BizTalk Map - Copy Node containing HTML

I recently had to map data from an InfoPath 2007 form to a canonical schema. The input from InfoPath usually contained HTML, although on occasion it contained encoded HTML (depending on where the original data was pulled from). The output needed to be in a CDATA section so that it could be treated as plain old text.

After consulting several people at work and looking at lots of blog posts, I was able to pull off a solution. I'm sure there are ways to improve the quality of the code, but it does work. One thing I don't like about this solution is that it adds a namespace attribute to the top level HTML nodes. Fortunately every browser I tested with ignores the namespace.

Here's the source schema:


And here's the contents of the Inline XSLT functoid that I used:

<xsl:element name="ns0:FreeformData1" >
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;![CDATA[</xsl:text>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="count(/*[local-name()='myFields']/*[local-name()='FreeData1']/child::*/child::node()) &gt; 0">
<xsl:for-each select = "/*[local-name()='myFields']/*[local-name()='FreeData1']/child::node()">
<xsl:copy-of select="self::*" />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="string(/*[local-name()='myFields']/*[local-name()='FreeData1'])" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">]]&gt;</xsl:text>
</xsl:element>

If the input XML looks like this:

<ns0:myFields xmlns:ns0="http://sampleforblog.namespace.com">
<ns0:field1>Test data</ns0:field1>
<ns0:FreeData1><html><FONT color="#ff0000">Hello</FONT> world this <STRONG>is a test</STRONG></html></ns0:FreeData1>
</ns0:myFields>


Then the output XML looks like this:

<ns0:yourFields xmlns:ns0="http://sample2forblog">
<ns0:field>Test data</ns0:field>
<ns0:FreeformData1><![CDATA[<html xmlns:ns0="http://sampleforblog.namespace.com"><FONT color="#ff0000">Hello</FONT> world this <STRONG>is a test</STRONG></html>]]></ns0:FreeformData1>
</ns0:yourFields>

I'm not showing the case where the HTML is encoded, but I did test that as well. Encoded HTML is handled by the "otherwise" case in the XSLT above.

SharePoint - Counting Social Tags

I found some code on the web for counting social tags, but unfortunately it failed when the page was a "welcome" page. The code below handles that special case. I used a Web Service Reference to the SocialDataService web service, although I probably could have created a (WCF) Service Reference instead.

The method IsWelcomePage() is detailed in my previous post. The method TrimPageFromUrl() is fairly simple, it just changes a URL such as http://spsite/pages/default.aspx to http://spsite/.

private void CountTagsByTermNameAndUrl()
{
    using (SocDataSvc.SocialDataService socialDataService = new SocDataSvc.SocialDataService())
    {
        socialDataService.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;
        socialDataService.Url = GetUrlWithUpdatedDomain(socialDataService.Url, m_siteUrl);
        SocDataSvc.SocialTermDetail termDetail;
        try
        {
            termDetail = socialDataService.GetTagTermsOnUrl(m_siteUrl, null)
                .Where(detail => detail.Term.Name == m_termName).SingleOrDefault();
            if (termDetail == null && IsWelcomePage(m_siteUrl))
            {   // this could be the default page, remove the last part of the Url and try again
                m_siteUrl = TrimPageFromUrl(m_siteUrl);
                termDetail = socialDataService.GetTagTermsOnUrl(m_siteUrl, null)
                    .Where(detail => detail.Term.Name == m_termName).SingleOrDefault();
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            // handle exception
        }

        // make sure we got at least one result
        m_tagCount = (termDetail != null && termDetail.Term.Name == m_termName) ? termDetail.Count : 0;
    }
}

Getting the Welcome Page for a SharePoint Publishing Site

I wish I had found this sooner, it could have saved me a lot of time:

private static bool IsWelcomePage(string url)
{
    bool rslt = false;

    using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))
    {
        using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
        {
            if (PublishingWeb.IsPublishingWeb(web))
            {
                PublishingWeb pweb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(web);
                string defaulturl = pweb.DefaultPage.Url;

                if (defaulturl == new Uri(url).GetComponents(UriComponents.Path, UriFormat.SafeUnescaped))
                {
                    rslt = true;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return rslt;
}

Properties for SharePoint 2010 Visual Web Parts

I seem to spend a lot of time looking up where to set various properties in Visual Web Part projects, so I'm recording what I have learned recently. Here's how to set the Category that the web part will appear in when adding it to a page:
<Property Name="Group" Value="Acme" />
This property is in the Elements.xml file for the web part. In this case, the Category will be Acme.

Here's a picture of some things that affect the appearance of this feature in SharePoint under Manage Features. Title and description should be fairly obvious. The interesting thing about this feature is that it has a dependency on another feature called Social Ribbon. I found the GUID by looking in the TEMPLATE\FEATURES folder in the 14 hive. In my case, I opened the Feature.xml file in the SocialRibbonControl folder and copied the Feature Id value.


