Beginning SharePoint® Designer 2010

Chapter 8. XSLT Data Views and Forms

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER

• How to best utilize the XSLT web parts

• Creating powerful data views using the XSLT web parts

• Creating custom forms using the XSLT form web parts

• Making use of custom actions to execute list forms

SharePoint 2010 is fast becoming the preferred front-end application for many companies. The need for representation of all sorts of data — from both inside and outside of SharePoint — is paramount. The main method that SharePoint uses to expose data is with the use of web parts. The two main categories of web parts are:

• Those that are created programmatically (either those with which SharePoint ships or those that developers create)

• Those that use XSLT to display data

This chapter focuses on the XSLT web parts, discussing and demonstrating how these web parts have been considered the Swiss army knife of all web parts because of the variety of possibilities they offer to expose and style data from disparate sources.

TWO TYPES OF WEB PARTS TO WORK WITH DATA

One of the most common things that site administrators want to do is display data on SharePoint pages. The data can be from a variety of sources, including SharePoint lists and libraries, XML files, databases, web services, or more. The two main web parts that you can deploy to show data are

• XSLT List View Web Part

• XSLT Data Form Web Part

Both can be deployed using SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD 2010). After they are deployed, you can configure them further using SPD 2010 or the ...