Using LINQ in Sharepoint along side CAML

Using LINQ is a huge advantage when programming. It gives you great flexiblity with minimal code.
CAML is a fastest way to get your data from SharePoint, problem is that building a dynamic CAML query can be rather tedious, hard to read and error prone.

So the solution:

First you should get the Dynamic library from ScottGu's Blog.

Now to get your list items you can run your CAML to do as much as possible, ie return the list items sorted by modified date, filtered by Content Type and maybe bring back a specific number of items (though in this example I cannot specify the RowLimit on my SPQuery as I need the full list to further filter from).

Then if you have further parameters that you need to filter on, ie multiple drop down lists that a user may or may not select, then you can employee LINQ as below:

            
//Get your list collection ordered and filtered as much as you can using CAML   
SPListItemCollection listCollection = web.Lists[listName].GetItems(query);

//check that user is filtering by both industry and country
if (IndustryItem != null && countryItem != null)
{

listItems = listCollection.Cast<SPListItem>()
                                    .Where(p => (p.GetFormattedValue("Country").Contains(countryItem.Title) && p.GetFormattedValue("Industry").Contains(industryItem.Title)))
.Take(5);
}

Of course you would require a few more else if blocks depending on the number of options to filter on but as you can see alot easier to achieve it this way then using just CAML.

Custom Buttons for MOSS HTML Editor

It is recommended that you use the Telerik RadEditor Lite for MOSS which is free if you have a valid MOSS 2007 license, but if you end up using the MOSS HTML editor you can enrich it by adding custom buttons.

Below I will create a button that will uppercase all selected text:

We start by creating a JavaScript file RTEToUppercase.js in [..]\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033 folder.
If you are using WSP Builder in your project then you will just create the folder path above starting from the Template folder and add the JavaScript file their.

We need to add the first function into the RTEToUppercase.js as follows:

//RTE2_RegisterToolbarButton("ID of button", "IconUrl", "Toolbar Text", "Tooltip", "ClickCallback function name", "ResetStateCallback function name")

RTE2_RegisterToolbarButton("ToUpperCase",
"",
"UPPERCASE",
"Change selected text to uppercase",
ToUpperCaseButtonOnClick,
ToUpperCaseButtonOnResetState,
new Array());

//Then we need to create the ClickCallback function which does all the work when the button is clicked

function ToUpperCaseButtonOnClick(strBaseElementID, args){
var docEditor = RTE_GetEditorDocument(strBaseElementID);
if (docEditor == null) { return; }
//gets the selected html/text
var selectedRange = docEditor.selection.createRange();
//uppercase the selected text
var strUpperCased = selectedRange.htmlText.toUpperCase();
//paste it back to editor
selectedRange.pasteHTML(strUpperCased);
//restore selection
RTE_RestoreSelection(strBaseElementID);

return true;
}

//Finally we create the ResetStateCallback function to enable or disable the button depending on whether or not text has been selected

function ToUpperCaseButtonOnResetState(strBaseElementID, args){
var docEditor = RTE_GetEditorDocument(strBaseElementID);
if (docEditor == null) { return; }
//restore selection
RTE_RestoreSelection(strBaseElementID);
//check if we have selected text
if (docEditor.selection.createRange().text.length != 0){
RTE_TB_SetEnabledFromCondition(strBaseElementID, true, "ToUpperCase");
} else {
RTE_TB_SetEnabledFromCondition(strBaseElementID, true, "ToUpperCase"); }
return true;
}

Save the file

Then we need to edit the following file Site Actions -> Site Settings -> Modify All Site Settings -> Master pages and page layouts -> Editing Menu -> RTE2ToolbarExtension.xml

Add the foillowing to the XML file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<RTE2ToolbarExtensions>
<RTE2ToolbarExtraButton id="ToUpperCase" src="RTEToUppercase.js"/>
</RTE2ToolbarExtensions>

Publish and away you go.

But instead of editing manually the best way is to add a Feature that will deploy the RTE2ToolbarExtension.xml file.

Unfortunately you cannot use provisioning technique to deploy this file but you can use Feature recievers as shown in the following blog http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc843966.aspx under "Deploying Page Editing Toolbar Customizations" section.

Once you have installed and Activated your feature you should have your UPPERCASE button appear when you edit using the Rich HTML Editor as shown below.

JS library that makes IE5-6 render like IE7! No more IE6 hacks!

I was looking at another frustrating CSS cross browser issue where I wanted to change a style on the first list item using :first-child but of course IE6 did not support this. So I was looking at examples that set a class on the first item manually or by using jQuery but then happened apon the following:

Dean Edwards has created a JS library that makes IE5-6 render like IE7, so it fixes issues like png transparency, adds the ability to use :first-child and more.
He also has a different release which gives IE5-7 advanced CSS features missing from IE7 like :contains(), :nth-last-child() and more

His site
http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2008/01/ie7-2/

see demos here
http://ie7-js.googlecode.com/svn/test/index.html