Tag Archives: CSR

JS Link – Creating Custom Links

I’ve spoken about this topic so many times I keep forgetting that I haven’t put together a decent post on the subject even though I’ve had sample code posted for quite some time (see References below). Smile with tongue out In my opinion, after conditional formatting this is a sweet spot for JS Link use cases and functionally WAY more useful.

Disclaimer: For those of you using SharePoint 2013, this is still relevant content. If you are using SharePoint 2016 or O365 and have PowerApps available and/or are only using ‘modern’ pages and views there are other potential solutions for you.

Business-wise, what makes custom links useful is the ability for users to build solutions – ‘stitching’ together SharePoint functionality into productive business solutions – beyond what the out of box lists and libraries provide.

What makes custom links with JS Link in SharePoint so useful is the crossing of a few core bits of functionality in SharePoint – that we’ll cover in more detail in this article:

Most everything in SharePoint is available via a URL – so we can ‘decode’ the links SharePoint uses to build our own links to the data we want our users to get to
‘Source’ data passed through the querystring allows us to control where the user is taken after a form is used (assuming the link destination was a form – it doesn’t have to be)
Creating a HTML link tag is super easy

User Experience Tweaking

You can use CSR to build ‘web-user-friendly’ vs. ‘SharePoint-user-friendly’ user interfaces. If all your users are familiar with SharePoint this isn’t a compelling reason. However, for environments where non-office workers (warehouse, production, etc.) are using SharePoint sites and solutions, making the interface intuitive – making it more ‘web-friendly’ – is a compelling reason to look at enhancements like this. For example:

Non-SharePoint users don’t know what the ellipses (…) are. They don’t know they need to click on the ‘…’ to get a menu for more details, etc.

By adding a column with web links to forms, it makes the interface easier to navigate – the useful links are displayed prominently instead of inside of a menu that needs to be opened first. If you had custom forms this same approach could be used to get the user to those forms instead of the default forms. SharePoint only enables linking to the default forms in the interface.

This also gives the solution owner more control over the interface by only displaying the controls they want made available to users.

How-To

If you use the SharePoint menu to navigate to the Edit page and look at the URL you will see something like this:

https://forgegroup.sharepoint.com/TeamSite/CSR/Lists/DemoList/EditForm.aspx?ID=1&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fforgegroup%2Esharepoint%2Ecom%2FTeamsite%2FCSR%2FSitePages%2FDemo%2520-%2520Link%2520to%2520Pages%2520and%2520Forms%2Easpx&ContentTypeId=0x01004578E7B0B3F1BE41A0EE6CF023F4518D

If we break the URL down we get the following:

https://forgegroup.sharepoint.com/TeamSite/CSR/Lists/DemoList/EditForm.aspx
This is the URL for the form page
?ID=1
This is the parameter passed in that tells the form which item ID in the list to display
&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fforgegroup%2Esharepoint%2Ecom%2FTeamsite%2FCSR%2FSitePages%2FDemo%2520-%2520Link%2520to%2520Pages%2520and%2520Forms%2Easpx
This tells SharePoint where to navigate when the form is submitted or cancelled – essentially where the user ends up next. This can be VERY useful when building your own solution.
&ContentTypeId=0x01004578E7B0B3F1BE41A0EE6CF023F4518D
Finally, this is the content type for the item in the list. We aren’t using this information for our example.

What we’re doing with the CSR code is creating our own link that will be displayed in an overridden column. The complete sample code can be found in the CSR_CustomLinks.js file. We’ll just look at the key lines here:

The link is going to ‘../Lists/DemoList/EditForm.aspx’ where ‘DemoList’ is the name of my list and ‘EditForm.aspx’ is the default edit form created for the list. If you’ve created a new form (with SharePoint Designer, etc.) and want to use it, this is where you’d put the name of the file. You could even leave the default ‘edit’ form as default but use this link to get to a separate edit form.
‘ID’ is the name of the parameter we’re sending to the form. We’re getting the data from the list as ctx.CurrentItem.ID
Then comes our own ‘Source’ value to tell SharePoint where to navigate after the form has been used. This can be helpful if you want to direct users to a specific place other than where they came from.
Finally, ‘Edit’ is the text that will displayed as the link. You can use whatever verbiage makes sense to your users here OR replace the text with a graphic or icon.

