Professional Visual Studio 2013

Chapter 25SharePoint

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Setting up a development environment for SharePoint
• Developing custom SharePoint components such as Web Parts, lists, and workflows
• Debugging and testing SharePoint projects
• Packaging and deploying SharePoint components

SharePoint, one of Microsoft’s strongest product lines, is a collection of related products and technologies that broadly service the areas of document and content management, web-based collaboration, and search. SharePoint is also a flexible application hosting platform, which enables you to develop and deploy everything from individual Web Parts to full-blown web applications. This chapter discusses some of the great features that you can expect.

From a development perspective, SharePoint 2013 included a number of changes, but the most significant can be summarized as the introduction of the App Model for SharePoint. This is not to say that the previous style of SharePoint development is no longer available; it is still there and supported in Visual Studio 2013. But the App Model adds to the options that are available to developers.

Before you get into what’s available in Visual Studio 2013 to support SharePoint development, the chapter spends a little time looking at the options. Then the choices you have to make within Visual Studio will be placed into the appropriate context.

SHAREPOINT EXECUTION MODELS

When it comes to creating a SharePoint application, there is one fundamental question that needs to be ...