Web Part Deployment

Question

Hey Everyone,

I know this may have been beat to death but I have been searching in circles trying to get a solid introduction to deploying web parts within MOSS 2007.

I have Visual Studio 2008 and a 2007 Sharepoint server. I am looking to develop some web parts and as per usual, was trying to start with the "hello world" type introduction. I am confident in learning how to actually program web parts, but when it comes to deploying them, there does not seem like there is a well documented "correct" way to go about things.

The best solution appears to package the web part with a feature and deploy by collecting the files into a .wsp file. It starts to get confusing when every little blog on the internet has their own way of structuring their project directories and xml documents to work, but no complete step by step guide from scratch. And if there is a walkthrough it seems to have been made by microsoft in 2003.

If anyone really has a stripped down, accepted means of deploying a web part and how to tackle it, even down to directory structure and why and where things go and what happens at each step, I would much appreciate it, as well as I am sure many others.

I appreciate everyone's help and apologize for my ranting.


Justin Rassier

Answer 1

I would package as a WSP using a tool, like WSPBuilder http://www.codeplex.com/wspbuilder .  This article has a end of end guide for creating and deploying a webpart using WSPBuilder http://rasor.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/wss-dev-quickstart/

Hope this helps

Dave

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My SharePoint Blog - http://www.davehunter.co.uk/blog

Answer 2

Hi Justin.

I can recommend you to take a look at the WSPBuilder extensions for Visual Studio.
It will add new templates so you can create a Hello World Web Part within seconds.

Play around with that and see which directory structures are being created, what xml files are being created, and you will soon learn how all things fit together.

Regards,
Magnus

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My blog: InsomniacGeek.com

Answer 3

Hi Justin,

There are several approaches to deploy webparts.

1) Using WSPBuilder

Refer following two link (specially first one)-

http://www.zimmergren.net/archive/2009/04/08/wspbuilder-walkthrough-of-the-visual-studio-add-in.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/evgenyblog/archive/2008/01/27/118966.aspx

2) Just build the WebPart as a Class Library project and deploy it.

http://avinashkt.blogspot.com/2007/06/developing-custom-web-part.html

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Regards, Avinash | avinashkt.blogspot.com

Answer 4

all response are correct, but when i read your post i have the felling you are litle confuse because having multiple ways to create a WSP solution, yes is true like Dave, Magnus and Avinash say, WSPbuilder is the most easy because you dont see what happen on Background like create the DDF, Manifest.XML and other files, that files are very important to understand what they do and why we need them.

WSPBuilder is a robust and easy way to create your WSP, 99% of all solution i made are correctly load to my WSP, but that 1% wspbuilder fail, why or some dll dont add on Solution, or the safecontrol is not correctly add on Manifest.xml or something like this, that why you need to understand step by step how to create your WSP, when that 1% happend you know what to do....

Here some link can help you understand

Development Tools and Techniques for Working with Code in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530302.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530301.aspx

Hope this help...

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André Lage Microsoft SharePoint, CRM and Sybase Consultant
Blog:http://aaclage.blogspot.com
Codeplex:http://spupload.codeplex.com/http://simplecamlsearch.codeplex.com/

Answer 5

Another option is the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 1.3

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=FB9D4B85-DA2A-432E-91FB-D505199C49F6&displaylang=en

But I agree with André, learning how to build a .wsp from scratch is good knowledge to have.

Paul.

Answer 6

Thank you for the help everyone. I appreciate it.