Setting up Azure Service Bus for debugging SharePoint 2013 Workflows

If you follow the instructions on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officeapps/archive/2013/03/21/update-to-debugging-sharepoint-2013-remote-events-using-visual-studio-2012.aspx to set up an Azure Service Bus to debug your SharePoint 2013 you need to take careful note of this starting paragraph.

Update 9/19/2014: Please note Microsoft Azure Service Bus now supports two types of connection strings: SAS and ACS. For remote event debugging via Azure Service Bus, only ACS connection string is currently supported as shown below. Follow the instructions in Service Bus Authentication and Authorization to get an ACS connection string for any new Service Bus namespace created after August 2014.

I skim read, so I missed it, twice.  And then spent a lot of time digging through why my brand new Azure Service Bus (SAS) doesn't work with SharePoint 2013's debugging.

To redeem myself and me ranting at other people (for my own fault of ... not-reading).  I present the following:

The newbie picture guide on how to set up Azure Service Bus for Office 365

Go here: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/

Scroll down and install the command line tools.  I went with the Windows PowerShell option on the left.

The download will run the Web Platform Installer, which then lets you install MS Azure PowerShell

Installed, it is here.

Run two PowerShell commands.

• Add-AzureAccount will open a browser window, allowing you to sign in with your Office 365 account and download a policy file
• New-AzureSBNamespace -name <name> -location '<region>' -CreateACSNamespace $true

The Service Bus can be managed via the web interface - they just can't be created.

It appears as type "Mixed"

Set Up VS.NET

This will now give you an old style ACS connection string that you can use in VS.NET's project properties.

And here is VS.NET happily debugging Office 365 workflow again.

For completeness: this is the Wrong Way, if you use the Azure Portal

Looks different.

ACS Connection String looks like this:

• Endpoint=sb://debug-jl.servicebus.windows.net/;SharedSecretIssuer=owner;SharedSecretValue=<code>=

SAS Connection String looks like this:

• Endpoint=sb://debug-bad.servicebus.windows.net/;SharedAccessKeyName=RootManageSharedAccessKey;SharedAccessKey=<code>=

The SAS Connection String does not currently work with VS.NET

Summary

• Download Azure PowerShell (or Azure CLI via npm) - they are two different things, don't mix them.
• Run two PowerShell commands to create the old Azure Service Bus (with ACS)
• Thank Greg Hurlman ‏@justcallme98 and ☞ Scott Hoag ☜ ‏@ciphertxt for reaching out and assisting me with my bad Azure skills.
• Apologies to people that had to read my uneducated rant.  I retract all of it.

Small Powershell Adventures -NotIn and Arrays

PowerShell v3 has a new syntax I quite liked:

$badIDs = "73574929","73573581","73575402","73576325","73575586","73575377","73574920"

for($i = 0; $i -lt $rows.length; $i++) {

    $row = $rows[$i];
    #echo $row
    $imageID = $row.ImageID
    if ($imageID -ne "none" -and $imageID -NotIn $badIDs ) {
        # don't do stuff
    }
}

Trouble is, this isn't available natively in PowerShell v2 (which is still quite common if you work on SP2010, Windows Server 2008R2).

Fortunately, we can just use Array.IndexOf static method to replace this.

if ($imageID -ne "none" -and [Array]::IndexOf($badIDs, $imageID) -eq -1 ) {
    # don't do stuff
}

KO binding for two SharePoint rich text editor controls

For a while now, I've been experimenting with a simple HTML editor for my forms.  Something to work with JavaScript databinding, in my particular case, KnockoutJS.

Why not TinyMCE and CKEditor?

But both libraries wants me to embed a bunch of additional 10-20 files.  I'm trying to build an App, which means packaging my assets.  I'm not going to package 20 files. 

Additionally, both TinyMCE nor CKEditor has official support for KnockoutJS binding anyway.  You end up on StackOverflow using someone's binding code.

An idea strikes!

Why not just use SharePoint's Rich Text Editor controls?  As long as you can create an ASPX page, you can use these controls that are out of the box.  As long as I don't postback, it doesn't matter what's the value inside of the controls.

