Created Date in SPListItemVersion does not respect locale settings?

A Quick post! On a recent project we had a custom control that was showing document version history information such as “Created By” and “Date Created” in a table format, it was looking all good. After the day light savings time (British Summer Time) one of the tester spotted a bug in document version history control where “Date Created” was still showing the GMT time, it looked like SPListItemVersion.Created was not respecting day light savings time.

TimeZone.xml looked good and every other Dates on the site were showing correct time. It turns out that SPListItemVersion.Created was only showing time in GMT (Don’t know why!) so a simple fix was to convert the time into local time at the render time.

lblDateCreated.Text = version.Created.ToLocalTime().ToString();

Various MOSS Enterprise Search Stuff – Part I

Recently I have been working on a large Content Management solution that required 300+ custom Managed/Metadata Properties in MOSS Search and had requirements to allow user to search on all of the Metadata Properties. MOSS Search Index was also used to run a number of reports such as “What Asset (Image, Video, Document etc) is used on what page?”

While working with MOSS Search I came across a number of things that I think are worth sharing.

Programmatically setting up Shared Scope

APIs to work with MOSS Search related Administration tasks such as creating Scopes, Managed Properties etc are very straight forward and well documented under Getting Started with the Enterprise Search Administration Object Model

But if you want to set up a shared scope, then it’s not very obvious from API how to do it. ScopeCollection.Create method as shown below takes owningSiteUrl as a parameter and to set up a shared scope just pass in null for owningSiteUrl and the scope will be created as a Shared Scope!

public Scope Create (
    string name,
    string description,
    Uri owningSiteUrl,
    bool displayInAdminUI,
    string alternateResultsPage,
    ScopeCompilationType compilationType
)

Programmatically setting up “Include values from a single crawled property based on order specified”

Programmatically setting up mappings to crawled properties is straight forward, if you want to add multiple crawled properties and include value only from a single crawled property based on the order than from the UI, you can simply check the radio button next “Include values from a single crawled property based on order specified”.

To do it programmatically add multiple Crawled properties to MappingCollection and then set ManagedProperty.RespectPriority property to true, here is some code (pseudo code really!) to add multiple crawled property mappings

                Schema propertiesSchema = new Schema(SearchContext.Current);
                ManagedPropertyCollection managedProperties = propertiesSchema.AllManagedProperties;
                ManagedProperty managedProperty = managedProperties["Test Property"];
                MappingCollection mappingCollection = managedProperty.GetMappings();

                //Create Crawled Property Mappings

                Mapping propMapping = new Mapping(new Guid("00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346"),
                                                 "ows_Modified_x0020_By",
                                                  "31",
                                                  managedProperty.PID);

                Mapping propMapping1 = new Mapping(new Guid("b725f130-47ef-101a-a5f1-02608c9eebac"),
                                                 "11",
                                                  "31",
                                                  managedProperty.PID);

                //Add in the order in which you want it to appear in the Admin UK
                mappingCollection.Add(propMapping);
                mappingCollection.Add(propMapping1);

                managedProperty.SetMappings(mappingCollection); // You have to do this for Mappings to work
                //Tell it to respect priority!
                managedProperty.RespectPriority = true;
                managedProperty.Update();

If you look at the Mapping object’s constructor below

public Mapping (
    Guid crawledPropset,
    string crawledPropertyName,
    int crawledPropertyVariantType,
    int managedPid
)

It takes a Guid (crawledPropset) which is the category of crawled property (SharePoint, People, etc) and also takes an int (crawledPropertyVariantType) which represents the DataType of crawled property, I find it annoying that list of possible values crawledPropset and crawledPropertyVariantType is not very handy so here are the possible values

Some Possible Values of crawledPropertyVariantType

Data Type	crawledPropertyVariantType
string	31
bool	11
integer	20
datetime	64
Something to do with Custom field	4127

