SharePoint and REST presentations
Over the course of 2011 and 2012, I've been giving a few related talks around a specialized way of customizing SharePoint - via building custom REST service interfaces, and connecting to them using client-side JavaScript technologies.
There are two main topics involved, building the custom service itself, and using Knockout as the client side data binding library to achieve mastery of these techniques over SharePoint 2010.
Custom REST Services and jQuery AJAX
It is incredibly easy with the community kit for SharePoint (CKS) to build and deploy custom service interfaces to your SharePoint environment. When you realized how easy it is to build this, you tend to re-evaluate and consider whether you should stop making webparts.
These series of developer talks dives into:
- building a service from scratch
- how to package it
- how to consume the service via jQuery AJAX
- how to debug both server side service, or the client-side javascript
- how to watch network traffic via network profiling
- and some ideas and best practices from experience in the field
SPSCBR - REST Service and jQuery AJAX
SSPUG - REST Service and jQuery AJAX
SharePoint Saturday Melbourne 2011 update
SharePoint Saturday Perth 2012
Custom REST, SOAP and Data services on SharePoint 2013
Downloads
SharePoint - here is a REST service Project Item template
Knockout JS
Knockout is a JavaScript library that solves the problem of (MVVM) data binding on the client side. It's a magical library that takes away the complexity of tracking how to update your client side DOM from messages received from the server.
If you understand why jQuery is cool, discovering Knockout will blow you away.
These series of developer talks dives into:
- introducing Knockout
- complex databinding patterns
- linking up with SharePoint 2010 REST service
- using REST service to perform full CRUD - that's right, SharePoint's REST service interface is two way!
- linking in client side JavaScript drag and drop
- implement auto refresh
- notes and ideas from beyond the frontier
Creating Knockout User Experiences in SharePoint with JavaScript and REST services
Retrospective: Creating Knockout User Experiences-in-SharePoint with JavaScript and REST services
Knockout binding formatters for date and currency
