How to use SharePoint apps in SharePoint 2013 team sites

In my previous post, we have seen how to create and deploy an app to developer site.

Now i want to use that app in any SharePoint site. This is really interesting because ultimately we have to use apps anywhere in our SharePoint site. In starting stage, I have struggled very hard to find solution for how to add an app to my site and how to show that app in my SharePoint pages and finally got it.

Below are the steps which i have followed.

1. Take out app which is in solution's bin folder and keep it anywhere or else you can keep it in same place.
 path is looks like <solution path>/bin/Debug/app.publish/<version number>/<appname>.app

2. I have create new web application and one root collection. Now i want to use the existing app in newly created site.

If you want to use any app in your web application then there should be on app catalog for the web application and app should be added to the app catalog then only the app will be available to all site collections/sites under the web application.

So, now we need to specify where we should upload/add our app.
All apps are to be upload to app catalog only.
For this we can create new app catalog or we can use existing app catalog to the newly create web application.

For now am going to create new app catalog for the newly created web application.

3. Go to Apps in Central administration --> Click on Manage App Catalog.

4. Choose correct web application from web application list and select "Create a new app catalog site" then click OK.

5. Then it will open create app catalog page, in this specify the below details

    Title - Title for catalog site
    Description - Description for catalog site
    Web Site Address - Specify URL name
    Specify primary site collection administrator name then
    Specify list of end users names

6. After successfully creation of app catalog site it will redirect to manage app catalog page.
    Here click view setting --> it will redirect to site setting then click site collection administrators.

   Now add user name to whom you want to add as site collection administrators.

7. Now go to app catalog site home page, there you can see the below options
 
    Apps for SharePoint
    Apps for Office
    App Requests

Click on Apps for SharePoint.

8. Click "New App" and then upload your app file (.app).

9. Once the app successfully uploaded, we need to add few details about app then click OK.

10. After successfully adding app to the list, it will looks as below screen.

11. Now you go to site contents --> click add an app.

12. It will open apps page and will show all OOB apps in SharePoint and on left hand side you can find the below two options under your apps.
   
     Apps you can add (default selected)
     From your organization

13. Click on "From your organization" then you can see list of apps available where have been uploaded in app catalog.

14. Select your app by click on app, once you selected any app it will pop up once window asking about trusting the app. Click on "Trust it" then it will create new app in your SharePoint site.

15. Now create a page or open existing page to add newly created app.Here i have created new page named as "GetListDetailsApp.aspx"

16. Open the page in edit mode and click on "App part" on ribbon. it will show all apps in the current SharePoint site. select your app and click OK.

17. Now save the page and it will looks as below.

18. As i told in the starting my app will show list of available list/libraries in the current site.
if you click on get details button, it will show all available list and libraries.

How to get list of libraries and list from the host web in SharePoint hosted app

In my previous post, we have seen how to create SharePoint hosted app.

Now i want to show one more sample of SharePoint hosted app.

Here i want to display list of libraries/lists in the host web  using SharePoint hosted app.

1. Open visual studio --> Click on create project.
2. Select 'App for SharePoint' and give a name to the project.

3. In the new app for SharePoint wizard, specify where to deploy and select 'SharePoint-hosted' for type of host.

3. Go to pages --> right click on pages select add new item --> select 'Client Web Part(Host web)' and give a name to the page.

4. It will open Create Client Web part wizard, in that keep the default values and click Finish.

5. Now change client web part title and description.

6. Change the body tag as below.

7. Now go to App.js which is in Scripts folder and modify the code as below.

8. Add App.js script link to the page.

9. Now we need to provide access permission to the app to read list data. double click on AppManifest.xml --> go to permission tab --> give propermission and save.

10. Now deploy the solution. Right click on solution and select deploy.

11. After successfully deployment, give automatically asking for trust. click on ok and trust it.

12. Go to a page and add the app part to the page. Click on "Get Details" button, it will show list of available libraries and list in the host web.

  

First SharePoint 2013 App creation (SharePoint - Hosted App)

After long time i got chance to post this blog..

Before going to create app there are few things we need to check.

1. SharePoint apps environment should be configure, i have already configured on my server please go through my previous post.
2. Before creating apps, there should be one site with has been created with developer template.
3. Farm Administror cannot deploy any app from visual studio. if farm administrator try to deploy then we can see the following error while deployment. "Error occurred in deployment step “Installed app for SharePoint”: The System Account cannot perform this action."
4. The user(not administrator) should have dbowner access on below databases.
    i. SharePoint_Config.
    ii. SharePoint_Admin_ [GUID].
    iii. WSS_ContentDB_[GUID] is the content database which is created to deploy the app.
    iv. Appmanagement_Service_DB (app management service application database).
    v. SubscriptionSettings_Service_DB (Subscription Settings service application database).

and also the user should have full control on developer site.

If the user don't have any one of the access. the below error will throw while deployment.

"Error occurred in deployment step “Installed app for SharePoint”: The local SharePoint server is not available. Check that the server is running and connected to the SharePoint Farm"

Ok now we have create one developer site for app deployment and non farm administrator have access on required database.

Now follow the below steps to create first SharePoint - Hosted app(The non farm administrator user logged on to SharePoint server). And i will show how to add the app to a page.

