MSDN Magazine - July 2008 - (Page 44)

Figure 2 Feature.xml The LitwareBranding feature contains a Master Page template named LitwareBranding.master and an element manifest named elements.xml. Within the elements.xml manifest there is declarative XML provisioning logic to create an instance of this Master Page template. This logic is defined by a Module element with an inner File element: the Visual Studio approach can be far more appealing than using the SharePoint Designer because it allows you to check all your source files into a source code management system. You can also more easily move your work from a development farm to a staging farm for testing and then into production. This month’s column is accompanied by a sample Visual Studio project named LitwareBranding. Figure 1 shows the structure of the LitwareBranding project within Visual Studio. As you can see, the solution has been designed using three different features whose purpose and implementation will be explained throughout this month’s column. The central feature within this solution is named LitwareBranding, which has been designed to be activated by a user within the scope of a WSS or MOSS site collection. Activation of the LitwareBranding feature forces the LitwareBranding solution to apply all the branding techniques that will be covered in this month’s column. Let’s begin our code walkthrough by looking at the feature.xml file for the central feature named LitwareBranding, shown in Figure 2. The LitwareBranding feature has been defined with a Scope attribute value of Site, which means it is scoped to the site collection level. The idea is that a site collection owner should be able to activate a single feature to apply the Litware corporate branding to all the sites within the current site collection. Figure 3 BrandManager Class public class BrandManager { // read-only properties public static string SiteCollectionUrl public static string DefaultMasterPageUrl public static string CustomMasterPageUrl public static string CustomCssUrl public static string CustomSiteLogoUrl // utility branding methods public static void ConfigureMasterUrl(bool ApplyMasterUrl) {} public static void ConfigureCustomMasterUrl(bool ApplyCustomMasterUrl) {} public static void ConfigureAlternateCss(bool ApplyCustomCss) {} public static void ConfigureSiteLogo(bool ApplySiteLogo) {} public static void ConfigureApplicationPageMaster(bool ApplyApplicationPageMaster) {} } During feature activation, this Module element forces WSS to provision an instance of the Master Page template named LitwareBranding.master in the Master Page gallery of the top-level site. After this Master Page instance has been provisioned, it’s then possible to supply code that programs against the WSS object model to synchronize pages through the site collection to link to this Master Page, as I will show in the next section. The LitwareBranding project contains a class named BrandManager. This utility class encapsulates all the code that programs against the WSS object model to apply and remove various branding elements. There are static methods exposed by the BrandManager class that accomplish the following tasks: • Synchronizing site pages to link to LitwareBranding.master • Synchronizing pages to use an alternate CSS file • Synchronizing pages to use a custom graphic for the site logo • Adding support to swap out the Master Page for application pages instead Before drilling down into specific members, take a look at Figure 3, which shows all the members of the BrandManager class. This class contains several static properties that parse together URLs pointing to various resources such as Master Pages and a CSS file. For example, the SiteCollectionUrl property returns the Web application-relative path to the current site collection. The DefaultMasterPageUrl returns a Web application-relative path to the default master page named default.master in the Master Page gallery of the current site collection’s top-level site. This path is parsed together using the SiteCollectionUrl property together with the following site-relative path: _catalogs/masterpage/default.master Creating a Utility Class for Brand Management Introducing the LitwareBranding Solution The CustomMasterPageUrl property returns a Web app relative path to the Master Page instance named LitwareBranding.master in the Master Page gallery of the current site collection’s top-level site. This path is parsed together using the SiteCollectionUrl property together with the following site-relative path: _catalogs/masterpage/litwarebranding.master Now, let’s examine the ConfigureMasterUrl method, which enumerates through every site in the current site collection and updates each site’s MasterUrl property to point to either the custom Master Page or the default Master Page: public static void ConfigureMasterUrl(bool ApplyMasterUrl) { // determine MasterUrl property setting 44 msdn magazine

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - July 2008

MSDN Magazine - July 2008 Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Flex Your Data Data Points Advanced Basics Office Space Cutting Edge Data Services ADO.NET Data and WPF Transactions WCF P2P Test Run Security Briefs Foundations .NET Matters {End Bracket}

MSDN Magazine - July 2008

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