Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Technologies

13.4 Creating Custom Web Parts 341

Chapter 13

by navigating to the shared services administration page, which is accessible

from the central administration page. From the shared services administra-

tion page, click the Search Settings link. From the search settings page, click

the Metadata property mappings link and add a new managed property.

13.4 Creating Custom Web Parts

As we can see, SharePoint comes equipped with many useful Web Parts out

of the box, and many more are available from the Microsoft online gallery

and through third-party vendors. However, there will be times when you

need a Web Part that is not available from these sources and is very specific to

your business needs. Fortunately, SharePoint is highly extensible and allows

Figure 13.33

Customized

content query

Web Part.

342 13.4 Creating Custom Web Parts

you to develop your own custom Web Parts using industry-standard develop-

ment tools such as Visual Studio 2005.

The following section steps you through the basics of how to create two

simple Web Parts. The main purpose of this section is to walk you through

creating your first Web Part as quickly as possible and to familiarize you with

the basic steps involved in deploying a Web Part. Later in the chapter, we will

discuss more advanced Web Part development techniques, such as creating

custom tool parts and creating connectable Web Parts.

Since Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 are

built upon ASP.NET 2.0, as developers you now have two methods of creating

SharePoint Web Parts. The first method involves creating Web Parts that inherit

from the ASP.NET 2.0

System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart

base class; this is the Microsoft-recommended method for Web Part develop-

ment. The second method involves creating a Web Part that inherits from the

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

WebPart class. The WSS 3.0 WebPart class

was carried forward from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, and is mostly avail-

able for backward-compatibility purposes. While inheriting from the ASP.NET

2.0 is generally the best technique to adopt when developing Web Parts, there

may be times that you need to use the WSS 3.0

WebPart class. For example, if

you would like your Web Part to be able to connect with a Web Part on another

page, you would inherit from the WSS 3.0

WebPart class because it supports

cross-page connections. Scenarios that would dictate the use of the WSS 3.0

WebPart class rather than the preferred ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart class include:

n Cross-page connections

n Connections between Web Parts outside of a Web Part zone.

n Client-side connections that leverage the Web Part page services com-

ponent

n Caching data to the content database

This chapter focuses on developing Web Parts using the ASP.NET 2.0

WebPart class. More information on developing Web Parts that use the WSS

3.0

WebPart class can be found in the Microsoft WSS 3.0 SDK.

13.4.1 Getting Started

Since Web Parts are basically ASP.NET Web controls, you can use Visual

Studio 2005 to perform all Web Part development. To make development

easier, Microsoft has provided a Web Part template that is available as part of

the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions package, which can be downloaded from

MSDN. This template provides skeleton code and the appropriate files and