RequiredFieldValidator in connected web parts

I plan on posting a tutorial on how to easily create connected web parts, but I wanted to write a short post on a unique issue I just came across, along with a simple solution.

Normally, when you add a RequiredFieldValidator to a form, it triggers when there is an attempted postback for that form. However, I have a scenario where I have two web parts, one called Contact List (this is the provider web part; it simply pulls data from a custom list library called Contact List and displays it) and another web part called Email Contact (this is the consumer webpart; it has a form where a user can enter their name, email, and message they want to email a contact). The Contact List web part provides a person while the Email Contact web part consumes a person. So when a user clicks a person in the Contact List, a postback is performed and the Email Contact web part will display that person's information above the form. A user could then enter their message, then click the Send button and it would email to the selected contact person.

Ok, so did you notice the problem yet? If the Email Contact web part has required field validators on its form fields (ie required on the submitter's name, email, and message), then when a user clicks a person in the Contact List web part, the requiredfieldvalidators in the Email Contact web part will prevent the postback from occurring, thus the person is never sent from the Contact List web part to the Email Contact web part. (Note: this scenario assumed that Contact List and Email Contact are on the same web page in the same WebPartZone).

The solution ended up being pretty simple. I am not going into the details of my specific implementation because the concept here is what it important (plus, I will post the code for this web part anyway in my article on connected web parts that I will do very soon). The solution is to use the ValidationGroup property of the RequiredFieldValidators and the Send button that saves/sends the message. To get this to work, I did the following:

In the Email Contact web part (all this is done in CreateChildControls):
1. create the RequiredFieldValidator controls for each field that needs it
2. add the RequiredFieldValidator controls to the web part's Controls collection
3. set their properties like ErrorMessage and ControlToValidate as you normally would
4. set their ValidationGroup property to "EmailContactValidationGroup"
5. when you create the form's button that saves/sends the email, set the button's ValidationGroup property also to "EmailContactValidationGroup"

The key here is to make sure the ValidationGroup is the same for the button and validators. This way, the validators will only fire off when the button is pressed!

How to populate a custom Contact List from AD

In a recent project at work, I was required to create a custom Contact List. The only problem was that I didn't want my SharePoint admins to have to go to the list, then click New -> Item and have to sit there and enter in the person's name, email address, title, etc, when all this information is already sitting over in AD (Active Directory) to begin with.

So, I wanted to provide my SharePoint site admins with the ability to search AD, select a person (or people), then with the click of a button, add them into my Contact List, which is a custom list library. My solution ended up being quite straightforward - create a web part with two controls, 1. a PeopleEditor control (the standard SharePoint control for selecting people from AD; it has those two little buttons in the lower right for checking the name you enter and a browse button to let you do searches) and 2. a Button control which will take whatever people have been entered into the PeopleEditor and save them into the Contact List.

First off, this assumes you have created a custom list called "Contact List" on your SharePoint site. The fields are all text fields, called "Name", "Job Title", and "Email Address".

1. Load Visual Studio 2008
2. Click File -> New -> Project... -> Visual Basic -> SharePoint -> Web Part
3. For the name, I called mine AddContactFromAD
4. Notice the web part was named WebPart1. Do a search and replace across the whole project and change WebPart1 to AddContactFromAD wherever it is found. While that just changed the contents of the files in the project, you will notice there is still a folder called WebPart1 with files inside all named WebPart1 with different file extensions. Manually rename the folder and the base names of those files (leaving the extensions alone for each).
5. Copy and paste the code below.
6. In the Solution Explorer, right click the project and click Properties, click the Debug tab on the left, then in "Start browser with URL:" type in the name of the SharePoint site you want to deploy the web part to.
7. Hit F5 to build and deploy the web part.

Code for AddContactFromAD.vb:

1. under your inherits statement and above your constructor, copy and paste:

WithEvents btnAddUsers As New Button
Dim peADLookUp As New PeopleEditor

2. in CreateChildControls(), copy and paste:

'create and add message to web part
Dim lblMessage As New Label
lblMessage.Text = "Add contact(s) from Active Directory into Contact List"
Controls.Add(lblMessage)

'add PeopleEditor control to web part (it was created above)
peADLookUp.Rows = 1
Controls.Add(peADLookUp)

'add button to web part (it was created above)
btnAddUsers.Text = "Add user(s) to Contact List"
Controls.Add(btnAddUsers)

3. below CreateChildControls(), copy and paste the following subroutine.

Sub btnAddUsers_Click() Handles btnAddUsers.Click
'PURPOSE: add selected users to Contact List

'get the site the web part is running on
Dim oWeb As SPWeb
oWeb = Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPControl.GetContextWeb(Context)

'get the list where we want to save the person to
Dim oList As SPList
oList = oWeb.Lists("Contact List")


Dim strDisplayName As String = ""
Dim strEmail As String = ""
Dim strTitle As String = ""

'loop through each entity in peADLookUp (note DisplayName,
'   Email, and Title are all properties in AD)
For Each account As PickerEntity In peADLookUp.ResolvedEntities
   'get values of  current entity
   strDisplayName = account.EntityData("DisplayName").ToString()
   strEmail = account.EntityData("Email").ToString()
   strTitle = account.EntityData("Title").ToString()

   'create a new list item in Contact List
   Dim oNewItem As SPListItem
   oNewItem = oList.Items.Add()

   'populate the new list item with values from the form
   oNewItem.Item("Name") = strDisplayName
   oNewItem.Item("Job Title") = strTitle
   oNewItem.Item("Email Address") = strEmail

   'update the list with the new item
   oNewItem.Update()
Next

End Sub