Cale Hoopes

Ouray 2012 Veterans Program Review

2012-01-17T11:36:00.001-08:00

Check out the IMG blog for a quick review of my trip to Ouray on their veterans program:

http://www.mountainguides.com/wordpress/2012/01/17/ouray/five-days-in-ouray-its-more-than-just-a-climb/

Sheldon’s Hands…

2011-12-22T18:25:00.001-08:00

Folks, for those of us who are climbers, ice climbers or mountaineers… keeping ourselves warm is very important.

Today’s blog post is from a friend of mine: Sheldon Kerr (a ski & mountaineering guide). She has a great article about keeping everything warm in the cold – this is for everyone! Even snowboarders….

Anyhow, the article is up on Verticulture – check it out!

http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2011/12/keeping-your-cool-in-the-cold/

Ouray Ice Climbing–> From Seattle

2011-12-21T10:42:00.001-08:00

Although Washington State Ice is ok, Ouray is fantastic – IMHO. I’ve never been to Hyalite, but I plan to hit that festival next year to check it out – everything I’ve heard has been really excellent. Today I thought I’d do a quick overview of how to go to Ouray to get some great ice climbing in – and my experiences.

I’ve attended multiple programs through International Mountain Guides. The director of the Ice Climbing program at Ouray for them is George Dunn. George’s credentials stand for themselves: current record holder for most summits of Mt. Rainier. Enough said there.

However, his on the ground staff is fantastic. Both years that I attended programs, I climbed and was instructed by Mark Allen. He’s a great friend and has put up some fantastic experiences of his own. In 2010, he put up a first ascent route on Mt. Bradley in the Alaska Range. The route is called “Vitalogy” and turned into an epic ascent – Read about it here: http://huntingtonsouthface.blogspot.com/. This year, he and his partner Graham Zimmerman completed a first ascent on Voyager Peak. Where’s Voyager Peak, you say??? Well, it was an unclimbed peak in the Alaska Range during their Lacuna expedition. Read more about this one here: http://lacunaexpedition.blogspot.com/. Anyhoo, as I get more into alpinism, Graham and Mark are inspirations. To find out more about Mark: http://alpinelines.blogspot.com/. If you hook up with him, tell him I sent you.

How the heck do I get there?

Well, I’ve tried two different methods to get there: Fly to Montrose or fly to Grand Junction. I haven’t tried to drive directly to Ouray from Seattle. Google tells me its 20 hours… but you pass through multiple areas that involve mountain travel so that could be considerably longer.

2010 Travel

This trip, I went to Ouray on a whim and I paid through the nose. I took 5 flights total and still rented a car – an expensive and useful/useless endeavor. United Airlines to Salt Lake, then fly to Grand Junction after a 4-hour layover (which put me there at 10 pm), and then drive by SUV 90 miles south down 550 to Ouray. Arrived at 12:30 am-ish. The only part about this was having a rental car – it was nice to do some shopping on the way down. The return was similar – after climbing I drove north on 550 back to Grand Junction, stayed overnight in a hotel, flew to Denver, then to Spokane, then back to Seattle. This trip ended up being very expensive and a ton of logistics.

2011 Travel

My wife and I travelled smarter – and it’s going to be my recommendation. Fly from Seattle to Denver, short layover and then commuter flight to Montrose. From Montrose, take a shuttle – this ends up MUCH CHEAPER than the rental car. Shuttle is $40 each way on Telluride Express. The vans are clean and comfortable and the drivers are great! For information, contact http://www.tellurideexpress.com. As a warning, their site doesn’t really mention Ouray, but if you give them a call, they will set you up. They will do pickups/dropoffs to anywhere in Ouray as well – so it’s a great idea.

Ice Park Membership

It’s a good idea that when you go to Ouray, you pick up an Ice Park Membership. This can be found at: http://ourayicepark.com/store/categories.php?category=Membership – Additionally you can buy one in town at Ouray Mountain Sports (http://ouraysports.com/). The membership gives so many in-town discounts to restaurants, shopping and LODGING. The lodging one is great – there are a multitude of hotels with 20% off or more per night! Just do it.

