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Building List Definitions with Event Receiver in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Visual How To

Applies to:   Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

Joel Krist, Akona Systems

August 2007

Overview

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 introduces extended support for working with list events. The new event-handling support provides developers an even richer platform for developing custom integration points and building new types of applications on top of Windows SharePoint Services.

The Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provide new support for creating SharePoint applications. The process of creating SharePoint list definitions and implementing list event handlers is significantly simplified. This Office Visual How To illustrates how to build a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 list definition with an event receiver by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

 See It Building List Definitions with Event Receiver

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Length: 5:26 | Size: 4.32 MB | Type: WMV file

Code It | Read It | Explore It

Code It

To illustrate how to build SharePoint list definitions with an event receiver, this section walks through three key steps:

  1. Creating a SharePoint list definition project in Visual Studio.

  2. Adding custom event-handling code to the item event receiver class that is generated by Visual Studio.

  3. Building and deploying the list definition and event receiver to a SharePoint site.

Create a List Definition Project in Visual Studio 2005

By using the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, you can easily create a suitable project for your list definition.

To create a SharePoint list definition project in Visual Studio 2005

  1. Start Visual Studio.

  2. On the File menu, click New, and then click Project. The New Project dialog box appears.

  3. In the Project Types pane, click Visual C#, and then select the SharePoint category.

  4. In the Templates pane, select List Definition. Specify a Name and Location for the project, and click OK. Visual Studio displays the List Definition Settings dialog box.

  5. Select a base list definition, select Create an instance of this list (which occurs when you deploy the definition), and select Add with event receiver. Click OK. Visual Studio generates the list definition project.

Add Code to the Item Event Receiver Class

When Visual Studio creates the list definition project, it generates two Microsoft Visual C# source files: ListEventReceiver.cs and ItemEventReceiver.cs. These files contain the implementations of classes that are derived from the SPListEventReceiver and SPItemEventReceiver classes, with overrides of the list and item event-handling methods. This Visual How To illustrates handling the ItemDeleting event, the synchronous Before event that occurs before an item is deleted from the list.

To add custom handling of the ItemDeleting event

  1. In the Visual Studio Solution Explorer, open the folder that has the same name as the project, and then open the ItemEventReceiver.cs source file.

  2. Scroll down and locate the ItemDeleting method.

  3. Add the following code to the body of the ItemDeleting method:

    C#
    properties.ErrorMessage = "Deleting of items not currently allowed.";
properties.Cancel = true;

Build and Deploy the List Definition and Event Receiver

Before you can build and deploy the list definition and event receiver to the SharePoint site, you must enable the ItemDeleting event in the element manifest properties of the item event receiver feature.

To enable the ItemDeleting event

  1. In Visual Studio, click Project, and then click projectname Properties. The project Properties dialog box appears.

  2. Click the SharePoint Solution tab.

  3. Expand the top-level Solution node, and then expand the node for the ItemEventReceiver feature. Click the Element Manifest node to display key/value pairs for the item events. (See Figure 1.)

    Figure 1. Enabling ItemDeleting event handler
    Enabling ItemDeleting event handler

  4. Edit the entry for the ItemDeleting Enabled key to set its value to True.

  5. Close the dialog box.

At this point the list definition project is ready to be built and deployed.

To build and deploy the list definition project

  • In Visual Studio, click Build, and then click Deploy Solution. Visual Studio builds the assembly for the list event receiver and generates the necessary configuration files for deployment of the solution. It then deploys the solution to the SharePoint site and activates the list definition and list item event receiver features.

You can now test the list item event receiver by browsing to an instance of the newly created list definition, adding an item to the list, and then attempting to delete the item. Because the ItemDeleting event is being handled and canceled in the event receiver, Windows SharePoint Services cancels the deletion of the item and displays the message from the event receiver.

Read It

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 extends list event handling in many ways:

  • The scope of events now covers not only document and form libraries but also lists.

  • Events that are triggered by lists can execute managed code when items are added, changed, or deleted.

  • Events at the list level, such as adding or removing fields, can now be handled.

  • Events are fired both before and after an action has occurred, allowing custom validation and potential cancellation of the event.

  • Event handler responses can now be easily communicated back to the user.

This article illustrated how to build SharePoint list definitions with an event receiver by using Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The key steps include:

  1. Creating a SharePoint list definition project in Visual Studio.

  2. Adding custom event-handling code to the item event receiver class that is generated by Visual Studio.

  3. Building and deploying the list definition and event receiver to a SharePoint site.

Explore It

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Looks like a good walkthrough but I never got to 1st base      Alex Mondale ... Noelle Mallory - MSFT   |   Edit   |   Show History

Is it possible the 64-bit edition of Visual Studio won't run the VSEWSS?

[Noelle Mallory - MSFT] Please post questions to the MSDN Forums at http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn. You will likely get a quicker response through the forum than through the Community Content.

Tags What's this?: vsewss (x) x64 (x) Add a tag
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Out of date      Chance1234   |   Edit   |   Show History
Out of date for 1.1, could not get passed the To enable the ItemDeleting event part
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no change      manamafshin ... Thomas Lee   |   Edit   |   Show History
i do this steps but i didn't get any change in my site
what's the matter?

[tfl 10.6.08] - As Noelle suggests above, you should post questions like this to the MSDN Forums at http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn. You are more likely to get a better response through the forums than through the Community Content.
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Deployment Issue      Tony Dickinson   |   Edit   |   Show History

I was hoping this would be the solution to my problem of getiing events into SharePoint. Unfortunately in this article simply clicking Deploy does not work? This is due to the SharePoint Site URL not being set. Great so where do you set it ?????? Might be somewhere simple but could'nt find it in project properites?

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RE: Deployment Issue      atappert   |   Edit   |   Show History
In your project properties, in the Debug section, set the Start Action to "Start browser with URL: " to the site collection you want to use. The solution will get added to farm and your features will be activated and deployed to the site collection. Shame that this isn't obvious.
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SharePoint Solution Tab = WSP View      dirq ... SassyAngelEyes   |   Edit   |   Show History
http://blogs.msdn.com/mcsnoiwb/archive/2007/08/21/announcing-the-ctp-for-vsewss-version-1-1.aspx
The "SharePoint Solution" tab has been deprecated and replaced with the WSP View.
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