Check if Rich TextField is Empty

Last week I had some problems to do a check wether a Rich Text Box is filled in or not. 
When doing a check on the Text propertie of the TextField, 
I found out that Sharepoint puts default something in the TextField. 

Like it or not, but it's really frustrating that you can't use the JQuery test .isEmpty().
So after some testing, I found out that Sharepoint puts a Paragraph tag in the TextField. 
So here under you can found out how I did the check wether a Rich TextField is filled in or not. 
 

if( ($(ctl00_m_g_6e043a15_d2d5_4e91_a8c6_562e51fe3b46_ff121_ctl00_ctl00_TextField_inplacerte).text() == "") || ($(ctl00_m_g_6e043a15_d2d5_4e91_a8c6_562e51fe3b46_ff121_ctl00_ctl00_TextField_inplacerte).html() == "
?
") )
    {
        alert('Please fill in the Rich Text box field !');
        return false;
    }
 
 

Update or Insert Sharepoint ListItems in a List Library

Looking for a way to update a Sharepoint ListItem by using the Lists.asmx webservice...
For doing this you need to create your function to create your Xml Layout
and afterwards call the function below UpdateSPList.
 

 XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
 XmlElement elBatch = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Batch");
 elBatch.SetAttribute("OnError", "Continue");
 // this because if one of the methods gives an error it will continue with the next method
 elBatch.SetAttribute("ViewName", Sharepoint_ViewId);
 elBatch.InnerXml = strBatch;
 
 returncode = UpdateSPList( sSiteUrl,  sSiteList,  elBatch);

 
strBatch containing for example:

        
<Method ID='0' Cmd='Update'>
    <Field Name='ID'> SharepointListItem.ows_ID </Field>
</Method>
<Method ID='1' Cmd='Update'>
    <Field Name='ID'>OtherSharepointListItem.ows_ID </Field>
</Method>
<Method ID='0' Cmd='New'>
            <Field Name='ID'>New</Field>
            <Field Name='Title'>YOUR TEXT HERE</Field>
</Method>
<Method ID='1' Cmd='New'>
            <Field Name='ID'>New</Field>
            <Field Name='Title'>YOUR TEXT HERE</Field>

 

Remark: The next Chars must be translated in the text values for your Fieldtag:
    "&" ==> "&"
    "<" ==> "<"
    ">" ==> ">"
    "\"" ==> """
    "'" ==> "'"

Below you find my Function that I have created that actualy does 
the update or insert into your List.
It requires three parameters : 
- the Site Url you are working on
- the List name on which you want to add or update one or more items
- the XML that contains the Batch Element

You will see that the function also uses the next global parameters
- sTechnicalUser
- sTechnicalPw
- sDomain
- bDefaultLogon (if true you will connect to the webservice with the 
user that is executing the program, otherwise use the technical user with it's
password and domain.  
This is done for giving the possibility to let shedule the program. 

         
 private Boolean UpdateSPList(string sSiteUrl, string sSiteList, XmlElement elBatch)
        {
            Boolean retcode = true;

            REFERANCENAME.Lists list = new REFERANCENAME.Lists();
            list.Url = sSiteUrl + "/_vti_bin/lists.asmx";
            if (bDefaultLogon)
                list.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
            else
            {
                list.PreAuthenticate = true;
                list.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential(sTechnicalUser, sTechnicalPw, sDomain);
            }
            logThis("Start updateSPList " + sSiteUrl + " " + sSiteList + " ...");
            try
            {
                XmlNode ndReturn = list.UpdateListItems(sSiteList, elBatch);
                logThis(sSpaces + "return " + ndReturn.OuterXml);
                // Instantiate a new XML document object to hold the return value(s)
                XmlDocument xmlResult = new XmlDocument();
                xmlResult.LoadXml(ndReturn.OuterXml);
                // SharePoint XML always uses a fixed namespace; you'll need your own NamespaceManager object to parse the return values
                XmlNamespaceManager nsMgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(xmlResult.NameTable);
                nsMgr.AddNamespace("sp", ndReturn.NamespaceURI);
                XmlNode ndRoot = xmlResult.SelectSingleNode("sp:Results", nsMgr);
                // Find the ErrorCode node, which exists for all operations regardless of status.
                XmlNodeList nlResults = ndRoot.SelectNodes("//sp:Result/sp:ErrorCode", nsMgr);
                // Loop through the node collection and find each ErrorCode entry
                foreach (XmlNode ndResult in nlResults)
                {
                    // Check the value of the node to determine its status
                    if (ndResult.InnerText != "0x00000000")
                    {
                        XmlNode ndError = ndResult.NextSibling;
                        string sError = ndError.InnerText;
                        // Set the value of string variable to hold the error code
                        this.logThis("Update operation failed for " + sSiteList + ": " + sError + ".");
                        // If you want to trip the Try…Catch, throw and exception of whatever type suits you
                        iFailedUpdatedRecords++;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        iUpdatedRecords++;
                    }
                }
           }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                logThis(sSpaces + "Error UpdateSPList ", e);
                retcode = false;
            }
            finally
            {
                list.Dispose(); // important!!!! always dispose your sharepoint objects !!!!!
                logThis("End updateSPList " + sSiteUrl + " " + sSiteList);
            }
            return retcode;
        }
 