Lodging

The first two visits to Ouray I spent at the Ouray Chalet Inn (http://ouraychaletinn.com/). This is a great budget hotel that’s not very far from the park. With prices like $55 per night with the ice park discount, that’s a great deal. This isn’t the RITZ, but it does the job and it’s on the main street. This year, I’ll likely stay in a condo.

More?

I plan on writing up more information on restaurants, shops and the climbing in and outside the park.

Resources?

Here’s a list of links to get you started:

Denali, Ouray, Training and Gear

2011-12-20T10:15:00.001-08:00

Well, Richard let me know this week that Oregon Mountain Community had a great deal on 2010 Outdoor Research Alti-Mitts… Therefore, $138 is a lot cheaper than $199. So, mittens are now taken care of for June 2012’s Denali climb. I’ll be blogging about prep all through the season… and posting gear.

I have other gear options I’m interested in – including the MSR XGK EX stove, and potentially an efficient pot for the stove… I have lots of other purchases that will probably occur before Denali. I’m going to get some 40-Below Overboots, work on my glove systems a little more, some merino wool to prevent stinky base layer, a solar charger for electronic devices, etc. As I gather purchases, I’ll post here – and then hopefully review after the fact.

Current Training – Ouray, then Denali

For training, I’ve been taking the A-Team class at Vertical World. The full training is way beyond my fitness level – like Crossfit for Climbing (not in the way the program is laid out, for the amount of pain you experience). Anyhow, so far, the class has been fantastic. I went in barely able to climb VB-V0 bouldering routes and now I’m up to V3 – and I went in just barely able to TR 5.9 and now I think I could probably top out around 5.10c (although still at the 5.10a level consistently).

The A-Team program is this:

Cardio (or ART) which is generally traversing for extended periods 3 times per workout with rests and/or Top Roping up/down climbing for 20 minutes continuously.
Bouldering practice – 16 routes at a stable level (V1 the entire time), 16 routes increasing decreasing – therefore you climb like V0, V1, V2, V3, V3, V2, V1, V0 – 2-5 minute rests between.
Power Endurance – Rambos (TR Up hard route, down easier route, Up hard route, lower x4), 4x4’s – Boulder problem, 4 times in a row – take break, complete 4 rounds of this, NINE BY NINES – This is TORTURE, 4 boulder problems over nine minutes without coming off between – complete boulder problem at 0 min, rest on the wall, another at 3 min, rest on wall, another at 6 min, rest on wall, another at 9 minutes, come off – rest for 9 minutes, do a total of 4 rounds of this.

All of this is in prep for Ice Climbing in Ouray. I’ll be attending the festival and then sticking around for International Mountain Guides Veteran’s program. I’m looking to maybe get on some multi-pitch routes, learn how to lead and how to climb steeper ice (WI4-5). Hopefully, I won’t be burned out by then.

Denali Training

I’m officially starting my Denali training on January 16th. I have a program from Climbing: Training for Peak Performance. There’s a good training program in there in regards to high altitude – that’s my goal. I’ve been to 19,347 ft. But that was at the equator in Ecuador. So, not only do I need some skills practice for Denali but I’m hoping to get my cardio to accept the altitude better. I’ll likely mix this with Ginkgo Biloba.

High Mountain Expedition: Four Months Prep...

Mountain Expedition: Four Months The lack of oxygen turns the big peaks—Denali, Aconcagua, the eight-thousanders—into a struggle against time. Most climbers have a very limited window of opportunity when logistics, weather, and health all come together for a summit bid. Although the climbing usually isn’t very technical, it is always physically demanding and often very exposed. Obviously, aerobic and muscular endurance are essential for high-altitude climbing. But you also want big, strong muscles when you head in, partly because physical strength is useful up there and partly because your muscles may wither. For this type of climbing, you must be prepared to work hard day after day when the weather is good. Since summit snow slopes seem to last forever, it takes mental stamina to tough them out. Those long, sweaty hours of training will reward you at the top—even more so when you make it down in one piece.

ST = Strength training: 1-1.5 hours of resistance exercises in the gym.

FH = Finger hangs: 10-15 minutes of focused training.

CE = Climb endurance: 1-4 hours on long, easy routes, preferably outdoors; this could be termed “active rest.”

CS = Climb strength: 1-1.5 hours of power endurance or power.

