Agile Sharepoint development by 21apps and Andrew Woodward MVP

Having developed software on the Microsoft platform since VB3 and before I have always like the way that as a developer things just worked, you click install and it does it all. I did flirt with Java before .Net came along; Java had a buzz and was moving on from the then VB6 solutions (and Visual Interdev was just horrible for ASP development).

My traversal into the world of Java was to be short lived, at the time Google had not been conceived and information, blogs and knowledge sharing online just did not happen. I failed miserably at the first hurdle trying to setup my development environment! The need for various versions of each separate component available from different sources was a mile away from the Microsoft bubble that I was used to. I ended my look at Java without even completing the ‘Hello World’ application L.

Now many years later and happily coding in the world of .Net (now in its version 3 flavour) I am starting to look fondly at the open source market again. This had crept up on me as I had started to bring Nant, Ndoc, CruiseControl and other open source products into my previously Microsoft only toolbox. This time my expedition is part of a project we are doing internally that we have the adopted the mantra ‘Embrace Open Source’. We have others this is the only one relevant to this blog posting!. Having done some research we are starting to settle on evaluation of Ruby, more specifically Ruby on Rails. It appears many other developers have gone down or are going down the Microsoft by day, Ruby on Rails by night – and the weekend and sometimes at work – just don’t tell the client!. One example is Netter-on-Rails.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a seminal moment in my software evolution, my thoughts views and progress will appear here to all those 1 or 2 readers that have found this blog J.

A common problem, how do I add Hyperlinks to a list programmatically in SharePoint

The documentation (SharePoint SDK) does give a clue to the answer but no real examples. You will see that the Hyperlink field is a System.String, System.String. It also states below ‘The URL field uniquely consists of two strings separated by a comma and space. One string contains the URL path and the other contains the description used as hyperlinked text.’

Sample code:

   SPSite site = new SPSite(url);
   SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
   SPList list = web.Lists[listName];
   SPListItem item = list.Items.Add();
   item["Hyperlink"] = stringUrl + “, ” + stringDescription;
   item.Update();

The important bit is the seperating “, ” (note comma and a space).

Also the hyperlink cannot be relative and must have http:// and is validated to ensure it is a valid hyperlink.

Update: Provided by ThatGuyGreg

Things get easier in MOSS 2007/WSS V3

SPFieldUrlValue linkUrl = new SPFieldUrlValue();
linkUrl.Description = “Whatever”;
linkUrl.Url = anURL.ToString();
anItem["URL"] = linkUrl;
anItem.Update();

I seem to be living in the world of SharePoint with an increasing move towards .Net 2.0, SQL 2005 and all the good things like Windows Workflow Foundation.

As such this blog will start to take on a more rounded feel (I will actually publish things).

Software Factories is a methodology developed at Microsoft. In a nutshell, a Software Factory is a development environment configured to support the rapid development of a specific type of application. While Software Factories are really just the logical next step in the continuing evolution of software development methods and practices, they promise to change the character of the software industry by introducing patterns of industrialization.

This is something that I will be actively looking at over the comming months and will be posting my finding and comments on this blog.

To get started have a look at:

Industrialised Software Development
Software Factories @ Microsoft