Our requirement was to load all the activities that are happening in our Facebook page such as comments, posts, videos, likes etc. But when I was using the activity feed plugin I realized that the activity feed plugin only brings the Facebook page activity done from the site in which it is currently hosted. For example, if you have integrated the activity feed plugin in your site http://demo.yoursite.com/, the plugin only shows the activity that is created from http://demo.yoursite.com. But our intentions was to bring the complete set of activities happening in the Facebook page.

Thankfully I found out the Facebook Like Box which met our requirements. It fetches the completely activity feed of a Facebook page and integrates into your site. You can also comment and like posts from the plugin.

Response.ContentEncoding = Encoding.Default;

Finally the single quotes and hypens were appearing correctly in the CSV. Please not that you have to HtmlDecode your data if you have already HtmlEncoded it.

In one of my recent projects I had a mail notification feature for a list which will send a mail when a new item is added. The mail will be sent with a link to the item. So I build the URL as http://app/sites/site2/Lists/Invoices/Dispform.aspx?ID=5 which points to the item with the ID as 5 in the list Invoices.

But opening the link as such will show the list item with the old left navigation which we don’t want. So when I checked out the URL opened by SharePoint when “View item” is clicked in the ribbon I found that it opens with a query parameter IsDlg in the URL which mentions whether the item is opened in a dialog. But unfortunately when I tried the same parameter as IsDlg=1 in the link the item opened fine with the left navigation hidden but the scrollbars disabled. Arrgh. Now the SP madness begins. But before I plucked all my hair out I luckily found this brilliant answer by XueQi which mentions that we can either use IsDlg=0 or IsDlg=2 for the scrollbars to work fine.

And the expedition continues.

But with the help of designer you can manually edit the CAML of the XSLT list viewer webpart in the view page and use the Membership element to filter based on the group. All you have to do is to use CurrentUserGroups as the membership type to show that particular item for the users in that specified group.

<Or>
  <Membership Type=\"CurrentUserGroups\">
    <FieldRef Name=\"AssignedTo\"/>
  </Membership>
  <Eq>
    <FieldRef Name=\"AssignedTo\"></FieldRef>
    <Value Type=\"Integer\">
      <UserID/>
    </Value>
  </Eq>
</Or>

Let’s consider that an item has the filed value as “Kate, John; Approvers”. The item will be shown to the user John kate as well as the members of the group ‘Approvers’. Remember that you have to set the people or group field to allow multiple values as well as selecting objects from SharePoint groups to hold such a value.

Dear Raghavendra,

Congratulations! We’re pleased to inform you that your contributions to Microsoft online technical communities have been recognized with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award.

The Microsoft Community Contributor Award is reserved for participants who have made notable contributions in Microsoft online community forums such as TechNet, MSDN and Answers. The value of these resources is greatly enhanced by participants like you, who voluntarily contribute your time and energy to improve the online community experience for others.

Thank you for your commitment to Microsoft online technical communities and congratulations again!

Thank you Microsoft for your recognition. Okay what else do I get apart from the certificate and the cool badges? They have given me 12 month free subscription for “Microsoft Press E-Reference Library” which have hundreds of books in different formats and the patterns and practices whitepapers etc. Cool!

Aspx

<asp:Button ID="btnOpenPopup" runat="server" Text="Close" OnClick="btnOpenPopup_Click" />
<br />
<asp:Label ID="lblMessage" runat="server"></asp:Label>
<telerik:RadWindow ID="radwindowPopup" runat="server" VisibleOnPageLoad="false" Height="150px"
                    Width="300px" Modal="true" BackColor="#DADADA" VisibleStatusbar="false" Behaviors="None" Title="Unsaved changes pending">
<ContentTemplate>
    <div style="padding: 20px">
        Do you want to save the changes?
        <br /><br />
        <asp:Button ID="btnOk" runat="server" Text="Yes" Width="50px" OnClick="btnOk_Click" />
        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
        <asp:Button ID="btnCancel" runat="server" Text="No" Width="50px" OnClick="btnCancel_Click" />
    </div>
</ContentTemplate>
</telerik:RadWindow>

Aspx.cs

public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page 
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    }

    protected void btnOpenPopup_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        radwindowPopup.VisibleOnPageLoad = true;
    }

    protected void btnOk_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        radwindowPopup.VisibleOnPageLoad = false;
        lblMessage.Text = "Changes are saved!";
    }

    protected void btnCancel_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        radwindowPopup.VisibleOnPageLoad = false;
        lblMessage.Text = "Changes are discarded!";
    }
}

Button ‘btnOpenPopup’ opens the popup by making the radwindow visible by setting ‘VisibleOnPageLoad’ to true. To hide it you just need to set it back to false. You’ve got your custom confirm box now which looks sleek.