AB = Aerobic base: cross-play in Zone 2 (about 70 percent-80 percent MHR).

LT = Endurance or Lactate Threshold intervals/fartleks: Either 4-5 intervals of 8- to 15-minute bouts at moderate intensity followed by 5 minutes of cool down, or 5-6 intervals of 2- to 8-minute bouts at high intensity followed by 4-6 minutes of cool-down.

S/L = Sprint or Lactate Tolerance intervals /fartleks: Either 5-20 intervals of 10- to 30-second full-intensity bursts followed by 3-5 minutes of complete rest, or 5-10 intervals of 1- to 3-minute bouts at near maximum intensity followed by 1 minute of cool-down.

That’s it… more later as I continue my quest for improving my climbing!

Iron Foundry - Cloud Foundry for .NET

2011-12-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Hey all!

I’ve been working on this open source project, Iron Foundry! Cloud Foundry is a open Platform-as-a-Service. Iron Foundry adds extensions to support .NET. This is a great system to allow publishing of web applications into the cloud (public or private). With this, you can create an application utilizing various technologies including Java, .NET, node.js, etc.

Developers can run their own instances of Iron Foundry in-house or with any service provider who supports it, finally giving them a truly open, interoperable .NET PaaS solution that can be run inside and outside the firewall. And because you can run your own instances of Iron Foundry, it’s easy to leverage it for a full dev, test/ QA, and staging environment before pushing to production. Operations teams now have the freedom to choose among a variety of service providers providing the same PaaS used in their development environments, enabling them to pick the one that meets their specific needs in areas such as security, compliance, availability, location, etc.

Build your app
Specify your URL and some configuration
Deploy to the Cloud
Browse to it

Anyhow, it’s a great system for developing web apps in the cloud. Check out more information at:
http://ironfoundry.org

Also, there’s a really great write up on the Visual Studio extensions that I helped build:

http://seroter.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/first-look-deploying-net-web-apps-to-cloud-foundry-via-iron-foundry/

Want more information or try it out? You can feel free to mail me.

Using SharePoint 2007 "RootFolder" query string parameter to navigate to a folder - Gotcha!

2008-10-27T09:53:00.001-07:00

I had a project which wanted to use a SharePoint document library in order to store documents for a Dynamics CRM 4.0 entity. The solution we came up with was to point to the AllItems.aspx, strip the chrome of the page and show the Document Library webpart with toolbar in an IFrame. Sound crazy? Maybe so.

All was good. It shows the library, you can interact with the parts and we stripped chrome using CSS. However, we wanted to go to a SUBFOLDER in the document library. While we could point to the SUBFOLDER, interacting with any of the toolbar buttons acted on the root of the library - NOT THE FOLDER!

The more we looked into it, we discovered that:

The FolderCTID and View is NOT required in the URL to get to a subfolder correctly.
The RootFolder query string parameter is required.
The RootFolder query string parameter MUST BE ESCAPED (%2f for slashes, %2d for dashes, etc.)
The RootFolder query string parameter Url is relative from the root of the site.
The RootFolder query string parameter (and this is the IMPORTANT point) is CASE SENSITIVE ON HOW YOU CREATED THE Sites and Folders!

An Example link to a document library AllItems page would look like this:

http://sharepoint/sites/TheSites/TheDocumentLibrary/Forms/AllItems.aspx

If there was a folder called "WhooHaw":

http://sharepoint/sites/TheSites/TheDocumentLibrary/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fTheSites%2fTheDocumentLibrary%2fWhooHaw

But you can't do this:

http://sharepoint/sites/TheSites/TheDocumentLibrary/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fthesites%2fthedocumentlibrary%2fwhoohaw

But you can't do this:

http://sharepoint/sites/TheSites/TheDocumentLibrary/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fTHESITES%2fTHEDOCUMENTLIBRARY%2fWHOOHAW

So, if you're going to put a document library in an IFRAME, make sure you create your RootFolder query string parameter correctly, or you'll find yourself unhappy with actions in the web part.

Game Design Portfolio

2008-07-02T15:09:00.001-07:00

Hey all! I'm slowly creeping toward graduating from the University of Advancing Technology with a Bachelor's Degree in Game Design. It's been a great degree program and I've learned a ton. Therefore, please check out my Game Design Portfolio at http://www.calehoopes.net

The portfolio took a whole lot of time to complete and includes information on game design projects, mod projects and other artifacts I've worked on.