In the sample code I’m actually building two links – ‘Edit’ and ‘Details’ in the same column override.

Get creative with this. The link doesn’t have to be to a form for the current list. It could be a view for another list with a reference back to the current list. For example you might have a document library where you’re keeping reference documents for a list and use a reference ID field in the document library to connect back to the current list. You could use this CSR approach to build the URL string to a view of the document library and filter it by the reference ID… Then a user could be looking at the current list and click on a simple link to all the related documents for that item.

Notes

Using graphics: Choose a location for any graphics you want to use as part of your solution. A good place might be the SiteAssets library. Then use code that looks something like this:

Replacing the ‘Edit’ text with an HTML image tag linking to your image file.
Combine this link with conditional formatting and potentially display different actions or icons depending on the content of your list item.
Filtering on a lookup column is another post using a similar custom link approach.
PowerApps: Moving forward solutions like described in this post will be accomplished using PowerApps. If you’re already using SharePoint Online, the capabilities are already available by building not only a list view from a SharePoint list, but being able to customize each column and build custom forms that you can link to within your PowerApp.

References

Hello World JS Link example – If you’ve never used the JS Link property of a web part, start here to understand the basics.
Sample code – CSR_CustomLinks.js
JS Link and CSR sample code, blog posts, and references
Get or create your own icons – Syncfusion Metro Studio
(Thanks Tamara Bredemus for that suggestion!)
PowerApps references and posts
And just in case you’re new to HTML as well, check out the w3schools tutorials and references

Display Links to SharePoint Item Attachments using CSR

I had an inquiry this week regarding whether or not CSR could be used within a SharePoint list view to display links directly to an item’s attachments. It took a bit of tweaking code around a bit, but Raymond Mitchell (@iwkid) and I were able to get it working.

Background: SharePoint lists may allow for attachments to list items. SharePoint also has a default column that can be used in a view for displaying whether or not an item *has* one or more attachments. (Is that Clippy in disguise?)

A user experience (UX) stumbling block however is that you have to open up an item view in order to see the list of items and links to them. If you’re familiar with SharePoint, not a huge UX issue, but still somewhat irritating compared to just seeing the list of items in the view directly. If you’re *not* SharePoint-savvy, then you might not know at all whether an attachment exists or how to see attachments.

We’re aiming for something like this:

The CSR JavaScript file can be found here: CSR_ViewAttach.js

Note: I’m sure the JavaScript gurus out there will find more code cleanup that can be done and methods that can be used to improve it – this should get you started. We’ll add new versions as improvements are made.

Instructions for use:

If you don’t already have one, create a ‘scripts’ document library on the Office365 / SharePoint site you’ll be using the CSR file on.
Download the JavaScript file from here
Edit the JavaScript file to work with your column, list and site URLs (see more in the sample file or below)
Upload the edited JavaScript file to your ‘scripts’ library.
jQuery is required for this CSR to work. If you don’t have jQuery already, upload it to the same scripts library. (See this post for more information on using jQuery with CSR)
Add the Script Editor web part to your page or use the ‘Embed Code’ option to add a reference to jQuery.
Ex. “<script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript” src=”../Scripts/jquery-2.1.3.min.js”></script>”
Your list: If you don’t have a ‘spare’ text column you can use to override in a view, create a new text column (ex. ‘ViewAttach’).
Create a view for your list that includes your new column. You can still use all the same sorting, filtering, and other other view configuration settings for this view.
When using your list view, edit the web part and add the link to your JavaScript file to the JS Link property of the web part. It will look something like: ~site/Scripts/CSR_ViewAttach.js

If everything is in place, attachments in your list should now be listed in the column you identified. (If not, check the common troubleshooting items for CSR… hmm, that sounds like another post…)

Items to configure in the JavaScript/CSR file before it will work in your environment (these are also noted in the file itself):

The (internal) name of field being overridden. In the example code below we’re using the ‘Body’ column (which is the internal name for the ‘Description’ field) of a task list. You can override any text field and/or create your own.
The siteURL variable. — See example in the CSR file itself
The listName variable. — The list that includes the attachments you’re displaying links to (example in file)
The attachPath variable. — Link to where attachments are stored (example in file)

Thanks, Notes, and References:

Thanks to Raymond Mitchell (@iwkid) for his help in getting the code to work.
Thanks to Corey Roth for his post on “How to: Get list item attachments using REST and JavaScript in SharePoint 2013”. This reference gave us the query URL we needed to get the attachments. We took that and merged it with CSR code to get this override to work.
Using jQuery for CSR
JS Link – Hello World

Please let me know how this works for you!

