Developing Portals using ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts

1
Developing Portals using ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts

• Paul Turnerpaul.turner_at_kaz-group.com

2
Outline

• What is a Portal?
• What is a Web Part?
• Why do I want to use them?
• Containers and Controls
• Putting it together
• Sharepoint Portal Server 2003?
• Conclusion

3
What is a Portal?

• Lots of Content
• Usually content is Dynamic
• Similar or consistent look (formatting) to
  content
• Can be Personalized
• Change the look, rearrange content
• Based on Roles or Users

4
What is a Portal

• Examples
• http//ninemsn.com.au/
• http//www.news.com.au/
• http//www.cnn.com/
• http//www.gartner.com/

5
What is a Web Part?

• Hosted (not stand alone)
• Contains content
• Can contain other features
• Menus, Graphic areas
• Can have different Views
• Read, Edit, Tabular, Graphs
• Can be linked together
• Master/Detail

6
What is a Web Part?
7
Why do I want to use them?

• Consistency
• Reusability
• Modular

8
Containers and Controls

• Add a WebPartManager
• Add a WebPartZone
• This contains/hosts the Web Parts
• Many Web Parts can be inside a Zone
• You can have many Zones on a page
• Add some special zones
• Create the controls

9
Demo

• WebPartManager
• WebPartZone
• Modes

10
Special Zones

• Catalog Zone
• Allows you to add closed Web Parts
• Lists available Web Parts
• Allows you to add User Controls
• Via the DeclarativeCatalogPart
• Editor Zone
• Allows you to edit properties of Web Parts
• Connections Zone
• Allows you to create connected Web Parts

11
Demo

• Special zones

12
Create the Controls

• Easy way
• Create standard User Controls (.ascx)
• Drag them on the DeclarativeCatalogPart
• Or drag the controls onto a Zone
• Hard(er) way
• Derive a new class from the WebPart class
• Implement all the required methods
• Provides the maximum functionality

13
Demo

• Create the controls (easy way)

14
Sharepoint Portal Server 2003?

• Sharepoint Web Parts
• They are not ASP.NET 2.0 compatible
• They share a similar set of features but must be
  hosted within Sharepoint
• ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts
• They are not compatible with Sharepoint 2003
• If you need to work with both solutions
• Design modular code (use class libraries)
• Provide a façade for the different hosting
  environments

15
Conclusion

• New in ASP.NET 2.0
• Easy to implement
• Saves a lot of code (compared to ASP.NET 1.x)
• Flexible and reusable
• Personalisation features