), or alternatively SPFile.RevertContentStream() should do it.

HTH,

Chris.

But there IS a corresponding file version in the 1...

2007-10-30T07:54:00.000Z

But there IS a corresponding file version in the 12 hive - we have both migrated AND deployed page layouts through features. The problem is to have Sharepoint look at the file version instead of the database version - "uncostumizing" the page layouts?

Liza,

I've not looked specifically at the C...

2007-10-29T18:22:00.000Z

Liza,

I've not looked specifically at the CMS 2002 migration scenario (though expect to soon for a client).

I'd _expect_ the page layouts to be in the database though. The only way they wouldn't be is if the page layouts were deployed with a Feature, but this wouldn't be the case for a CMS migration.

You'll only ever be able to uncustomize a file if there's a corresponding version on the filesystem somewhere.

HTH,

Chris.

We have migrated content from MCMS to MOSS which s...

2007-10-29T10:27:00.000Z

We have migrated content from MCMS to MOSS which seems to have the effetct that page layouts are copied to the database. There is no 'Revert to site definition' functionality for page layouts - is there any other way 'uncostumize' page layouts?

Thanks for the post Chris. Makes a lot of sense. G...

2007-07-05T12:53:00.000+01:00

Thanks for the post Chris. Makes a lot of sense. Gotta love customized pages!