Here's some images directly from the portfolio about various games including Lunar Conflict, Allele, Project:Inveteratus, Mazama Township, The Epsicor, Neighborhood War and others. Enjoy!

MakeCab.exe and SharePoint 2007 WSP Size

2008-07-02T14:57:00.001-07:00

So, it's been forever since I wrote a blog but I've been furiously working with SharePoint as of late. First off, I've been working on an end-to-end provisioning system that allows creation and deployment of variations including content. I'll probably blog on some of that in the future. It takes a long time but some of the problem solving has been fairly cool.

However, on another note, I'm starting to add extra images to a Feature that I'm building for a client. When I added those images, MakeCab.exe started splitting my files into two "Disks". This seemed like an easy thing to fix. However, the documentation has MANY different variables that you can set in MakeCab.exe and it's not very obvious what setting will prevent splitting across disks.

You should know that the default disk size is 1.44MB which means as soon as you add a file that puts you over the top, you then end up splitting across disks. Since my SharePoint WSP's have started getting fairly large, that's a big problem.

The Important Variable is: MaxDiskSize
which should be set to 0 (Zero).

This means, ignore all of the other variables such as MaxFileCount, MaxCabinetSize, etc.

Therefore, if you have the potential for large WSP files, use this file header in your DDF (or your script/program which generates your DDF).

;
.OPTION EXPLICIT
.set DiskDirectoryTemplate=CDROM
.set CompressionType=MSZIP
.set UniqueFiles="ON"
.set Cabinet="ON"
.set DiskDirectory1=
.set CabinetNameTemplate=${wsp.name}.wsp
.set MaxDiskSize=0

Special thanks to Thomas Wyrick who's working with me on my current project. He helped me out with this issue which saved tons of time. I need to take full credit for this because I typed it into my project and made it work (kidding of course...)

MOSS User Profile Import - Why can't I find Distribution Lists? Why is my AD Import failing?

2007-11-14T16:13:00.001-08:00

Today, working on a proof of concept, a coworker of mine was trying to add a distribution list to an audience. This doesn't sound like rocket science but every time he tried to add a list he knew was in our domain.... NO DICE. Nothing would be found.

So, every post I could find on the issue said "DO AN IMPORT".

Here's some posts that we considered:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1839430&SiteID=1

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/12/01/getting-started-with-personalization-in-moss-2007.aspx

http://rehmangul.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/personalization-in-moss-2007/

All of these links had some good suggestions - all of them suggesting somewhere that a full import was needed to make sure that distribution lists were imported.

We went to ran a full import and we got ERRORS! This is where we discovered something very interesting. In our company our active directory settings are managed like so:

FQDN: int.company.com

AD DOMAIN NAME: COMPANY

Most companies would normally just have a situation like this:

FQDN: company.com

AD DOMAIN NAME: COMPANY

When the SSP for SharePoint was set up, an Import connection for the User Profile was automatically created. However, in our case, the domain it set up was called "INT" instead of "COMPANY". SHAREPOINT PARSES THE FQDN AND USES THE FIRST PART UP TO THE FIRST DOT. LOL.

Therefore, every time we tried to do a User Import from AD, we got ourselves an error that "No domain existed for that name".

The Fix

To fix the problem, simply recreate the Import Connection. This is REALLY SIMPLE.
To get to the Connections: Shared Services -> User Profile and Properties -> View Import Connections.
Create a new connection
For the name, use the actual domain name "COMPANY" instead of "INT" <or whatever your first part of your FQDN is> and use Auto Fill Root Search Base to pull the search base LDAP query string out.
Return to Manage Connections
Delete the other Connection
Return to User Profile and Properties
Start Full Import
View the log. There should be entries in there for PEOPLE_IMPORT and PEOPLE_DL_IMPORT.

Once you've done this.... Audiences should allow you to add any Distribution Lists and have the latest information from active directory. In large organizations, be careful. You might want to limit your query much more. One of the links above has information about reducing your crawl of AD.

Happy DL'ing.

