Changing Default Views

Sergei Sergeev’s post about changing default views helped a bit here

However I found that when doing the same on publishing pages things become slightly trickier.

I have looked at 3 different things that we could do to the ListViewWebPart:

  • Delete
  • Add
  • Update

The basic steps

First for all of these operations we need to:

  • get the web  part manager,
  • checkout the page and
  • run with elevated permissions
  • Allow Unsafe Updates

So the framework for our three functions is:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate
{

using (SPSite eSite = new SPSite(web.Url))
{

using (SPWeb eWeb = eSite.OpenWeb())
{

eWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

SPFile page = eWeb.GetFile(“Pages/default.aspx”);

if (page != null)
{

try
{

page.CheckOut();
SPLimitedWebPartManager WebPartManagerUpdate = page.GetLimitedWebPartManager(PersonalizationScope.Shared);

// Do all the important stuff

page.CheckIn(“Done something to the page”);

page.Publish(“Done something to the page”);

}

catch

{

//Report Error

}

}

}

}

});
;

 

Note that the Checkout happens before I get the LimitedWebPartManager. Initially I did this the other way around. However this resulted in getting errors when you check the page back in. The system will complain that the page is already checked out by someone else. It looks like the GetLimitedWebPartManager call does an auto checkout when the page isn’t checked out.

So now that we have the framework for our 3 functions in place I’ll look at the specifics:

 

Delete a Web Part

XsltListViewWebPart docWebpart = null;
foreach (System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart aWebpart in WebPartManagerUpdate.WebParts)
{



if (aWebpart.Title == WebPartTitle)
{

docWebpart = aWebpart as XsltListViewWebPart;

}

}


// Delete it
if (docWebpart != null)
{

// remove the Xslt web part
WebPartManagerUpdate.DeleteWebPart(docWebpart);

}

Update a Web Part

 

I have a list view web part on my page which currently shows document and I want to show only emails:
var emailListViewWebPart = (XsltListViewWebPart)WebPartManagerUpdate.WebParts.Cast().FirstOrDefault(w => w.Title.Equals("MyEmails"));
var eDocLib = eWeb.Lists.TryGetList("Documents");
var view = eDocLib.Views.Cast().FirstOrDefault(w => w.ID.ToString("B").Equals(emailListViewWebPart.ViewGuid, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
view.ViewFields.Add("EmailFrom");
view.ViewFields.Add("EmailCc");
view.ViewFields.Add("EmailTo");
view.Query = "";
view.Update();
WebPartManagerUpdate.SaveChanges(emailListViewWebPart);

 

 Add a Web Part

 

Now I’m adding a new Xslt Web part to page and setting the view.

XsltListViewWebPart newDocWebpart = new XsltListViewWebPart
{

Title = “All My Documents”,
ListName = docLib.ID.ToString(“B”).ToUpper(),
ListId = docLib.ID,
Visible = true

};
WebPartManagerUpdate.AddWebPart(newDocWebpart, “TopLeftRow”, 0);
WebPartManagerUpdate.SaveChanges(newDocWebpart);
var allDocView = docLib.Views[“All Documents”];
newDocWebpart.ViewGuid = allDocView.ID.ToString(“B”).ToUpper();
WebPartManagerUpdate.SaveChanges(newDocWebpart);

Bonus bits

So what if I want to replace my web part or add and update. Do I just merge the code in this article?

No that isn’t going to work. I found that I had the check in my changes to the page. Then re-get the web part before I could find the updates.

So it is best to build the above three functions rather than doing multiple operations on the same web part.

By Pieter Veenstra

Business Applications and Office Apps & Services Microsoft MVP working as a Microsoft Productivity Principal Consultant at HybrIT Services. You can contact me using contact@veenstra.me.uk.

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