SharePoint InputFormTextBox

<sharepoint:InputFormTextBox title="Title" class="ms-input" data-bind="spInputFormTextBox: CommentText1" ID="CommentTextBox1" Runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="40" Rows="5" RichText="True" RichTextMode="Compatible"/>

Knockout Two-Way Binding:

ko.bindingHandlers.spInputFormTextBox = {
    init: function (element, valueAccessor, allBindingsAccessor, context) {
        var modelValue = valueAccessor();
        var value = ko.utils.unwrapObservable(valueAccessor());

        var baseElementID = $(element).attr("id");
        $(element).val(value);
        RTE_TransferTextAreaContentsToIFrame(baseElementID);

        //handle edits made in the editor
        var doc = RTE_GetEditorDocument(baseElementID);
        if (doc == null) return;

        var $editor = $(doc.body);

        $editor.on('blur', function (e) {

            RTE_TransferIFrameContentsToTextArea(baseElementID);

            var $elemSave = $("#" + baseElementID + "_spSave");
            if ($elemSave.length) {
                modelValue($elemSave.val());
            }
            else {
                modelValue($(element).html());
            }
        });
    },
    update: function (element, valueAccessor, allBindingsAccessor, context) {
        //handle programmatic updates to the observable
        var value = ko.utils.unwrapObservable(valueAccessor());

        var baseElementID = $(element).attr("id");
        $(element).val(value);
        RTE_TransferTextAreaContentsToIFrame(baseElementID);
    }
};

Thoughts:

• SharePoint:InputFormTextBox is a nice little control you can drop in anywhere.  It's been around for a long time too, since SharePoint 2007. 
• RichTextMode="Compatible" mode creates a smaller rich text control with a tiny toolbar. 
• Biggest problem, is this control is IE-only.  Does not render nicely on other browsers.
• The KnockoutJS data-bind syntax is very clean and can be used directly on the control.
• Explanation: the Javascript focuses on borrowing the RTE_Transfer* functions in SharePoint to copy the value to a hidden field, then grab the HTML from there back to the observable.  This borrows SharePoint's other javascript function to clean up the HTML and do a bunch of encode/decode things.

SharePoint RichTextField

<div data-bind="spRichTextField: CommentText1">
<sharepoint:RichTextField CssClass="ms-input" ID="CommentTextBox1" Runat="server" FieldName="CommentText1" ControlMode="New"/>
</div>

KnockoutJS Two-Way Binding:

ko.bindingHandlers.spRichTextField = {
    init: function (element, valueAccessor, allBindingsAccessor, context) {
        var modelValue = valueAccessor();
        var value = ko.utils.unwrapObservable(valueAccessor());

        var $inplacerte = $(element).find("div.ms-rtestate-field.ms-rtefield div[id$=TextField_inplacerte]");
        $inplacerte.html(value);

        //handle edits made in the editor
        $inplacerte.on('blur', function (e) {
            var RTEhtml = RTE.Canvas.getEditableRegionHtml($inplacerte[0], false);

            modelValue(RTEhtml);
        });
    },
    update: function (element, valueAccessor, allBindingsAccessor, context) {
        //handle programmatic updates to the observable
        var value = ko.utils.unwrapObservable(valueAccessor());

        var $inplacerte = $(element).find("div.ms-rtestate-field.ms-rtefield div[id$=TextField_inplacerte]");
        $inplacerte.html(value);
    }
};

Thoughts:

• The SharePoint Rich Text Field works on every browser, and it shows a nice Ribbon for interacting with rich text.
• To use this, you do need to tie it to a Field on the current list item (which would be the page), this is quite annoying to set up.
• I use data-bind to pull the value out and work with it via Javascript - so I don't actually bother with saving back to the list item via the UI.
• You can't add the data-bind attribute to the RichTextField control.  It will complain about not knowing what the attribute is.  I work around this by wrapping the binding syntax outside of the ASP.NET control and use jQuery to look for the DOM elements within.
• Explanation: This borrow SharePoint's RTE.Canvas javascript class to update and retrieve HTML from the Content-Editable DIV.  Again, SharePoint's Javascript does a bunch of encoding/decoding that makes the HTML nice to read at the end.

