Issues while reporting SilverLight Webpart in SharePoint Pages

Hi, in this post, I am going to address few issues that in general we will be facing while integrating the SilverLight Webpart in SharePoint Pages.

Error: "Could not download the Silverlight application or the Silverlight Plugin did not load."

Possible Corrections:

Make sure the following were done.

1) In inetmgr, go to the properties of the SiteCollection in which you wanted to add the Silver Light Webpart and in the HTTP Headers section, you will be having the MIME types button, clicking on which you have to mention about the Silver Light Version name in the properties window.
2)Make sure that the Silver Ligth DLL is placed in the GAC folder and also in the respective SiteCollection Bin folder.
3)Need to specify the SilverLight Safecontrol in both Central Admin Web.config file and also in the respective Site Collection web.config file.


Other Way to Achieve this:

Refer URL http://karinebosch.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/integrating-silverlight-3-in-sharepoint-2007/

alternatively go through the below steps as mentioned in the above URL:

Silverlight 3 has been released last week and it comes with really really great features. To learn more about them, I refer to posts like those of Tim Heuer, Scott Guthrie and Shawn Wildermuth. And a blog I personally like very much is the blog of Mike Snow. Besides those listed here, there are a lot of other interesting resources you can find on the net.

All these new features sounds very exciting. Today I have been trying to integrate Silverlight 3 into SharePoint and it has not been easy at all.

Installation of Silverlight 3
- Download Silverlight 3 runtime and install

- Download the Silverlight 3 SDK and install

- If you are a developer, download Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio and install. If you run your environment in a Virtual PC (like most of the SharePoint developers do) you will encounter problems when you have no internet connection from within your Virtual PC. Until the beta version of Silverlight 3 you could use the trick to copy the content of the temporary folder while the exe was aching to install, and then install everything separately, but this time you will not find the Silverlight.3.x_Developer.exe file to enable Silverlight debugging in Visual Studio so you DO need an internet connection this time. (To enable internet access from within your VPC, I can recommend this post).

- If you need to develop more advanced user interfaces (and you will), you can download and install the Blend 3 trial.

If you installed all these bits, you are ready to go. Open Visual Studio 2008 and you can start developing your first Silverlight 3 applications. Exciting isn’t it? But if you are a SharePoint developer like me, there is the next hurdle to take: how can I display my first Silverlight 3 application in SharePoint? The SharePoint path has always been steep and has never been easy to take.

Configuration of the SharePoint server
Here comes the good news: in despite of previous versions, with Silverlight 3 you have to change NOTHING to the web.config of your SharePoint web application(s) on the server. You only have to configure the web.config for Framework 3.5 but this can easily lazily be done by Visual Studio 2008.

The last week I received a lot of questions on my blog: “Where is the System.Web.Silverlight.dll? I can’t find it.”. Well, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t exist anymore. You have to create the silverlight applications from within javascript, at least if you want to stay compatible.

Consequences for the SharePoint developer
You have two options:

- You are conservative and you install the Silverlight 3 SDK side by side with the Silverlight 2 SDK. In that case you can continue using the SilverlightControl, even with Silverlight 3 applications.

- You are progressive and you remove the Silverlight 2 SDK and install the Silverlight 3 SDK. In that case you have to change your code.

The conservative way
Install the Silverlight 3 SDK side by side with the Silverlight 2 SDK. In that case the System.Web.Silverlight.dll is still available and can be deployed in the Global Assembly Cache, and you can continue using the Silverlight control, residing in that System.Web.Silverlight.dll. The control works with Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 applications.

PS. I haven’t checked HttpWebRequest to call SharePoint web services, so I don’t know if that’s boobytrapped too.

The progressive way
Update 25/07/2009: because of encountering problems with execution of the script inside the web part code, I altered this post slightly.

This post explains how you can create a SharePoint web part that hosts a Silverlight 3 application. In a following post you will read how to host a Silverlight 3 application from within an application page. Both techniques are the basics that can be used in every SharePoint development scenario.

Create a javascript file with f.e. the name SpSilverlight.js. Include the following script to create a Silverlight application based on the silverlight.CreateObjectEx method:

function onSilverlightError(sender, args) {
var appSource = "";
if (sender != null && sender != 0) {
appSource = sender.getHost().Source;
}

var errorType = args.ErrorType;
var iErrorCode = args.ErrorCode;
if (errorType == "ImageError" || errorType == "MediaError") {
return;
}
var errMsg = "Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application " + appSource + "\n" ;
errMsg += "Code: "+ iErrorCode + " \n";
errMsg += "Category: " + errorType + " \n";
errMsg += "Message: " + args.ErrorMessage + " \n";
if (errorType == "ParserError") {
errMsg += "File: " + args.xamlFile + " \n";
errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + " \n";
errMsg += "Position: " + args.charPosition + " \n";
}
else if (errorType == "RuntimeError") {
if (args.lineNumber != 0) {
errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + " \n";
errMsg += "Position: " + args.charPosition + " \n";
}
errMsg += "MethodName: " + args.methodName + " \n";
}
throw new Error(errMsg);
}
function createSL(divid, swidth, sheight, source, initparameters)
{
var pluginid = divid + "Plugin";
var divElement = document.getElementById(divid);
var altHTML = divElement.innerHTML;
if (swidth == null)
swidth='100%';
if (sheight == null)
sheight='750px';
Silverlight.createObjectEx(
{
source: source,
parentElement: divElement,
id: pluginid,
properties:
{
// Plug-in properties
width:swidth,
height:sheight,
minRuntimeVersion:'2.0.31005.0'
},
events:
{
OnError: onSilverlightError // OnError property value -- event-handler function name.
// OnLoad property value -- event-handler function name.
},
initParams: initparameters
});
}You can also create a Silverlight object using the silverlight.CreateObject method and include that in the SpSilverlight.js file.

In your web parts in the OnPreRender event you will have to register following javascript files:

the Silverlight.js file (which comes with Silverlight and can be found in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v3.0\Tools directory)
the SpSilverlight.js file you just created.
protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnPreRender(e);
ClientScriptManager cs = Page.ClientScript;// Include the required javascript file.
if (!cs.IsClientScriptIncludeRegistered("sl_javascript"))
cs.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this.GetType(), "sl_javascript", "/_LAYOUTS/SL3/Silverlight.js");
if (!cs.IsClientScriptIncludeRegistered("spsl_javascript"))
cs.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this.GetType(), "spsl_javascript", "/_LAYOUTS/SL3/SpSilverlight.js");
}Notice the path to the javascript files. I both deployed them to a sub folder of the 12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS folder. To avoid having to deploy these files for each web part and application page, you can best deploy them once to a single sub folder of the 12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS folder. You can also deploy them to the ClientBin folder under your SharePoint web application (in IIS).

Call the above javascript from within the CreateChildControls method:

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
string slstring = "";
silverlightHost = new LiteralControl(string.Format("

{0}", slstring));
this.Controls.Add(silverlightHost);
}If you need to pass data to the Silverlight control you need to set the initParams argument. This is a comma delimited string which has the following syntax:

key1=value1,key2=value2,...Note that there are no spaces.

The CreateChildControls method would look as follows:

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
string xaplocation = "/_LAYOUTS/SL3/HelloSilverlight3.xap";
string initparams = string.Format("url={0},list=Shared Documents", SPContext.Current.Web.Url);
string slstring = string.Format("", xaplocation, initparams);
silverlightHost = new LiteralControl(string.Format("

{0}", slstring));
this.Controls.Add(silverlightHost);
}