Using jQuery for CSR

There are a few useful CSR utility solutions that require jQuery to be available to the CSR script. If you are an IW / Power User you don’t necessarily need to know how to use jQuery explicitly, but there are some easy templates that only work by using it.

If jQuery isn’t already enabled for your site, you need to add the jQuery file and a link to it on the page you’re using it on.

Download the latest version of the file from HERE. Get the ‘…compressed, production…’ version.
Copy the file to your Scripts library (just to be consistent with where your other CSR files are).
On the page you are using jQuery dependent CSR, add a Script Editor web part.
In the Editor web part, add the following line – or similar based on where your file is located. This worked for me by having the file in my Scripts library:
<script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript” src=”../Scripts/jquery-2.1.3.min.js”></script>”

Note: Take a peek at Marc’s post on jQuery to make sure your file is working properly.

CSR that uses the jQuery library should now function properly.

JS Link – Using CSR for KPIs

OK. Someone asked me today if CSR and JS Link can be used incorporate KPIs into a list view. The answer of course is ‘yes’. This is a wonderful example of how CSR can be used. Smile

Background: If you’re wondering what a ‘KPI’ is – it’s a ‘key performance indicator’. You can find more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_indicator What we’re talking about specifically in this case is a visual KPI in a SharePoint list view – something that can be used as a quick visual cue as to what the data is showing.

If you’re wondering what CSR and JS Link are referring to, take a peek at my “JS Link – Hello World” article.

With all that settled, here’s a quick example of one way KPIs could be incorporated into a list view using CSR and JS Link:

Create a list (yes, you can use an existing list).
Add or identify a column that’s going to be used as a value to test.
Add or identify a column for where the KPI indicator can be displayed – a graphic will override whatever data might be in this field. The title of the column can be useful to indicate which KPI is being displayed…
Identify the locations of graphics to be used as the KPI indicators. I put mine in the Site Assets library for this example, but they could be stored just about anywhere.

Here’s the sample JavaScript:

Note: You can update the fully qualified links to the image to relative links: src=”/TeamSite/CSR/…” (still need the rest of the URL, but dropping the beginning part)

In the example code, we’re checking the value of one field and displaying the image in an override of a second field.

Again, this is an extremely simple example – the logic for the KPI could be much more complicated as needed. There could be one or more KPIs per item. Lots of ways to improve on the concept.

The example ends up looking something like this:

NOTE: For this quick and dirty example I created a field in the list that is essentially used only as a field to be overridden with an image. If I want to make the solution cleaner and more UX friendly I could do an Item override which would allow me to skip adding the new ‘container’ field. I could just bake the image into the rendered HTML directly.

Reference to where the images came from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Light_icons

Another much more complicated example:
http://www.connectorman.com/jslink-code-kpis-sharepoint-2013-2/

Client-Side Rendering (CSR) demystified – Slides

At SPC14 – the SharePoint Conference 2014 – I initially presented a session on Client-Side Rendering in SharePoint 2013 as implemented using JS Link through the web interface. CSR and JS Link using uploaded JavaScript files and the JS Link web part property pointed at the appropriate JavaScript files – to be differentiated from JS Link baked into managed code.

The recording and slides for the SPC session are available here – on Channel9: http://channel9.msdn.com/events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC318

This content has also since been presented (in slight variations of the original) at a few SharePoint Saturday events.

JS Link – Highlighting a Row with CSR

One conditional formatting scenario in SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 was to highlight a row in a list view based on a rule: data within the item/row. SharePoint Designer 2013 unfortunately does not have the same design view available, so we need to use some relatively simple code to get the same results. This article discusses one method to get the same results using SharePoint 2013 with Client-Side Rendering (CSR) and the JS Link web part property.

Referring back to a few of my other posts you can get an idea of the general approach using CSR here:

When creating the JavaScript file this time we aren’t doing any Field or Item overrides, but we are using the PostRender functionality:

OverrideCtx.OnPostRender = {

As the name describes, we’re tweaking the page output after the rest of the page has been rendered. Using Field overrides we could alter the formatting of text, but not cells and wouldn’t have access to the row either. Using the Item override we could build the row from scratch and highlight the row, but it would take a lot more work rebuilding the view when we can just use the PostRender method to tweak the existing view.