Configuring MOSS as a Search Appliance with Keywords and Best Bets against a non-MOSS source

2007-11-07T14:48:00.001-08:00

I have been working on a client project that involves replacing a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Search solution with MOSS. One of the great things we sold to the client including the ability to do tuning on the searches using Keywords, Synonyms and Best Bets. However, when I started to look into this, it wasn't readily apparent how to accomplish this. I was concerned at a time that once we'd sold this functionality, I'd have to build a synonym engine and best bets because there is no configuration at the SSP level for Keywords & Best Bets.

As I looked around the net, no one seemed to have the answer either. I pinged some experts and they said "let me know when you find out". One expert showed how to configure keywords programmatically however it pointed at a site collection. This got me thinking and led me to the solution. If this was obvious to you, then this post is not for you.

To set up MOSS as a search appliance against your existing web site (in this case, a MCMS 2002 web site), you'll need to go through and set up your SSP and a source.

Set up Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
Set up a Shared Service Provider site within MOSS. Make sure that all of the search technologies are turned on.
Create a content source. In the content source, fill in the address to start from for the search of non-MOSS content.
Create a scope so that you can specify just your desired content in the Web Service Search Query. Call it something like "MyScope" which I'll use for my example.
Finally, you'll need to go back to Central Admin and create a site collection. THE SITE COLLECTION YOU CREATE IS WHERE YOU WILL CONFIGURE KEYWORDS/BEST BETS and will also be the URL USED FOR THE WEB REFERENCE OF THE WEB SERVICES.
Go your new site collection -> site settings. Let's say that location is actually http://mymosssite:80.
Under "Site Collection Administration", go to scopes and make sure your scope shows up. If it doesn't you didn't configure it for "Shared" or under your specific site collection.
Under "Site Collection Administration", you can now configure keywords, synonyms and best bets under "Search Keywords"

To test all of this, you can use the "SharePoint Query Web Service Test Tool". This tool can be found here. This is an example of the tool below:

So, for our scenario here's the configuration of the tool to test out if its working:

Click the MOSS button in the tool
Click the SQL button right after
Configure the URL. This URL will be the URL of the SITE COLLECTION you set up with keywords and best bets --- NOT THE SSP location. This is very important because keywords and best bets are bound to the site collection and not the SSP. An example URL based on above will be http://mymosssite:80/_vti_bin/search.asmx.
Make sure "Include Relevance Results" and "Include Special Terms Results" are chosen.
Then you can test it out (assuming you've created keywords, synonyms and best bets) by writing an Enterprise Search SQL Query. Here's an example for a phrase like "windows vista":
select path from scope() where "scope"='MyScope' and FREETEXT('windows vista')
Once you have the Query entered in the Query Text text box, you'll need to generate the request XML. Click "Build Request XML". You should see the XML created.
Finally, click the "QueryEx" button. It should generate a table of results. To see your best bets, change the result type to "SpecialTermResults"

If you get back what you expected, you've gotten far! Now you'll obviously want to configure this as a part of your site... i.e., use the search web service. For this part, I'm going to point you at the SDK because it has all the code snippets you need.

In addition, Patrick Tisseghem has a wonderful chapter on using the Search Web Service in his book Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 by Microsoft Press.

Good luck with your search endeavors! Thanks to Stefan Goßner who gave me some good ideas on this whether he knows it or not.

Great Tools for SharePoint Development

2007-10-25T10:21:00.001-07:00

The community has really been active for quite awhile putting together some great tools to help us all out. Here's some of my absolute favorite tools to use for SharePoint Development.

SP Deploy

SPDeploy is a great tool for SharePoint development by my co-worker Clint Simon. He has been working on it for quite awhile and it's near perfect. It's a very simple system that allows you to do development of SharePoint solution packages from a remote machine.

From Clint's site:
SPDeploy is a tool that allows developers to create SharePoint customizations inside Visual Studio, then package and deploy those changes to a remote SharePoint server. With SPDeploy you can create a project that contains SharePoint customizations and deploy those customizations to a remote SharePoint server in 10 minutes or less. SPDeploy consists of an MSBuild extension and a Visual Studio Project template.

I've been using SPDeploy on projects and it has really improved my productivity. It automatically reads the tree of files in Visual Studio and builds my wsp package. Additionally, I know he's working on expanding the tool even more than he already has.

