Radio Button Custom Field Choice – Going from Vertical to Horizontal with Java Script

By Roi Kolbinger - SharePoint Consultant
KWizCom Professional Services – http://www.kwizcom.com/

Have you noticed that field choice only gives a vertical view?
But what if I want a horizontal view?
When you want to customize your view but don't know how it can be very frustrating but there is always a way, you just have to know how…

For example:
I want to use the field "Gender" with two choice options – male and female.
This is how such a field would normally look in MOSS:




But I don't want to waste so much screen space. It would be much better to have something like this:



With a little Java script it's not so hard to go from vertical to horizontal. Here's how you do it:
Simply add this code to the form (add it in the SPD to NewForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx for the list that includes the view you want to change):




That all – now we have our Male/Female options in the desired view layout!

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For more helpful tips and guidelines please visit: http://kwizcom.blogspot.com/
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Creating a field in a List and getting the error: "Index was outside the bounds of the array"

Today, while I was code reviewing a new release of our rating field type I got a weird error message...

We added a new feature that adds 2 read only fields with the total number of ratings and number of comments.

Code example for addnig new fields was simple:

if (!list.Fields.ContainsField(ratingField.FieldName_NumOfCommentsInternalName))
{
list.Fields.Add(ratingField.FieldName_NumOfCommentsDecodedName, SPFieldType.Number, false);
//Some more logic here
}

Pretty simple, only when this code runs this time (3rd unit testing sessions before release to customer review) suddenly I get the error message above "Index was outside the bounds of the array".

Well... I ran it in debug few time, scratching my head few times more, but nothing - same error every time!

OK, time for drilling into SharePoint code I guess...
The exception stack trace was as following:

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPStringUtility.EscapedCodeToLower(String str)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.FixFieldV3Attrs(XmlDocument xd, XmlElement xe, Guid& fid, String& name)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.TranslateFieldSchema(String schemaXml, Guid& fid, String& strDisp, String& strStaticNew)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.AddFieldAsXmlInternal(String schemaXml, Boolean addToDefaultView, SPAddFieldOptions op)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.AddFieldAsXml(String schemaXml, Boolean addToDefaultView, SPAddFieldOptions op)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.AddFieldAsXml(String strXml)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.AddInternal(String strDisplayName, SPFieldType type, Boolean bRequired, Boolean bCompactName, Guid lookupListId, Guid lookupWebId, StringCollection choices)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.Add(String strDisplayName, SPFieldType type, Boolean bRequired, Boolean bCompactName, StringCollection choices)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldCollection.Add(String strDisplayName, SPFieldType type, Boolean bRequired)
at KWizCom.SharePoint.Rating.ListRatingUtilities.CreateRatingCountFieldsInList(SPWeb web, SPList list, RatingField ratingField)

Revealing that the exception was raised from a method called:

Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPStringUtility.EscapedCodeToLower(String str)

So far - makes sense... string parsing is always the number one cause for index bound exceptions, right?

So, I wanted to check what was wrong with the field name I was trying to create...

ratingField.FieldName_NumOfCommentsDecodedName "2Rating Site Column_x" string

See that my field name ends with "_x"...

The code I extracted from "EscapedCodeToLower" had the following line in it:

if (((str[i] == '_') && (i < (str.Length - 1))) && (str[i + 1] == 'x'))

Well, now everything was clear to me.

Microsoft uses "XmlConvert.EncodeName" in order to encode fields internal names in SharePoint. This encoding method replaces illegal characters with "_x0020_" for example. Apparently this method looks up every "_" that was followed by "x" and assumes it is a token it needs to decode... But what happens if my text ends with "_x"?

Aha! You get your "Index was outside the bounds of the array" exception!

So, I guess now I have to add a check to my code. I Doubt anyone would notice it or bother to fix it.

Well, I googled that error message regarding SPList.Fields.Add and got nothing - hopefully this will help someone in need in the future...

Shai.

How to backup and restore a website with Variations

The article below was written by Armine Vardanyan, a SharePoint SharePoint Implementer for KWizCom Professional Services. Armine explains step by step how to backup and restore a website with Variations

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When you backup a SharePoint site that uses the Variations feature, the variation jobs you created are not automatically backed up. Thus, before restoring your site to a new web application, you will need to create Variation labels and the needed hierarchy so that the variations jobs will be created automatically. Once this task is completed you will be able to restore your site safely, without losing any information.


Here's how to correctly backup and restore your site, with its Variation labels:

1. You need to backup the web application by using stsadm(recommended):
stsadm -o backup -url http://portalname/ -filename myBackup.bckSee How to copy site collection from one server to anther (Backup and Restore).
2. Create a new web application from the “SharePoint Central Administration” where you want to restore the backup and create the site collection. (/).









3. Go to your created web-site.
4. Go to “Site Settings” > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings
5. Under the “Site Collection Administration” section click on “Variation labels”





6. Click on New Label and create your Variation labels (same as when you created them in the site you backed-up)
7. Click on Create Hierarchies.




8. After the hierarchies were created you can restore your backup and overwrite by:
stsadm -o restore -url http://newportalname/ -filename MyBackup.bck –overwrite

Not so hard right?