Block Excape and Ctrl+z keypress to prevent the undo action by keyboard

One of the disadvantages of using Jscript of JQuery is when a user uses 
the Escape or CTRL+z on his keyboard that 
your actions, like filling in input fields, in your scripting are being undone.

So best option in this case is to prevent that thoose events are being executed.
This you can do by capturing the keypresses of the Escape key and the CTRL+z key combination.
The script below will execute on the document Keydown event. 

 function DisableEscAndCtrlZ(){
  document.onkeydown = function(evt) {
   evt = evt || window.event;
   // ctrl+z
   if (evt.ctrlKey && evt.keyCode == 90) {
    return false;  
   }
   // esc
   if (evt.keyCode == 27) {
    return false;  
   }
  };
 }

 $(document).ready( function() {
  DisableEscAndCtrlZ();
 };
 

View SharePoint Attachments in Display Pages

When creating a Custom Page of the Type Display, Sharepoint does not include
the attachments in your page.

To display attachments that dissapear in a custom display form,
simply add a new row in the custom display form 
and add the following line within that row in the code view.

<SharePoint:AttachmentsField ControlMode="Display" FieldName="Attachments" runat="server" Visible="true"/>
 

Enyoi your attachments in your Display ASPX pages ;-)

Custom Cancel button, Go Back to the web-page you came from ...

Nice to have against the Close or Save button is a beautifull Cancel button. 
A request of a customer this week was to have a link on there intranet 
to a sharepoint custom new page, but without the Sharepoint header and menu. 

So people could add items in a list, but nothing else more. 

On the page the Sharepoint Close/Cancel button returns automatically back to 
the Sharepoint List. But what the customer wanted was that the requester 
returned back to the page where they came from or, 
if the page was openend in a new window, to close the window.

To do this, replace the Sharepoint Close/Cancel button with our own custum buttom.
add a little script in a content Editor webpart to execute the return function (goback).

<input type="button" value="Cancel" name="CancelButton" class="ms-ButtonHeightWidth" onclick="goback();" />

// in content editor webpart:
function goback() {
    // Jumps back
            //history.back();
            if (history.length >0)
            {
                        history.back();
            }
            else
            {
                        window.close();
            }
}

 

Customizing the Search Results Page (XSLT) – Add highlighting

Thanks to Tobias Zimmergren I found out how to add Word Highlighting your Search Result Page.

 
Customizing the Search result page xslt by adding Highlighting

What you have to do is to adapt the XSL code in the XSLT Editor of the Core Search Result 
webpart and locate the the following section (It already exist):

<xsl:template name="Hithightlighting">
 

And since this template exists from the beginning, all you really have to do is to customize 
the style attribute and add a color property of the <b> tag 
(I replaced it with a <strong> tag instead, for sake of standards)

Then you can simply specify the styles for each highlighted word like following:

 <xsl:template match="c0">
 <strong style="color:blue;"><xsl:value-of select="."/></strong>
 </xsl:template>
 

It’s simple as that. I hope this helped some of you to get started 
on some basic Search Core Results XSLT customizations. 


For customizing the result itself you can take also a look 
at the blog of customize the search result using Sharepoint Designer.

Full screen width SharePoint Rich Text Editor

It can be frustrating in SharePoint when the "Rich Text Editor" on the edit page 
of Wiki's, Blogs, Edit pages is set to fixed column width by default Sharepoint.  

We get frequently the question to enlarge the width of the editor. This because
it's easier to fill in text in a fullscreen-width editor!
 
Here's the CSS to make it happen (warning, this syntax applies to ALL rich text editors!). 

The first does all normal forms and wikis:

<style> 
#onetIDListForm, #onetIDListForm .ms-formbody, #onetIDListForm iframe[title="Rich Text Editor"]{
 width:100% !important;
}
</style> 
 

And this does the same for Blogs!

<style> 
.ms-formbody span span div iframe, .ms-formbody span span table.ms-long{
 width:100%; text-align:left;
}

</style>
 

You just to need to put the code in a Content Editor Webpart on your page.

I hope that your customers enyoi the full width Rich Text Editors like ours...