I also wanted show an image in the feature gallery next to the feature. First, I right clicked my project name in VS Solution Explorer and selected Add / SharePoint "Images" mapped folder. I created a sub-folder directly in the Images folder and copied my image there. Finally, I edited the Feature1.Template.xml file and added the following attribute to the Feature element: ImageUrl="Neudesic\Neudesic.jpg".

Finally, here are some properties that I added to the .webpart file: to affect the display of the web part in the web part gallery and to set a couple of properties that take effect when the web part displays on a page:
<property name="Title" type="string">Acme Web Part</property>
<property name="Description" type="string">Displays stuff, along with doing other stuff"</property>
<property name="ChromeType" type="chrometype">None</property>
<property name="Width" type="unit">200</property>

Error Handling Code for Web Part

I keep needing to write the same error handling code for Web Parts, HTML pages, etc. The only difference is in how I display the error. This is something I wrote for a client who told me that he wanted the web part to look ugly if an exception is thrown. Well, this does just that! The label with ID lblError is invisible until DisplayException gets called.

private void DisplayException(Exception ex)
{
   using (StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter())
   {
       using (HtmlTextWriter htmlTextWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(stringWriter))
       {

           // show exception message
           HtmlWriteLine("Exception", ex.Message, htmlTextWriter);
           HtmlWriteLine("Method", ex.TargetSite, htmlTextWriter);
           HtmlWriteLineReplaceNewLines("Stack Trace", ex.StackTrace, htmlTextWriter);

           Exception exInner = ex.InnerException;
           int innerExceptionNum = 1;
           while (exInner != null)
           {
               htmlTextWriter.WriteBreak();
               htmlTextWriter.Write("-----");
               htmlTextWriter.WriteBreak();

               HtmlWriteLine(String.Format("Inner Exception {0}", innerExceptionNum), exInner.Message, htmlTextWriter);
               HtmlWriteLine("Method", exInner.TargetSite, htmlTextWriter);
               HtmlWriteLineReplaceNewLines("Stack Trace", exInner.StackTrace, htmlTextWriter);

               exInner = exInner.InnerException;
               innerExceptionNum++;

               htmlTextWriter.WriteBreak();
           }
           lblError.Text = stringWriter.ToString();
           lblError.Visible = true;
       }
   }
}

private void HtmlWriteLineReplaceNewLines(string label, string text, HtmlTextWriter htmlTextWriter)
{
   htmlTextWriter.Write(String.Format("{0}=", label));
   string[] textArray = text.Split(new string[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None);
   foreach (string s in textArray)
   {
       htmlTextWriter.Write(s);
       htmlTextWriter.WriteBreak();
   }
}

private static void HtmlWriteLine(string label, Object value, HtmlTextWriter htmlTextWriter)
{
   htmlTextWriter.Write(String.Format("{0}=\"{1}\"", label, value));
   htmlTextWriter.WriteBreak();
}

Schema referenced by Map...has been deleted

While trying to troubleshoot an automated installer for the BizTalk ACME.Notifications application, my client was seeing this error:

Schema referenced by Map 'ACME.Notifications.Insertion.BizTalk.Transforms.Notification_to_InsertionRequest' has been deleted. The local, cached version of the BizTalk Server group configuration is out of date. You must refresh the BizTalk Server group configuration before making further changes.

We saw it in the log of the automated installation, and then when we tried to use the BizTalk Administration Console to view the application, we also saw the error. The error also prevented us from removing DLLs from the ACME.Notifications application.

The map named in the error is the only schema where I actually changed the name of one of the schemas in the map. I think that the map reference got broken when we installed the new schema DLL which no longer had the old map name, and at that point BizTalk choked – in a way that was unrecoverable.

We tried running the auto installer again, but that did not resolve the issue. We also tried installing this hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2516201, which references the same error message, but that did not resolve the issue, even after re-deploying.

In order to fix this, we had to go into the database BizTalkMgmtDb and delete the relevant map from the table bt_MapSpec. Since this table does not list the names of the maps, I found the relevant schema by looking that the field “outspec_docspec_name”, which had the old name of the schema. Then I used the BizTalk Management Console to delete all of the DLLs, followed by redeploying, and everything started working again.

In order to prevent this from being a possible issue in the future, we rewrote the installer so that it deletes the DLLs from BizTalk before trying to add in the latest versions.

Beware of .CS Files

I just had the joy of debugging a thorny issue in BizTalk 2010. I spent quite a while wondering why a property schema I had changed was not showing up in the Admin Console with the changes. I even went to the trouble to delete everything from the GAC using gacutil (the BizTalk Assembly Viewer isn't supported on my 64 bit operating system). Still the schema was unchanged.

It finally occurred to me to look at the .CS file corresponding to the problem XSD file. The .CS file had not changed at all, and the attribute on it was read-only. Deleting it from the file system just caused me to get other errors when I compiled.

Then I looked in TFS, and I realized that a co-worker had added the .CS file there. When I deleted the .CS file from TFS, the issue was resolved. Now the schema changes show up in the Admin Console.