*Please note that above values are what I have encountered till now *

Commonly Used crawledPropset

Category	crawledPropset
Sharepoint	00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346
Basic	0b63e343-9ccc-11d0-bcdb-00805fccce04
Mail	aa568eec-e0e5-11cf-8fda-00aa00a14f93
Office	f29f85e0-4ff9-1068-ab91-08002b27b3d9
People	00110329-0000-0110-c000-000000111146

Filtering by approval status in ContentByQueryWebPart

If you need to programmatically set properties on ContentByQueryWebPart to filter the data by approval status than FilterField is _ModerationStatus FilterType is ModState

webPart.FilterField1 = "_ModerationStatus";
webPart.FilterType1 = "ModStat";
webPart.FilterValue1 = "Approved";

Programmatically adding RSSAggregatorWebPart to a Page

I have been struggling to find information on how to add RSSAggregatorWebPart to a page. First I started with doing something like

RSSAggregatorWebPart rssViewer = new RSSAggregatorWebPart();
rssViewer.FeedUrl = "http://ketulpatel.wordpress.com/feed/";
rssViewer.ID = "rssFeed";
rssViewer.DataSourcesString = dataSourceString.ToString();
rssViewer.Title = "My Blog";
//AddWebPart is an helper method to add a webpart to a page
AddWebPart(web,rssViewer,"default.aspx","CenterColTop",0);

That added the web-part to the page but when rendering the Page, web part gave an error asking to check error logs for errors and error log under 12 hive contained following error

RssWebPart: Exception handed to HandleRuntimeException.HandleException System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: key at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.CacheObject.LoadDataFromCache(String key) at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseXmlDataSource.GetXmlDocument() at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.GetHierarchicalDocument(IHierarchicalDataSource ds) at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.DataFormWebPart.GetHierarchicalXPathNavigator(IHierarchicalDataSource ds) at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SingleDataSource.GetXPathNavigatorInternal() at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SingleDataSource.GetXPathNavigator() at Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SingleDataSource.GetXPathNavigator(IDataSource datasource, Boolean origin…

Blha Blha….. Really could not tell what’s going on, but If I add the same web-part from the UI (Using the Web Part Gallery) than it worked fine and my feed showed up in the web-part. After examining the properties of the working web-part in the debug mode, I noticed the web part has DataSourceString and ParameterBindings property set, MSDN has no documentation about it (or at least I could not find it) and setting those properties when adding RSS WebPart programmatically worked

Here is the full code snippet

RSSAggregatorWebPart rssViewer = new RSSAggregatorWebPart();
rssViewer.FeedUrl = "http://ketulpatel.wordpress.com/feed/";
rssViewer.ID = "rssFeed";
StringBuilder dataSourceString = new StringBuilder("<%@ Register TagPrefix=\"WebControls\" Namespace=\"Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls\" Assembly=\"Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c\" %>");
            dataSourceString.Append("<%@ Register TagPrefix=\"WebPartPages\" Namespace=\"Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages\" Assembly=\"Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c\" %>");
            dataSourceString.Append("<WebControls:XmlUrlDataSource runat=\"server\" AuthType=\"None\" HttpMethod=\"GET\">");
            dataSourceString.Append("<DataFileParameters>");
            dataSourceString.Append("<WebPartPages:DataFormParameter Name=\"RequestUrl\" ParameterKey=\"RequestUrl\" PropertyName=\"ParameterValues\"/>");
            dataSourceString.Append("</DataFileParameters>");
            dataSourceString.Append("</WebControls:XmlUrlDataSource>");

rssViewer.DataSourcesString = dataSourceString.ToString();
rssViewer.ParameterBindings = "<ParameterBinding Name=\"RequestUrl\" Location=\"WPProperty[FeedUrl]\"/>";
rssViewer.Title = "My Blog";
AddWebPart(web,rssViewer,"default.aspx","CenterColTop",0);

Value of DataSourceString is:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="WebControls" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<WebControls:XmlUrlDataSource runat="server" AuthType="None" HttpMethod="GET">
<DataFileParameters>
<WebPartPages:DataFormParameter Name="RequestUrl" ParameterKey="RequestUrl" PropertyName="ParameterValues"/>
</DataFileParameters>
</WebControls:XmlUrlDataSource>

