SharePoint 2010 Development with Silverlight

This book is for every SharePoint developer who wants to build state-of-the-art solutions with Silverlight—within the enterprise, for consulting clients, or for commercial sale.   Developers increasingly want to build rich applications that run in the SharePoint 2010 browser user interface while offering a far more compelling and engaging experience than conventional web pages. One proven technology gives them all the tools and resources they need to achieve these goals: Silverlight®. Using Silverlight and SharePoint together, developers can create state-of-the-art applications that utilize Silverlight’s outstanding user experience, and fully leverage the vast collections of business data already stored in corporate SharePoint deployments. In SharePoint 2010 Development with Silverlight, two SharePoint gurus collaborate to teach all the concepts and techniques needed to create robust Silverlight solutions for delivery through SharePoint 2010, and present fully documented code that demonstrates superior design and programming.   Bob German and Paul Stubbs draw on their extensive experience developing custom SharePoint business solutions with Silverlight and presenting on these technologies at leading Microsoft developer events. Writing for both experienced and new SharePoint developers, they quickly review the fundamentals of both SharePoint and Silverlight development, and then demonstrate how to use both platforms together to build uniquely powerful solutions. These include: • Simple and connected Silverlight Web Parts (Chapter 5) and Silverlight Web Part Editing (Chapters 7 and 10) • Advanced use of the SharePoint Client Object Model including dynamic loading, paging, and server-side exception handling (Chapter 8) • Use of SharePoint’s REST API including paging, caching, and filtering (Chapter 9) • Integration with SharePoint search and social networking (Chapter 10) • Solutions that improve performance and reduce server traffic by passing serialized .NET objects on the web page (Chapter 7) • Use of SharePoint’s JavaScript API with JQuery (Chapter 7) • SharePoint applications for Windows Phone 7 (Chapter 12) • Integration with Office 365 and Windows Azure™ services (Chapter 14) • Silverlight field types in SharePoint, featuring a mapping field that allows geocoding SharePoint content (Chapter 15)    Including New Features in Silverlight 5 Silverlight 5 introduces a number of new features such as implicit data templates and debugging data binding that can be very helpful in SharePoint solutions. All the examples in this book have been tested with Silverlight 4; some have been extended to showcase the new capabilities in Silverlight 5. See Chapter 3 for a list.    

Table of Contents:
Foreword xvii Preface xix PART I Getting Started 1 1 Getting Started with SharePoint and Silverlight 3 Why SharePoint? 4 Why Silverlight? 6 Why SharePoint and Silverlight Together? 9 Who Should Read This Book 11 How to Use This Book 11 Creating a Development Environment 13 Summary 26 2 Introduction to SharePoint Development 27 Understanding SharePoint Content 28 Building a Web Part 33 Lists and Libraries 43 Accessing Lists and Libraries with the SharePoint Server API 51 Updating List Data with the SharePoint API 59 LINQ to SharePoint 60 Web Parts as Composite Controls 63 Event Receivers 67 Solutions and Features 69 Feature Receivers 75 Summary 77 3 Introduction to Silverlight Development 79 Placing Silverlight on a Web Page 80 Building a Simple Silverlight Application with Visual Studio 2010 82 Toolbox and Layout Controls 87 Setting Control Properties 92 Creating and Showing Child Windows 93 Advanced Features of .NET in Silverlight 97 Networking and Web Services in Silverlight 104 Asynchronous Response Handling 106 Introducing Silverlight 5 108 Summary 109 PART II SharePoint and Silverlight Development 111 4 A First Look at Silverlight in SharePoint 113 Create Content 114 Media Web Part 121 Media Field Control 127 Organizational Chart 128 Workflow Visualization 130 Silverlight Web Part 133 Other Hosting Options 138 IFrame 144 Summary 147 5 Web Part Development 151 Silverlight Web Parts 151 Manually Building a Silverlight Web Part 152 Visual Studio Silverlight Web Parts Extension 156 Building a Silverlight Web Part 159 Building a Custom Silverlight Web Part 166 Connecting Web Parts 172 Summary 182 6 Expression Blend, Data Binding, and Sample Data 183 Behaviors 184 SketchFlow 197 Design with Data 213 Summary 221 7 Accessing SharePoint Using the HTML Bridge 223 Passing Data to Silverlight with the HTML Bridge 223 Passing Data on the Web Page 226 Passing SharePoint Library Content to Silverlight 231 Introducing the Visual State Manager 240 Displaying and Caching Images 243 Full Screen and Printing in Silverlight 246 Web Part Editing and Posting Back with the Web Page 247 Calling SharePoint Javascript and JQuery from Silverlight 253 Summary 259 8 Accessing SharePoint Data with the Client Object Model 261 Client Object Model Goals 261 Hello World 262 Client Context 266 Load and LoadQuery 268 Object Model 270 Retrieving List Data 271 Updating List Data 274 Deleting List Data 275 Creating List Data 276 Paging 277 Document Upload 282 Creating Ribbon Custom Actions 283 Server Side Exception Handling 285 Deployment and Redistribution 287 Summary 289 9 Accessing SharePoint Data with WCF Data Services 291 REST and the Open Data Protocol 292 Getting Started with WCF Data Services 293 Binding to a SharePoint List Using WCF Data Services 296 Updating SharePoint Data 304 Paging through Large Data Sets 306 Caching Paged Data 310 Filtering and Sorting the Data 312 Using Silverlight 5 to Bind Style Setters 315 Summary 317 10 Accessing SharePoint with Web Services 319 Web Services in SharePoint 320 The SearchView Web Part Sample Solution 322 Accessing Enterprise Search 339 Accessing Social Data 354 Updating SearchView for Silverlight 5 361 Building Custom WCF Services for SharePoint 366 Summary 373 11 Accessing External Data 375 Building a Feed Reader Web Part 379 Building a Custom Feed Reader Proxy 386 Adding Cross-Domain Policy to SharePoint 390 Using Business Connectivity Services from Silverlight 392 Adding a Web Browser Preview with Silverlight 5 409 Summary 414 PART III Building Solutions 415 12 Windows Phone 7 SharePoint Applications 417 Office Hub 417 Development Framework 419 Development Tools 420 Connecting to SharePoint 425 Databinding to the Task List 435 Development Environment 438 Publishing an Application 443 Summary 445 13 Creating Silverlight Navigation 447 Out-of-the-Box Navigation 447 Site Map Providers 453 Building a Site Map Provider 455 Building a Navigation Web Part 461 Building a Navigation Control 471 Rendering a Navigation Control on a SharePoint Master Page 472 Summary 475 14 SharePoint and Silverlight in the Cloud 477 SharePoint Online Sandboxed Solutions, Development Environment, and Deployment 479 Web Services in SharePoint Online 484 SharePoint Online Debugging 485 SharePoint Online API “Additional” Restrictions for Sandboxed Solutions 486 SharePoint Online Silverlight “Client Side Object Model” Data Project 488 SharePoint Online Silverlight REST Data Project 497 SharePoint Online Azure Project 502 Summary 520 15 Creating a Silverlight Field Control 521 Defining the Bing Maps Field Type 523 Building a Silverlight Field Control 526 Serializing a Bing Maps Location 534 Getting Started with Bing Maps 536 Displaying and Editing Maps in Silverlight 540 Using the Location Field 549 Field Controls and Publishing Sites 553 Defining a Bing Maps Column and Content Type 555 Defining a Page Layout 558 Using the Location Field in a Publishing Site 563 Summary 565 Index 567