TypeScript presentation (take 2) at SPSMEL

Earlier today I delivered possibly my best TypeScript session ever at SharePoint Saturday Melbourne.  The attendees were great, and I feel like I cracked jokes all the way through!

The secret, and this I think many attendees may not have realized, is that I started almost 10 minutes early.  So they went through 70 minutes of solid TypeScript wonderland with me.  I hope that extra time was good.

As I have actually done the rounds with TypeScript for a whole year.  I think this might be a good time to sunset this particular topic. 

Download Links

• TypeScript-SPS-melb2.pptx
• ts.demo.zip

The Future of TypeScript

TypeScript, now that it has reached version 1, will never disappear:

There are some really big projects within Microsoft that is using TypeScript.  There is no alternative for them to switch to.

• Dart - is not focused on building JavaScript.  Dart believes that JavaScript is broken fundamentally, and the only way to fix it is to introduce a new Virtual Machine.  Dart compiles down to JavaScript is almost a side-effect for adoption.  If Flash and Silverlight are bad for the web, what do you think people's reaction would be to Dart VM?
• Coffee Script is great, and solves a genuine problem with JavaScript - that the language is too loose, and gives you too many ways to hang yourself.  Coffee Script's syntax, being so close to Ruby, will ensure a smooth path for them to work on Ruby and Coffee Script. 
  In the same vain that I feel a Ruby Developer should never use TypeScript - they should use CoffeeScript; a C#/.NET/Java/C++/JS developer should never use Coffee Script - they should learn the TypeScript syntax that's closer to what they already know, plus TypeScript will greatly help them learn, understand and write better Javascript.
• ECMA Script v6 - is really the holy grail that will fix a lot of the odd JavaScript syntax (along with "option strict").  But ES6 does not include Type information.  What that means is that even with the eventual convergence of the Evergreen Browsers to ES6, TypeScript will still have a place as a superset to ES6.  The Type information is important for the tools to correctly check your code for you during design and compile time.

TypeScript sits in its own place.  It tries to give you "invisible railings" for your JavaScript. 

With TypeScript, you start with JavaScript, and you work within self imposed railings (which magically disappear when it's compiled back in JavaScript) so you get the benefit of a strong typed language to help you write code, but none of the performance penalties.

TypeScript enables teams to work together.  For projects that have hundreds of thousands of lines of JavaScript - there is no way back.

Remember: As your JavaScript codebase grow, it will become unmanageable and you will have code rot.  TypeScript is a great way to help you avoid that gruesome spaghetti situation. 

Nintex Workflow Inline Function to check if SPFile is locked

IsDocumentWritable

Nintex Workflow has a fairly useful function "IsDocumentWritable" that checks if the current item that the workflow is running on is writable.

There is a small problem, it only checks if the file is Checked Out (SPFile.CheckedOutType) and not if the file was locked, say by a Desktop Client Application.

Add Nintex Workflow Inline Function

We can add a simple Nintex Workflow inline function to get the behaviour we wanted:

I followed Vadim's excellent blog entry: http://www.vadimtabakman.com/nintex-workflow-developing-a-custom-inline-function.aspx

/*
* & 'C:\Program Files\Nintex\Nintex Workflow 2010\NWAdmin.exe' -o AddInlineFunction -functionalias "fn-IsFileLocked" -assembly "MY_DLL, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=9f7c41d4a6ea1fb3" -namespace "MYNamespace" -typename "MYInlineFunctions" -method "IsFileLocked" -description "Checks if file is locked." -usage "fn-IsFileLocked(itemPath)"
*/

public static bool IsFileLocked(string itemPath)
{
    bool result = false;
    try
    {
        SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(() =>
        {

            using (SPSite site = new SPSite(itemPath))
            {
                using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
                {
                    SPFile file = web.GetFile(itemPath);
                    if (!file.Exists)
                    {
                        return;
                    }

                    // true if checked out

                    result = file.LockType != SPFile.SPLockType.None;
                    return;
                }
            }
        });
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
    }
    return result;
}

You can call this method from within Nintex Workflow Designer.