Value of ParameterBindings is:

<ParameterBinding Name="RequestUrl" Location="WPProperty[FeedUrl]"/>

Programmatically setting up Approval workflow in MOSS

Out-of-box Approval works pretty well for simple content approval and that’s what exactly I wanted. If you attach an Approval workflow to a list from the UI you get number of options to set such as Approvers, People who needs to be notified and an important one if you want to update the approval status of a list item to Approved or Rejected is “Update the approval status (use this workflow to control content approval)” in “Post completion Workflow Activities”

As in most the real world situation I want to set this up during deployment process and not from the UI.

Following code snippet will set up your list with Moderation enabled:

SPList list = web.Lists["MyList"];
list.EnableModeration = true;
list.Update();

Following code snippet sets up the Approval work flow on the list

SPWorkflowTemplate baseTemplate = web.WorkflowTemplates.GetTemplateByName("Approval", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
SPWorkflowAssociation assoc = SPWorkflowAssociation.CreateListAssociation(baseTemplate, "Property Approval", web.Lists["Workflow Tasks"], web.Lists["Workflow History"]);
assoc.AllowManual = true;
assoc.AutoStartCreate = true;
string data = GetApprovalWorkFlowData();
assoc.AssociationData = data;
list.AddWorkflowAssociation(assoc);

In Above code snippet AssociationData property of SPWorkflowAssociation can be used to set things like Approvers, People who needs to be notified and “Post completion Workflow Activities” for content approval

AssociationData is in XML format and looks like:

<my:myFields xml:lang="en-us" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:my="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD">
  <my:Reviewers>
    <my:Person>
      <my:DisplayName>Ketul Patel</my:DisplayName>
      <my:AccountId>domain\kpatel</my:AccountId>
      <my:AccountType>User</my:AccountType>
    </my:Person>
  </my:Reviewers>
  <my:CC>
    <my:Person>
      <my:DisplayName>Joe Doe</my:DisplayName>
      <my:AccountId>domain\jdoe</my:AccountId>
      <my:AccountType>User</my:AccountType>
    </my:Person>
  </my:CC>
  <my:DueDate xsi:nil="true"></my:DueDate>
  <my:Description>A new Property has been added to the system and requires approval.</my:Description>
  <my:Title></my:Title>
  <my:DefaultTaskType>1</my:DefaultTaskType>
  <my:CreateTasksInSerial>true</my:CreateTasksInSerial>
  <my:AllowDelegation>true</my:AllowDelegation>
  <my:AllowChangeRequests>true</my:AllowChangeRequests>
  <my:StopOnAnyReject xsi:nil="true"></my:StopOnAnyReject>
  <my:WantedTasks xsi:nil="true"></my:WantedTasks>
  <my:SetMetadataOnSuccess>false</my:SetMetadataOnSuccess>
  <my:MetadataSuccessField></my:MetadataSuccessField>
  <my:MetadataSuccessValue></my:MetadataSuccessValue>
  <my:ApproveWhenComplete>true</my:ApproveWhenComplete>
  <my:TimePerTaskVal xsi:nil="true"></my:TimePerTaskVal>
  <my:TimePerTaskType xsi:nil="true"></my:TimePerTaskType>
  <my:Voting>false</my:Voting>
  <my:MetadataTriggerField></my:MetadataTriggerField>
  <my:MetadataTriggerValue></my:MetadataTriggerValue>
  <my:InitLock>false</my:InitLock>
  <my:MetadataStop>false</my:MetadataStop>
  <my:ItemChangeStop>false</my:ItemChangeStop>
  <my:GroupTasks>false</my:GroupTasks>
</my:myFields>

Various elements in the above XML are pretty self explaining and roughly maps to relevant tick box or textbox on the “Customize Workflow” Page (CstWrkflIP.aspx)

<my:ApproveWhenComplete>true</my:ApproveWhenComplete>

Is the element to use to set the “Update the approval status (use this workflow to control content approval)” checkbox