1. Open visual studio 2013 (Run as administrator).
2. Click on new project ( on left hand side).
3. Select Apps on left hand side which is under Installed --> Templates--> Visual c# --> office/SharePoint and select "App for SharePoint" then give a name for your project(Here SP2013App). Then click on "OK".

4. Specify SharePoint site which has been created for deployment of apps(developer site) and select SharePoint-hosted as type of host. now click on "finish" and visual studio will create app project.

5. Visual creates app project and also create some feature, packages, content types, scripts and pages.
also creates one appmanifest.xml and packages.config file.

Here i want to create an app which can be add to any SharePoint page.

for this i have to create one new page with the template of "Client web part(hosted app)".

6. Add client web part by right clicking on project you have created above and click on Add --> New Item, select "Client web part (Host Web)" and enter the name of your client web part then click on Add button.

7. After that it will show create client web part wizard, here enter your App part Name and Select the Page which you want to show on the App part, then Click on Finish. Here i want create new page so i have chosen first option.

8. now visual studio has create new page in pages folder, now we can edit app title and description by double click on page's elements.xml. Also you can set default height and width of the app.

9. Now come to the page which will show actual content in the app.

You can open the page and the line number six you have

"<WebPartPages:AllowFraming ID="AllowFraming" runat="server" />" 

which is important to allow the page to show in IFRAME.

If you don't add the above line of code snippet then it will you error as

"This content cannot be displayed in a frame" .

10. In my app part, i want to show basic details about current hosted site.

now go to <body> tag and <form> tag and one div tag to display one button along with one more div to display about site.

whenever user click on the button it has to show site details. this is the simple basic operation.

11. Modify App.js file to call the function on button click as below.

Here complete code for App.js

'use strict';

var context = SP.ClientContext.get_current();
var user = context.get_web().get_currentUser();
var oWebsite;
var hostWebUrl;
var appWebUrl;
// This code runs when the DOM is ready and creates a context object which is needed to use the SharePoint object model
$(document).ready(function () {
    getUserName();
    hostWebUrl = decodeURIComponent(manageQueryStringParameter('SPHostUrl'));
    appWebUrl = decodeURIComponent(manageQueryStringParameter('SPAppWebUrl'));
});

// This function prepares, loads, and then executes a SharePoint query to get the current users information
function getUserName() {
    context.load(user);
    context.executeQueryAsync(onGetUserNameSuccess, onGetUserNameFail);
}

// This function is executed if the above call is successful
// It replaces the contents of the 'message' element with the user name
function onGetUserNameSuccess() {
    $('#message').text('Hello ' + user.get_title());
}

// This function is executed if the above call fails
function onGetUserNameFail(sender, args) {
    alert('Failed to get user name. Error:' + args.get_message());
}

function GetDetails()
{
    var ctx = new SP.ClientContext(appWebUrl);
    var appCtxSite = new SP.AppContextSite(ctx, hostWebUrl);

    oWebsite = appCtxSite.get_web();
    ctx.load(oWebsite);
    //document.getElementById("AppPartmessage").innerHTML = "<p> My first AppPart </p>";
    ctx.executeQueryAsync(onGetDetailsSuccess, onGetDetailsFail);
}
function onGetDetailsSuccess() {
    $('#AppPartmessage').text('Site Name is: ' + oWebsite.get_title() + "\n Site description: " + oWebsite.get_description());
}
function onGetDetailsFail(sender, args) {
    alert('Failed to get site details. Error:' + args.get_message());
}
function manageQueryStringParameter(paramToRetrieve) {
    var params =
        document.URL.split("?")[1].split("&");
    var strParams = "";
    for (var i = 0; i < params.length; i = i + 1) {
        var singleParam = params[i].split("=");
        if (singleParam[0] == paramToRetrieve)
            return singleParam[1];
    }
}

12. Here the app will read the host web site details so we need to give proper permission for the app on host site. Double click on AppManifest.xml file and you can see screen as below.

13. Now build the app and deploy by right click on project and select deploy.

14. Once the app is deployed it will show the path where it has been deploy.

15. It will automatically opens the app and will show option to trust the app or not. click on trust.

16. now go to host site and add your app to any page so display the app.

go to page --> edit page--> select insert from ribbon --> click on app part --> select the app and click on OK.

Now save the page and it will looks like as below.

17. Click on "Get Details" button and it will show site title and description.

This is all about very basic SharePoint hosted app.

ISSUE: The Subscription Settings service and corresponding application and proxy needs to be running in order to make changes to these settings.

When i was recently configuring SharePoint 2013 apps environment and trying to Configure App URLs by navigating from sharepoint 2013 central administration I got the below error.

"The Subscription Settings service and corresponding application and proxy needs to be running in order to make changes to these settings."

The above error comes when we didnt configure subscription setting services and this service we cannot configure from central admin. we can do it using power shell.

Here the script.

$account = Get-SPManagedAccount <domain\administrator>

$appPoolSubSvc = New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name SettingsServiceAppPool -Account $account

$appSubSvc = New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplication –ApplicationPool $appPoolSubSvc –Name "Subscription Settings Service" –DatabaseName SubscriptionSettings_Service_DB

$serviceAppProxy = New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplicationProxy -ServiceApplication $appSubSvc