SharePoint 4 Developers

It's been a while since the last time I wrote here. If you are interested in .NET and Azure, check my new blog: https://tech.playgokids.com/

Not sure if you know, but the official approach provided by Microsoft to compile ASPNET 5 solutions and deploy to Azure via script doesn’t work. So far this is the current state.

The prebuild.ps1 script fails on Get-ChildItem commandlet, due to the long path of NPM packages, that need to be restored. You probably should be getting errors like this:

“The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.”

This is so annoying! I spent some time trying to circumvent this issue, with no luck. This is a OS limitation.

Luckily I was able to touch base with the Microsoft Corp guys about that. The alternative to the issue is provided on this solution:

https://github.com/Microsoft/PartsUnlimited

Core Scripts

Check-out the scripts for automation:

• Call-Dnu.ps1
• Call-Dnx.ps1
• Install-Dnvm.ps1
• PublishWebsite.ps1

Available on https://github.com/Microsoft/PartsUnlimited/tree/master/scripts

CI Build

On my CI build I was able to get them running smoothly, as per Figure 1:

Figure 1 – CI build

Considering that my solution is created with the following projects:

Solution
-- Project.Deployment
-- Project.Models
-- Project.Web

The details for each task of Figure 1 are displayed here:

1. Install dnvm
   Type: File Path
   Script filename: $/Project/Main/Project.Deployment/Install-Dnvm.ps1
2. Dnu restore
   Type: File Path
   Script filename: $/Project/Main/Project.Deployment/Call-Dnu.ps1
   Arguments: restore $(Build.SourcesDirectory)
3. Dnu build Web project
   Type: File Path
   Script filename: $/Project/Main/Project.Deployment/Call-Dnu.ps1
   Arguments: build $(Build.SourcesDirectory)/Project.Web --configuration $(BuildConfiguration)
4. Dnu build db model
   Type: File Path
   Script filename: $/Project/Main/Project.Deployment/Call-Dnu.ps1
   Arguments: build $(Build.SourcesDirectory)/Project.Models --configuration $(BuildConfiguration)
5. Dnx sql script
   Type: File Path
   Script filename: $/Project/Main/Project.Deployment/Call-Dnx.ps1
   Arguments: –p Project.Models ef migrations script > $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\sql_script.sql
6. Npm install
   Command: install
   Working Directory: $/Project/Main/Project.Web
7. Gulp files
   Gulp File Path: $/Project/Main/Project.Web/gulpfile.js
   gulp.js location: Project.Web/node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js
8. Dnu publishing solution
   Type: File Path
   Script filename: $/Project/Main/Project.Deployment/Call-Dnu.ps1
   Arguments: publish $(Build.SourcesDirectory)/Project.Web --runtime active --configuration $(BuildConfiguration) --out $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\web
9. Copy files to: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\Scripts
   Source Folder: $/Project/Main/Project.Deployment
   Contents: **\*.ps1
   Target Folder: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\Scripts
   Overwrite: true
10. Publish Artifact: drop
    Path to Publish: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)
    Artifact Name: drop
    Artifact Type: Server
    

Note: You could add Npm packages to the source code, so you wouldn’t need to have Npm installation as a task. I haven’t even mentioned about Bower packaging as a task, which you might be using. In my case I decided to add bower to the source code, just because it is so damn slow to restore packages during the build.

Keep an eye on this post for more updates, as I’ll keep updating it when MS releases new stuff.

Cheers,

Marcel

Hey guys,

Looking at the future, besides SharePoint having its own App Model, solutions are evolving, they are not limited anymore to what we can do within the platform.

Cloud solutions are becoming interconnected, multi-platform focused, so studying only the SharePoint App Model itself is not enough to master, you need to know Office 365 Development APIs. Hands-on training is available here: https://github.com/OfficeDev/TrainingContent

When you think you have mastered something, you realize you are only on the top of the iceberg. :)

Happy studying.

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

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