SharePoint Web Parts Development Guide

I built my SharePoint Web Parts development environment. I will get into why I am building this in a future post, but for now, you should just follow along and stop asking questions =)

Prerequisites
There are a couple tools you need to get Visual Studio .NET 2003 setup. The first is to get a copy of the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly and copy it to your development PC. You can find the DLL on your SharePoint server located, by default, in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\ISAPI. Put it in a location you will not forget but can easily recognize its importance. I chose C:\Development\SharePoint\WebParts for mine. The second tool you will need is really not a tool, but if you want an idea about what you are developing with, get the less-than-robust SharePoint Products and Technologies 2003 Software Development Kit that Microsoft provides. Hey, some documentation is always better than none! Finally, download the Web Part Templates for Visual Studio .NET. This will get VS.NET ready with some nice templates to see some code in action.

Ready for Action
When you open VS.NET you can select File > New > Project. You will see a new option for Web Part Library. If you installation of the Web Part Templates went well your new project will load.


Otherwise, you might see an error saying that the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll could not be found and that you should reinstall the templates. In fact, I received that error. I chose to ignore and just added the dll to the project’s references.

Stay tuned for my next post...