The latest version is available here:
http://www.spsimon.com/2007/09/introducing-spdeploy.html

SharePoint Developer Explorer

For all of us who are unhappy with some of the downfalls of SharePoint Designer 2007, SharePoint Developer Explorer can really add value. This project is a Visual Studio 2005 add-in which will expose the SharePoint tree as seen from SharePoint Designer. It allows check-ins, check-outs and publishing from right within Visual Studio. This means you get a well-formatted syntax colored environment to edit ASPX page layouts, master pages, CSS files and XSLT files. Additionally, you can get at the declarative CAML behind content types which will help if you need the CAML to create your solution packages.

A few of us here at Ascentium have already interacted with this and I know it's in use on one project! We are grateful for Vincent Rothwell for his great addition to the community.

The latest information is available here:
http://blog.thekid.me.uk/archive/2007/10/15/sharepoint-developer-explorer-visual-studio-add-in.aspx

Search Query Web Service Test Tool

If you've had to interact with the Search Web Services, you know how tough it can be when you have queries go awry. How about testing out those queries in advance?

The Search Query Web Service Test Tool is an invaluable way to test out whether or not your web service queries should return data. You also get the XML to view. It will run any of the four functions from the web service.

The latest information is available here:
http://www.mosssearch.com/searchwebservice.html

Andrew Connell's WCM STSADM Commands

Commands include:

PublishAllItems

GenSiteColumnsXml

GenContentTypesXml

I'm sure if you've done MOSS publishing, you've been frustrated by creating tons of items and just wanting everything published for that latest demo. Well, there's a way to do it! STSADM -o PublishAllItems! Andrew Connell has added a couple of great commands to STSADM and they add great value. He supplies not only the executables but the source code too.

The latest information is available here:
http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2007/10/29/My-MOSS-WCM-STSADM-custom-commands-have-been-updated.aspx

YACAMLQT

So, CAML queries aren't so easy when they get more complicated than "bring back my one thing based on my one parameter". However, you know SQL really well. You can even think how to write a WHERE clause to get at all the items you need. But putting together that complex CAML clause can be a royal pain. Well, Carlos Sanz to the rescue! YACAMLQT - Yet Another CAML Query Tool is a great tool that converts your WHERE clause into CAML markup, C# or even CAML.NET. This tool is invaluable when you have to do 10 nested OR clauses!

The latest information is available here:
http://www.ideseg.com/SharePointYetAnotherCAMLQueryTool2.aspx

Stramit SharePoint 2007 CAML Viewer

For anyone trying to interact with Caml and SharePoint, there is no end of helpful tools out there. The Stramit SharePoint 2007 CAML Viewer is one of those great tools that will allow you to test queries. Additionally, you can see queries in a tree format and view the results as XML. One of the greatest values of this tool, however, is the ability to get at list definitions, site column definitions and the schema XML. This tool can be used remotely as it uses the web services to get access to a SharePoint server. NOTE however that you have to have the URL to the specific site to look at items under that site (no hierarchy from the top level down.) Enjoy!

The latest information is available here:
http://www.codeplex.com/SPCamlViewer

Exposing a Connected Property on the Data View Web Part (DFWP) to pass in CAML Queries

2007-10-25T10:08:00.003-07:00

The Data Form Web Part (called Data View in SharePoint Designer) is a very versatile web part. While offering an XSLT transform for layout purposes, there are various features such as sorting, filtering and paging. However, when it comes to content management, all of the configuration is in the page layout which requires interaction with SharePoint Designer. This makes it difficult for a content editor to configure things such as filtering from the browser.

You have a few options here:

You can filter the web part by hand in the page layout (undesirable).
You can build a custom web part (won't work if the project has to be out-of-the-box.
You can add a CAML parameter to the Data View and allow the content editor to configure it!

Overview

Here's the concept. We're going to set up a Data Form Web Part within a page layout. We're going to point that at a specific list. We're going to add a parameter to the Data Form Web Part for use with connections and filtering. We're going to make two edits to the XML definition of the web part. Then we'll configure a Text Filter web part to allow the user to type in CAML. Finally we'll connect the two web parts up and watch the filtering work.

