Invoking a public Salesforce Web Service Method from a force.com site

Typically when dealing with a Salesforce hosted web service you need to first authenticate to the login site to get a sessionId and Url of the server that will process the requests.

It turns out that it is possible to invoke a web service without this authentication step provided it is configured in a certain way.

Step 1

Mark the class as global and the web service as public. E.g.

 /* 
 * Test to see if the web service can be connected to and used 
 * without having to log in as there is no api sObject use here.
 */
global class HelloWorld
{
    WebService public static String GetMessage()
    {
        return 'Hello world';
    }
}

Step 2

In Salesforce, it is important to give public access to the class (Adding the class under Settings > Develop > Sites > Public Access Settings)

Step 3

Download and import the WSDL from the Apex class.

Step 4

Once you have imported the WSDL you will need to use the public URL of the web service rather than the standard version which requires a session to be established first.

E.g. The domain will change to use the a pattern like:

https://<yourcompanyinsites>.<sandboxname>.<sandbo​xinstance>.force.com/<sitename>

https://<yourcompanyinsites>.secure.force.com/<sitename>

Step n+1

One of the key aspects when calling it from C# is setting ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue before creating the web service proxy. E.g.

System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false;

See:

• Public Web Services via Apex and Force.com Sites

IIS terminated web server process during debugging - Application poll ping settings in IIS

When debugging a web application from Visual Studio I've started getting the following error when I take too long to step through a process:

"The web server process that was being debugged has been terminated by Internet Information Services (IIS). This can be avoided by configuring Application Pool ping setting in IIS. See help for further details."

Try increasing the "Ping Maximum Response Time (seconds)" or turning off "Ping Enabled" entirely.

See also:

• Stack Overflow: Why does debugging keep timing out in IIS7?

Sitecore CMS 6.2 - Accessing parameters in Sublayouts

<Rant>I often seem to have no end of grief when searching for Sitecore documentation straight from Google. It seems most of the useful information is buried in cookbooks and component references which are in PDF format rather than HTML and require a login to the Sitecore Developer Network. I just find it frustrating that they have lots of good documentation but it is difficult to search. I'm almost tempted to bring all their docs down to a public facing web server and letting it get indexed.</Rant>

As a case and point, I wanted an administrator editing the layout details for a content items control to be able to specify a value that would be mapped into a public property on a user control. The Additional Parameters seemed like a good candidate but didn't lead anywhere with the standard Sitecore install.

Turning to Google I found Anders Dreyers post on Accessing parameters in Sublayouts with Sitecore 5.3.1. At least with that version of Sitecore it looked like parameters weren't easily available in a sublayout.

That post did lead me to Sitecore.Web.UI.SublayoutRenderingType, which is referenced in the web.config as the rendering control for sublayouts. Using Reflector on it shows that the parameters collection could be used to automatically set properties using reflection.

After searching through the Presentation Component Reference I went to the Presentation Component Cookbook PDF via a footnote reference and then onto the SublayoutParameterHelper via another footnote.

4.5.3 How to Pass Rendering Parameters to a Control
To pass parameters to a control using the Control Properties dialog:

• In the Control Properties dialog, enter control properties.

To pass parameters to a control using the rendering properties dialog:

• In the rendering properties dialog, click the Parameters tab, and then enter named parameters.¹²

¹² To access the parameters passed to a sublayout, see http://trac.sitecore.net/SublayoutParameterHelper.

Googling for SublayoutParameterHelper lead me back to Cascade the Data Source of a Sublayout down to Nested Controls PDF, which seems to explain how to use the SublayoutParameterHelper.

This looks like just what I was after. By inheriting from Sitecore.Sharedsource.Web.UI.Sublayouts.SublayoutBase rather than System.Web.UI.UserControl the parameters will be automatically mapped to the corresponding properties in the sublayout if they exist. Just remember to call base.OnInit() if you override it (as per the documentation).

ASP.NET Control.SetRenderMethodDelegate()

I was looking for a way to inject a WebControl as the next sibling of another HtmlControl where they may not be in a control tree yet. The post Adding Rendering with SetRenderMethodDelegate() - aeh, sort of seemed like a possibility but didn't eventuate as certain controls (Panels) would render their outer content before passing off the the rendering delegate.

Using jQuery with Sitecore and avoiding conflicts with Prototype

When using jQuery with Sitecore you need to take additional steps so that the jQuery $ function doesn't interfere with the Prototype $ function that Sitecore uses for the Sitecore Ribbon.

Example from api.jquery.com

jQuery.noConflict();
(function($) { 
  $(function() {
    // more code using $ as alias to jQuery
  });
})(jQuery);
// other code using $ as an alias to the other library

See Also:

• Avoiding jQuery’s noConflict() Mode with Prototype and Sitecore
• jQuery conflicts with PageEditor

System.Web.MembershipProvider and RoleProvider references not found in unit tests after VS2010 upgrade

After updating a solution from VS2008 to VS2010 the unit tests for our custom web security providers started failing the builds with messages like:

Error    15    The type or namespace name 'MembershipProvider' could not be found (are you missing a using 
directive or an assembly reference?)    D:\Development\[snip].UnitTests\ProviderHelper.cs

Error    16    The type or namespace name 'RoleProvider' could not be found (are you missing a using 
directive or an assembly reference?)    D:\Development\[snip].UnitTests\ProviderHelper.cs

Error    4    The type name 'RoleProvider' could not be found. This type has been forwarded to assembly 
'System.Web.ApplicationServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'. 
Consider adding a reference to that assembly.    D:\Development\[snip].UnitTests\ProviderHelper.cs

The last exception here reveals the issue. The project now needs a reference to System.Web.ApplicationServices

Writing cleaner WebControl HtmlTextWriter output with a fluent interface

Producing HTML output from a ASP.NET WebControl is fairly verbose in terms of the amount of markup required. This isn't ideal for readability or maintenance.

When I find a workable solution I'll post it here. Right now I'm thinking it will be some form of Fluent interface.

See Also:

• Stack Overflow: Fluent interface for rendering HTML
• Stack Overflow: Alternatives to HtmlTextWriter in a System.Web.UI.Control?
• HtmlTextWriter fluent interface