AD User Editor - Sources, Evolutions and Modifications

Written by Alexis | 12 August 2009

References

I picked a lot of infos and get inspirated by some bits of source code googling the web. My most important sources of inspiration and help were:

• ActiveDirectoryTools of Burke Holland
• SharePoint solution created by the STSDEV utility
• Right way webpart coding on Ishai Sagi's blog
• Sharepoint Web Controls (User picker, Date picker) from Karine Bosch's blog

Wishes List

• More friendly property editor in webpart configuration (like toolpart in this webpart, or from an external list)
• Encode connexion strings (no more clear text)
• Make it really multilingual (cf here)
• Code it the MVC way (at least separate presentation elements from data)
• Add multi-valued field to properties control types (find the sharepoint one which does this task)
• Package it with SharePoint Solution Installer

Before trying to compile something

1. Use a server with MOSS 2007 and Visual Studio 2008 installed on it (not tested with VS2005 and WSS3 alone)
2. Install Visual Studio Extensions for Sharepoint from here
3. Download and install STSDEV from here
4. Unzip the project archive and open NomineSharePointTools.sln with Visual Studio
5. Edit DeploymentFiles/Microsoft.SharePoint.targets to make targetUrl, WssRootFilesFolder, STSADM and STSDEV match your server config.
6. Click the menu "Generate>Config Manager" and select DebugDeploy or DebugUdate depending on what you did before.
7. Press F5: It should compile and install (don't care if VS tells you a class can't be directly launched)
8. You just have to activate the feature on you site collection and then add the webpart to a test page.
9. Next, each time you'll update, the webpart will be automagically updated.

Conclusion

Thank you for trying my WebPart. It's my first real developement for SharePoint 2007, so feel free to send any constructive comment to help me making it even better.