First Steps - SharePoint Designer

Let's open up SharePoint Designer and point it to our Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. We will open up an existing page layout or new page layout. The first activity we will need to do is to create a web part zone. After that, click on the zone and go up to the Data View menu and click "Insert Data View..."

Then, in the right pane, under the "Data Source Library" tab, you'll see possible data sources. In this case, I'm going to choose a list I made. Since we are using CAML, this trick only really will work with SharePoint Lists and SharePoint Libraries. My list is called "My Custom List". After choosing my list, I will insert a multiple-row list INSIDE my web part zone. This is important as I will need the ability to create the connection between the filter and the web part.

Once this is created, you'll want to open the "Common Data View Tasks" menu. This menu allows you to do filtering, grouping and paging. We're concerned most with simply adding Parameters.

In the Data View Parameters window, we need to create a "New Parameter." The name of this parameter is important. This parameter name will be used in making a connection between the filter and the data view. Additionally, it will be used within the XML in order to tailor the data source as we'll see momentarily. Make sure you choose "Control" as the source. You will ultimately be passing in the filter, but you don't want it tied to Query String or anything else.

Once we've added a new parameter, we can go back to "Source" view and see how SharePoint Designer has exposed our Parameter. In the image below, you can see that a new parameter was added to the node. Additionally, you can see that a parameter has been added to the stylesheet. Use the stylesheet parameter for debugging. You can expose the filter value to the web page by using an node.

Now, we need to add a "DataFormParameter" to the SelectParameters of the DataSources section of the SPDataSource. Yes, it sounds much more complicated than it is. Simply add a node configured as below.

Now that we have a "DataFormParameter", we can set up a new value for our select command within our SPDataSource. The original value below is simply <View></View>.

All we have to do to pass in our CAML is to replace the with {CAML}. Once we've done this and saved it, we'll be done in designer. Save your Page Layout. It's time to go into the browser and create a page.

How it works

Basically what you're doing is adding a parameter to the web part. Therefore any connections will set that parameter. Then when you set up the you are mapping the web part parameter to something that can be available in the select command. The key here is the "ParameterKey" in the <WebPartPages:DataFormParameter> node. The key needs to map DIRECTLY to your ParameterBinding Name. If the key and the name don't match, the mapping will fail. Finally, the {CAML} that is used in the select command is simply shorthand for any of the using the name attribute. This allows the select command to receive any text connected through the CAML parameter.

Creating your filtered page

First, I'm going to use a Text Filter Web Part. This web part can only be found in MOSS and requires the Enterprise Site Collection features.

Create a page from your page layout. Once in edit mode, you'll want to "Add a Web Part" to your zone with the data form web part you configured. The web part you add is in the "Filters" group and is the Text Filter web part.

Once its configured it should look something like this:

You now need to configure your filter. Before you can enter text for your filter, you will need to give it a title. Once you've given it a title, then you will be allowed to enter text for the filter value.

Once you have given it a title, you will be able to make connections. Click the "Edit" on the Data Form Web Part. THIS IS IMPORTANT, you want to make the connection from the DFWP the Filter. Therefore, you will click Connections -> Get Parameters From -> Filter: Filter (note, this name "Filter" is the name you used for your filter web part).

When you get the Provider/Consumer screen up, you'll want to pick CAML in the consumer and choose Finish. NOTE: If you don't see CAML here, your Data Form Web Part is not configured correctly.

We are going to create some CAML in order to only show 3 items. These items we'll filter by using the ID column on the list. I have taken a screen shot of the CAML with formatting. However, in order for this to work, you'll need to remove the formatting. Here's the CAML we will use:

Once the page is checked in, you'll see the filter and the list. As soon as you enter your CAML text into the filter text box and click away, the page should refresh and your filtering should work.

Things of Note

I used a Text Filter Web Part here. There are some drawbacks with the text filter. First, I don't believe you can hide the web part without an export/import. If you're using filters as configuration for content editors, you won't want to show the values or anything to the common visitor. Therefore, you'll want to hide it.

You might want to create a picker to look up values from a list to do precise filtering. I did this for a client and had great success with filtering using this method. This gives you the ability to filter down to individual items in an almost relational way.

Finally, here is a great link about dealing with Multiple OR and AND conditions in CAML. This article on the PluggedOut Development blog helped immensely on this.

Let me know if you have any questions!