SharePoint development and other development topics
“Which Java frameworks, tools and technologies did Java developer use in 2016?”
Over 2.000 developers took part to answer this question from the 2016 survey of ZeroTurnaround. Following report shows the result: the tools and technologies Java developers use – Java frameworks, IDEs, build, tools, servers, databases, and so on.
The 2017 report may be released soon (June 2017) – stay tuned.
You can find the complete post here: Java Tools and Technologies Landscape Report 2016 | zeroturnaround.com
Following step-by-step guide helps you to use the Azure template “SharePoint server farm” though you have a Azure free trial account.
Microsoft offers a free trial account with $200 credit that lets you evaluate Azure for a month. But it seems like you can’t use the Azure template SharePoint server farm when you have a trial account. Well you can use it – I found a way that I want to share with you.
To set up a development environment for Microsoft Azure you can choose between two different deployment models:
Only with ARM it is possible to use a Azure template (ARM template). Of course the second model is considerably more faster and would be the favorite one. After the preparation was done it took about 30 Minutes to deploy a complete SharePoint three tier small farm!
You can find a lot of guides for the classic deployment (see link list at the end of this post), but nearly no information about the second one. Microsoft states, that you can’t use SharePoint server farm templatess with a trial account, see following screenshot of the Microsoft page Create SharePoint server farms.
Here’s the good news: you CAN use it! 🙂
Just use following Step-by-Step guide.
I found two amazing sources that help to understand the Chrome Dev Tools that I want to share with you.
Cody Lindley – one of the contributors of jQuery – demonstrates 16 various ways to search, find and edit within the source code of a site using Chrome Developer Tools.
You can find the complete post here: 16 Ways to Search, Find and Edit with Chrome DevTools | Telerik Blogs
Another great source for a deeper understanding of Chrome Dev Tools is the Tips and Tricks section of the Chrome documentation.
You can find the complete article here: Tips and Tricks | Chrome Dev Tools documentation
If you want to find out why your MVC application isn’t working you can use MvcDiagnostics. It’s a single WebForms page can be dropped into any MVC site, and then viewed in your browser.
You can find a detailed explanation here: Diagnosing ASP.NET MVC Problems | Blog ‘Brad Wilson’
Here’s how to install this tool: ASP.NET MVC Diagnostics Using NuGet | Blog ‘You’ve Been Haacked’
Don’t worry about the old blog post date – this tool is up to date: Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Diagnostics 5.2.3 | NuGet Gallery
How does ASP.NET MVC work? In following post you can learn how it works and that its magic – the loose coupling – comes from convention.
Why do i say magic? Because with the loose coupling of its components Model, View and Controller the code is way more readable and testable (to name only two).
The convention of ASP.NET MVC is that you can set a name in one component just like you want. But you have to repeat this name exactly in the other component.
This is an example of a main controller that covers pages like Home, About, Privacy Policy, etc. In following image Home is such a name. You can choose the name by your own, but you have to repeat it exactly: Home2Controller won’t work (the convention sometimes adds a keyword like Controller). Another example for such a name is About.
Please click on the image to see it full size:
Another typical use case you can find in many tutorials is a list controller. In following example I refer to the tutorial Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC 5 from the ASP.NET page.
The controller handles list overview views and list item views. Lets say the user requests a list item with the id = 1. That means
Then you got:
I hope this helped a little bit to clarify how ASP.NET MVC works (it helped me a lot and i use it often when I do some tutorials).
For a beginner tutorial I recommend following ASP.NET MVC Getting Started tutorial: http://www.asp.net/mvc/overview/getting-started/introduction/getting-started
You can find her basics about the MVC execution process: http://www.asp.net/mvc/overview/older-versions-1/overview/understanding-the-asp-net-mvc-execution-process
And if you want to dig deeper here a long post from Scott: 🙂 http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BackToBasicsDynamicImageGenerationASPNETControllersRoutingIHttpHandlersAndRunAllManagedModulesForAllRequests.aspx
* Following article helped me with the diagrams, it is a very good introduction as well:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/620195/Learning-MVC-Part-Introduction-to-MVC-Architectu
How MVC works – another simple and helpful introduction:
http://www.jquery2dotnet.com/2013/05/how-mvc-works.html
I found a very good explanation about the Lambda expression in @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.FirstName), see Link below.
As the author wrote, a lambda expression is a way to write an anonymous function. As a summary you can find here the lambda expression and its anonymous function it could be translated logically.
(x => x.Name)
>>>>>> translates to >>>>>>
string Function(Data x)
{
return x.Name
}
(() => someVariable)
>>>>>> translates to >>>>>>
string Function()
{
return someVariable;
}
model => item.FirstName
>>>>>> translates to >>>>>>
string Function(Model model)
{
return item.FirstName;
}
Here you find the complete post: I want to understand the lambda expression in @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.FirstName)
With Visual Studio Community 2015 you get a full Visual Studio version for free! In following post you can learn how to download it and – for SharePoint – how to install the Office Developer Tools.
I am just as excited as other bloggers like Tobias Zimmergren about Microsoft’s new strategy Mobile First, Cloud First that seems to lead to a new Microsoft corporation that invents itself in surprisingly fast steps. In November 2014 Microsoft made another great step in its opening process. As S. Somasegar wrote they were Opening up Visual Studio and .NET to Every Developer, Any Application. That is they open up Visual Studio development to a broader community. And they release free versions and offer more Open Source projects then ever.
Great news isn’t it? 🙂
Back in 2013 the Visual Studio Community 2013 version replaced the free Expression version of Visual Studio.
Additionally you needed the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013. This link starts a download of the file OfficeToolsForVS2013Update1.exe. If you don’t thrust a download from the URL aka.ms (which is indeed a Microsoft URL) you can have a look at this Microsoft Announcement, the link Download the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 – March 2014 Update points to the same file. On this StackExchange page you can find further information.
Last week Visual Studio Community 2015 was released. See following post from S. Somasegar or this german news at heise online. (It’s great to see how many 3rd party tools they integrated. I can’t wait to try out Apache Cordova for JavaScript development)
With Visual Studio Community 2015 the tools were renamed from “Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013” to “Office Developer Tools”. As a user wrote on this SharePoint Community page you can download the Office Developer Tools here. Click on the button Get Office Developer Tools.
There is already an Update 1 available that includes a vocabulary change. In 2015, the SharePoint “app model” name was changed to the “add-in model.”. Presumably, this change in name was necessary to introduce the SharePoint Mobile App.
Meanwhile there is an Update 2 available as well.
The “Get Office Developer Tools” link already points to these updates. As you can see in the comment from user Sean Laberee about Update 1 the link is correct even though it downloads OfficeToolsForVS2015.exe which is the same as what you used in August (first release) and November (Update 1). It also launches the Web Platform Installer pointing to the entry for the latest update of the Office Developer Tools.
As Tobias wrote
One word. WOW.
Boy am I glad I chose to work with Microsoft technologies back in the day when I had to choose the direction for my professional career.
🙂