The method exists in core.js and it is used OOTB by SharePoint for opening popups in places like selecting a web application from a list of web applications, selecting a site collection from a list of site collections etc. (you could see these in Central administration). So here is the method -

function openPopup(){
    commonShowModalDialog("/_layouts/selectitem.aspx", "resizable: no; status:no; scroll: no; help: no; center: yes; dialogwidth:410px; dialogHeight:300px;", RetrieveItemValue);
}

CommonShowModalDialog has similar parameters as a simple window.open().

1. Target URL
2. Window features
3. Callback function

To pass a value from the popup to the parent page use window.returnValue in te popup to save the value before closing the window.

//called from the popup page
function closePoup(){
    window.returnValue = myValue;
    window.close();
}

Retrieve the value passed from the popup in the callback function mentioned.

//Retreives the value sent from the popup
function RetrieveItemValue(retValue) {
    alert(retValue);
}

As simple as that.

<html>
<head>
    <title>Locate an IP</title>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="yqlgeo.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">

        var ipaddress;

        //get location of an IP
        function getIPLocation() {
            document.getElementById('divDetails').innerHTML = '<br />Loading..';
            try {
                var start = new Date();
                var ctrl = document.getElementById('txtIP');
                var ipadd = ctrl.value;
                yqlgeo.get(ipadd, function (o) {
                    var details = '<br /><h3><b>Location Details</b></h3>';
                    details += 'Country Code : <b>' + o.place.country.code + '</b><br />';
                    details += 'Country Name : <b>' + o.place.country.content + '</b><br />';
                    details += 'Country Language : <b>' + o.place.lang + '</b><br />';
                    details += 'Latitude : <b>' + o.place.centroid.latitude + '</b><br />';
                    details += 'Longitude : <b>' + o.place.centroid.longitude + '</b><br />';
                    details += 'Place Name : <b>' + o.place.name + '</b><br />';
                    document.getElementById('divDetails').innerHTML = details;
                });
                var end = new Date();
                var diff = dateDifference(start, end);
                //document.getElementById('divtime').innerHTML = 'Time Elapsed : ' + diff.seconds;
            }
            catch (e) {
                document.getElementById('divDetails').innerHTML = e.Message;
            }
        }

        //get current IP
        function getCurrentIP() {
            var ctrl = document.getElementById('txtCurrentIP');
            if (ctrl) {
                ctrl.value = ipaddress;
            }
            else
                alert('Unable to retrieve IP');
        }

        function getip(json) {
            if (json.ip)
                ipaddress = json.ip;
            else
                alert('Unable to retrieve the IP address');
        }

    </script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://jsonip.appspot.com/?callback=getip"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="frm" action="javascript:getIPLocation()">
    <p>
        Get your IP Address
    </p>
    <input type="text" id="txtCurrentIP" />
    <input type="button" onclick="getCurrentIP()" value="Get IP" />
    <p>
        Type the IP Address
    </p>
    <input type="text" id="txtIP" />
    <input type="button" onclick="getIPLocation()" value="Locate" />
    <br />
    <div id="divDetails">
    </div>
    <br />
    <div id="divtime">
    </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

The sample makes use of the YQL Geo Library written by Chris Heilmann which is available here to retrieve the geo-location of an IP. To retrieve the client’s external IP I’ve made use of the API provided by jsoip.appsot.com. Thanks to the SO post here.

Are you puzzled to see your IIS opening up blank not showing any of your sites? Is SharePoint server 2007 installed in the server? If yes, the issue is because of overloaded thread requests on your IIS. I suspect this has something to do with the WSS timer service. Not sure though. To get back your IIS just do an IISRESET in the box. And there you’ll get all your sites back in IIS.

After compiling my project and publishing it i tried to run the report and ran into the error

Remote report processing requires Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services or later.

After a bit of surfing i realized that the prerequisites in the microsoft download page of the control listed this

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services or higher for server processing mode
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or .NET Framework 4.0

Hmm. Strange. So be careful before you migrate your report viewer control for your SSRS projects from version 2008 to 2010. Make sure you have SQL Server 2008 at the server.

NLV