I won’t get into all the JavaScript details but want to highlight what’s important to replicate this functionality on your own. The code essentially steps through each item/row in the table and runs the logic on each item.

There are only a few snippets you need to customize to fit your scenario:

if (listItem.Priority == “(1) High”) {

The code above is your condition / rule. ‘Priority’ is the column you’re checking the value on – remember that ‘Priority’ is the internal name of the column. You can use any column that’s included in the view for your rule criteria.

row.style.backgroundColor = “rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.5)”; //red

This (above) is setting the row background color. You can set whichever color you need. You can have multiple rules checking different rows and applying various colors if you wish.

OK! Once the JavaScript is written and uploaded to the site (see other posts for details) and the JS Link property is set, if everything is working the list should now show a highlighted row for data that matches the rule:

Using the PostRender approach makes highlighting an entire row pretty easy. If you wanted to highlight a specific cell, it would be possible but would take some more code (we’ll show that another time) to get the right column selected. It’s not as easy as just calling out the column/field name. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish on the cell/field level, that kind of change might be easier using the Field override.

Thanks again to Jon Campbell (MS), Raymond Mitchell and Phil Jirsa for hammering through much of the JavaScript details on this one. Jon clued us into some of these JS Link innerds back when he was on the SharePoint team. 🙂

SPC14 MySPC, Sessions and Schedule

SPC14 is going to be pretty darn cool. Looking at the sessions and how things are going to be organized is amazing. Microsoft is doing a great job integrating Yammer into the mix for this conference.

If you haven’t already, sign in to MySPC and then link your Yammer account to MySPC. Once you’ve gotten into the SPC 2014 network in Yammer, you’ll be able to search by session numbers to find session presentation information, slide decks, related links and files, etc. The Yammer network integration and ‘second screen’ experience is going to change how you experience the conference – before, during and after the event.

Be sure to check out the sessions you’re interested in on the Yammer network to properly set expectations for what you’re going to see during the presentations.

Here’s information about my session:
#SPC318 – Client-Side Rendering (CSR) demystified
MySPC Link | Yammer Link

It is a developer session and I will be talking about JavaScript code that applies to the web interface, specifically list views but also touching on forms. From a practical viewpoint the content I’ll be covering can be used by what I would call power users, citizen developers, etc. –> folks comfortable tweaking HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript given some guidance.

There’s more information available on the Yammer page. Log on, ask questions, participate in the conversation and I’ll see you on Tuesday!

JS Link – Hello World

JS Link and CSR (Client-Side Rendering) for SharePoint 2013 are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t exactly. The JS Link web part property is a way to add CSR template overrides to your page.

This quick post walks through a ‘Hello World’ scenario that doesn’t do any CSR, but makes sure your JavaScript file is working and that the JS Link reference can find it.

I’ve got a longer post on more of the details and use of JS Link for CSR in SharePoint 2013, but this is a quick ‘Hello World’ version for JS Link. There are three main components:

Create a JavaScript file
This file, saved as [yourFileName.js] literally only needs to have a single line:
alert(“Hello World”);
Put the file in a location where your JS Link reference can see it.
- One common location to upload to is the Master Page Gallery though other locations can be used. This does require higher permissions on the site, however.
- Using this ‘Hello World’ approach is a great way to test the location of your file, the permissions to that file and the JS Link string (next step) used to get everything working.
- If you are a site collection administrator you can use SharePoint Designer 2013 to view ‘All Files’ in the Master Page Gallery and add a new JavaScript file that way.
Point your web part to the JavaScript file.
You are changing the properties of a web part here. Technically you can edit the web part of a standard view for a list, but I generally don’t do that.
1. For this example create a page on the site and drop a web part from your test app (list or library) on to that page.
2. Edit the page and Edit Web Part. At the far bottom of the web part properties, under the Miscellaneous grouping is the ‘JS Link’ property.
3. Enter the following and click OK.
  ~site/_catalogs/masterpage/[yourFileName].js
If everything is working as planned, as soon as you click ‘OK’ you should get a JavaScript alert that says ‘Hello World’.