Today I’ve published the landing page for ng-sharepoint.com. Together with my fellow SharePoint MVP’s Jeremy Thake and Scot Hillier we’d like to provide a community site for SharePoint App developers who are interested in using AngularJS to build great Apps for SharePoint
If you’re interested in AngularJS and SharePoint go there and register yourself.
Today I’ve published SharePoint.Jasmine on github and NuGet which allows you to test your JavaScript code directly inside of a SharePoint App. By installing SharePoint.Jasmine into your project using
`Install-Package SharePoint.Jasmine’
All required artefacts for executing JavaScript UnitTests using Jasmine are automatically integrated into your App project. The updated App structure will look like the following
Most important is the actual test page located in Pages/tests
The index.aspx file is responsible for loading the Jasmine Test-Runner, the Specs and all the JavaScript source files you’re interested in. By default I’ve added the Jasmine-Sample folder which gives you a rough introduction in how to write JavaScript UnitTests using Jasmine. When installing the App and navigating to the Test-Runner-Site you’ll receive the test results embedded in the default SharePoint MasterPage.
Keep on testing your code :)
During the last weeks I’ve added some new features to ShareCoffee which are now available in the most rencet release.
As for all previous versions you can grab a copy using NuGet or Bower.IO
In order to save even more keystrokes when building Apps for SharePoint, you can access ShareCoffee now by using the $s shorthand.
Since the first release of ShareCoffee, you’re able to load AppWebUrl by providing a custom function. With the release of v0.0.11 you’re also able to load the AppWebUrl by yourself and provide the actual string to ShareCoffee.
Since the first release of ShareCoffee, you’re able to load HostWebUrl by providing a custom function. With the release of v0.0.11 you’re also able to load the HostWebUrl by yourself and provide the actual string to ShareCoffee.
In SharePoint-Hosted Apps (using the common MasterPage) you’re able to grab the FormDigestValue by using the ShareCoffee.Commons.getFormDigest() method. Unfortunately the underlying hidden field isn’t available in Cloud-Hosted Apps or HTML/ASPX pages within SharePoint-Hosted Apps not using the MasterPage. With 0.0.11 you can also inject either a function for loading the FormDigestValue from SharePoint’s REST endpoint or load it by yourself and provide it to ShareCoffee.
AngularJS provides it’s own stringify method for converting JSON objects to string. The angular implementation takes care about proerties prefixed with the $ sign. This method will only be used if you’re app is using AngularJS
For GET requests no FormDigestValue is required, because of this I’ve removed the actual call to ShareCoffee.Commons.getFormDigest() from the RESTFactory which is responsible for building REST request property objects.
I’m glad to present the new ShareCoffee logo.
A big thank you to Oliver Jungmann for creating the awesome logo. A big thank you to Stefan Hübsch for providing his awesome new font Typocalypse Lichtspiele.
For me as a developer it’s always amazing to see people creating such logos in almost no time. Creativity is just awesome.
For all the SharePoint Conference attendees out there. Hopefully the ShareCoffee stickers will be shipped before #SPC so come and visit my #SPC417 session and grab some of these cool stickers.
Today I’ve published the next AddOn for ShareCoffee. ShareCoffee.UserProfiles. It’s providing a dedicated wrapper for SharePoint’s UserProfiles API.
By using the new AddOn you can easily configure REST requests for dealing with SharePoint’s UserProfile REST API from both, SharePoint Hosted and Cloud-Hosted Apps.
You can install the AddOn (which will automatically pull ShareCoffee as a dependency) by using
Not all UserProfile methods are currently available as REST endpoint. Currently SharePoint is offering the following methods which can of course be used with ShareCoffee
Here is a short sample how to use ShareCoffee’s UserProfiles AddOn from within an AngularJS App written in CoffeeScript
If you’re looking for sample Apps using ShareCoffee and all of it’s AddOns (Search / UserProfiles) you should check out the updated Samples repository on the github repository.
If you’ll be visiting #SPC14 come to my session #SPC417 and see some ShareCoffee Action :)
Throughout this post I’ll give you a rough introduction into SASS as part of my branding SharePoint sites with yeoman series. See all other posts from this series here
SASS (Syntactically Awesome StyleSheets) is a language which compiles into CSS and allows you to write your styles in a comfortable and use all the cool things which CSS is missing like variables, mixins or nested rules.
SASS comes with two different flavours.
SCSS is the most popular dialect from SASS. It’s based on CSS3 and adds some custom keywords and syntactic elements to the latest CSS standard. Because it’s based on CSS3 syntax it’s really easy to learn and you should definitely prefer SCSS syntax over SASS syntax in these days.
SASS syntax on the other side was the first implementation and is a little bit older. SASS syntax is also referenced as indention syntax on many websites.
No matter which flavour you choose, sass compiler can automatically generate the opposite syntax for you with no effort.
As CoffeeScript saves your time writing client-side code, SASS saves your time when writing stylesheets. So let’s dive into SASS instead of messing time with the theory.
Before you can start writing SASS on your development box you’ve to install Ruby on your system. There are thousands of tutorials available online which are describing how to install Ruby in the best way. – At this point I’d like to advice you using RVM (Ruby Version Manager) which allows you to easily switch between different ruby versions on your system.
After you’ve installed Ruby on your system you can finally install the SASS compiler on your system using Ruby’s Package manager gem
Variables reduce code duplication through your stylesheets and they make it easy to create easily customisable designs for your website. Consider the following scss file.
