Author / Simon Doy

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Posts by Simon Doy

I am an avid SharePoint enthusiast who works as an Independent SharePoint Consultant based in Leeds, United Kingdom. I am one of the organisers of the Yorkshire SharePoint User Group in the United Kingdom. I have been designing and building SharePoint solutions since 2006.
by Simon Doy

Visual Studio SharePoint Packaging Issue: Both "SharePointItem" and "SharePointItem" contains a file that deploys to the same Package location.


I have had this problem a few times when moving and copying SharePoint SPI objects within Visual Studio 2010.

When you attempt to package and deploy your SharePoint solution the following error occurs:-

  • C:\TFSBulid\4\Project\BuildLocation\Sources\ProjectName\Package\Package.package: Both “[ExampleSiteDefinition]” and “[ExampleSiteDefinition]” contain a file that deploys to the same Package location: [Location]

The problem occurs because two of the SharePoint Project Item (SPI) have references to the same location. This seems to occur when you copy SharePoint Project Items.

If you take a look at the SharePointProjectItem.spdata file for the SharePoint Project Item that you copied from the SharePoint Point Item specified in the [Location] portion of the error message you will see that the SharePointProjectItem.spdata file will show details of the old SharePoint Project Item rather then the new SharePoint Item.

The content of the SharePointProjectItem.spdata looks like this:-

 1: <?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf-8"?>
 2: <ProjectItemType="Microsoft.VisualStudio.SharePoint.SiteDefinition" DefaultFile="onet.xml" SupportedTrustLevels="FullTrust" SupportedDeploymentScopes="Package"
 3: xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2010/SharePointTools/SharePointProjectItemModel>
 4: <Files>
 5: <ProjectItemFileSource="default.aspx" Target="SiteTemplates\ExampleSiteDefinition\"
Type="TemplateFile" />
 6: <ProjectItemFileSource="onet.xml" Target="SiteTemplates\ExampleSiteDefinition\Xml\"
Type="TemplateFile" />
 7: <ProjectItemFileSource="webtemp_ExampleSiteDefinition.xml" Target="1033\XML\"
Type="TemplateFile"/>
 8: </Files>
 9: </ProjectItem>

To fix this update the ProjectItemFileSource element’s Target attribute to point to the correct location.

by Simon Doy

Creating List Instance: Object Reference not set to an instance of an object


Introduction

This one is a bit of an old issue but some of my posts are just to remind me of a time that I got stuck in the past. Also if it helps someone else then great.

It is possible to create a feature which creates an instance of a SharePoint List when its activated. However, sometimes you only want a list to be created on the Root Web of a site collection.

Issue

Well the XML for specifying a ListInstance as a feature has an attribute called RootWebOnly which I thought I could use to only allow the ListInstance to be created on the RootWeb.

Unfortunately when you do that you get a message like the following in your SharePoint ULS Logs when the feature is activated:-

Feature Activation: Threw an exception, attempting to roll back. Feature ‘FeatureName’(ID: ‘xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx). Exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPListInstanceElement.ElementActivated(SPFeaturePropertyCollection props, SPSqlCommand sqlcmdAppendOnly, SPWebApplication webApp, SPSite site, SPWeb web, Boolean fForce)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPElementDefinitionCollection.ProvisionListInstances(SPFeaturePropertyCollection props, SPSite site, SPWeb web, Boolean fForce)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPElementDefinitionCollection.ProvisionElements(SPFeaturePropertyCollection props, SPWebApplication webapp, SPSite site, SPWeb web, Boolean fForce)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeature.ProvisionElements(SPFeaturePropertyCollection props, SPWebApplication webapp, SPSite site, SPWeb web, Boolean fForce)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeature.Activate(SPSite siteParent, SPWeb webParent, SPFeaturePropertyCollection props, Boolean fForce)

The offending Feature ListInstance element is below:-

 1: <?xmlversion="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 2: <Elements
 3: xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
 4: <ListInstance
 5: Id="AListId"
 6: Title="A List"
 7: Description="A List 
 8: Description”
 9: Url="Lists/ListUrlHere"
 10: OnQuickLaunch="FALSE"
 11: RootWebOnly=”TRUE”
 12: FeatureId="xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxx"
 13: TemplateType="45100"></ListInstance>
 14: </Elements>

Solution

To fix the feature activation remove the RootWebOnly=”TRUE” from your ListInstance element manifest file and instead move the RootWebOnly=”TRUE” into your List’s schema.xml.

To ensure that the list is only provisioned at the root web of the site collection change the Feature.xml to use Scope=”Site”

Update:

Thanks to Dennis who picked up my mistake in this post which stated that the RootWebOnly attribute should be moved to the feature.xml.