When compiling the file using
sass variables.scss variables.css
you’ll reveive the following stylesheet. Make some changes to the variables by your own and execute the SASS compiler to see the effect.
Mixins are awesome. By using mixins you can define a set of styles at some point and reuse it through your entire stylesheet. Take for example a CSS3 rotation which has been created and tested for most popular browsers. Instead of rewriting all the different styles again and again you can include them in SASS and save many keystrokes and a lot of time.
Again, when compiled with the sass executable you’ll receive the following CSS.
As last component from SASS I’d like to demonstrate what nested rules are and which benefits you’ll get when betting on SASS instead of CSS.
Nested rules are pretty easy but powerful components. Nested rules are adopting the schema DOM elements are following. Consider you’re writing a CSS or a SASS file which is responsible for styling an article. When writing plain CSS you would write some CSS like the following
Nested rules are optimising exactly this CSS selector definition. Depending on the indention and the parent classes the CSS selectors will be generated from the SASS compiler.
As you can see, SASS offers great features to reduce the amount of code to write and to reduce the complexity of your stylesheets.
SASS is an important part for branding SharePoint sites using our yeoman generators because we heavily use SASS throughout the branding solutions in order to use latest and greatest web technologies. Of course there are some competitors in this area available. Personally I also like stylus very much. No matter which abstraction language you use, because of the compile-time-check you should consider using one of them.
A while ago I started a series about how to brand SharePoint sites using the Yeoman web development workflow. With this small introduction to CoffeeScript I’d like to continue the series.
CoffeeScript is a small language that compiles into JavaScript. The initial release of CoffeeScript has been published back in 2009. Since then the language has become more and more popular. The CoffeeScript source code is hosted on github.com and there is a really good website (coffescript.org) which teaches you all the things you’ve to know about the language.
For most SharePoint developers out there languages such as CoffeeScript are a little bit strange, which is – in my opinion – caused by Microsoft’s developer marketing who did their best to bring Windows developers to the web – but this is a different and sad story (think about ASP.NET WebForms Designer and UpdatePanel..).
So, first the question is why!
Instead of writing more and more text I’m going to show you some CoffeeScript Code, which should give you a lot of reasons why to learn CoffeeScript.
As you can see in this very easy snippet, you can save a lot of keystrokes because CoffeeScript pays attention to the indentions you’re using within your code. This makes thinks like brackets and semicolons unnecessary.
Based on the Ruby syntax you can use cool comparison expressions in CoffeeScript
Iterating over collections or arrays is really easy and you will save tons of code compared to vanilla JavaScript.
Define Classes and use inheritance in the easy way. Don’t care about prototype inheritance when writing your code. CoffeeScript handles this behind the scenes.
See also the fat arrow (=>) which is responsible for ensuring that context within the function is the one you’ve defined at programming time. So you can finally forget all these var that = this statements
When programming CSOM with CoffeeScript code becomes more readable and easier to maintain combined to vanilla JavaScript
As you can see CoffeeScript is awesome. Give yourself 30 minutes and checkout coffeescript.org and start writing client-side-code the robust way. In addition to all these benefits it’s fun to write CoffeeScript because you can use cool syntactic features from Ruby which will save a lot of time in your daily business.
Now it’s official! The end of the InfoPath era is here. Today Microsoft published an official statement about the future of InfoPath and InfoPath Services.
In bottom line the story is short J There will be no upcoming release of InfoPath or InfoPath Services. Because many customers were using InfoPath to generate heavy customized forms in SharePoint Microsoft will keep on supporting InfoPath until 2023.
For me as a developer these are awesome news. Can’t count how many times I was forced to build something using crappy InfoPath instead of writing a clean and nice web-app which is able to render on any device. I’ve also been involved in many difficult projects where customers spent many months or perhaps years customizing Forms using InfoPath before they’ve decided to involve developers into their projects in order to make the suggested scenarios work as expected.
This is of course my personal opinion. I know many other customers who are building Forms with respect to the technology and with awareness of their disadvantages.
If you’re interested in the entire official statement check this post over here
In 2014 we’re celebrating the 5th ShareCamp in Munich. (23rd – 25th of May 2014)
Don’t panic, the registration isn’t opened yet. But you should check out our new website at born2share.com and get latest information about the event.
I’m really glad to say that we’ll again be able to host the ShareCamp for 200 attendees! And it’s all for free!!!
One weekend full of SharePoint. SharePoint by Day and SharePints by night!
See you in Munic
Today I’ve published a new yeoman generator which allows you to easily create new ShareCoffee AddOns. (view on github)
If you haven’t heard of yeoman, you should definitely check out it’s website at yeoman.io. By using such a yeoman generator you can start building web-apps or – in this case – ShareCoffee AddOns in no time. And the best advantage is: All these frameworks and tools are based on NodeJS and can be used from any platform running NodeJS. (Also a low budget Chromebook is able to run NodeJS :D #awesome)
When you’ve installed the yeoman tools as described on the yeoman website you install my new generator using
npm install generator-sharecoffee-addon –g
Right now your system is configured for writing ShareCoffee AddOns. Creating a new AddOn is straight forward as described in the following Shell Script
The yeoman generator will ask you a few questions about your new AddOn and generate all the required files and directories for you. After generating everything it automatically invokes npm install which pulls all dependencies from the web an installs them (isolated to the project directory)
If create a quick video which should demonstrate how this could look like on a Mac.