SharePoint Custom Action: Execute Code from the EditControlBlock Location

There are a few great blogs available to show how to develop custom actions. However, it is quite tricky to attach custom code to a EditControlBlock location.

Normally with most custom action locations, you can simply specify the assembly and control class in the Elements.xml file.



Example:
ControlAssembly="LaunchDocItemCustEvent, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=63316a326efb84ec"
ControlClass="LaunchDocItemCustEvent.LaunchDocWriter";


But in the case of EditControlBlock you will get an “Invalid URL” error when you try execute the code.


You have to specify a custom target URL and not an assembly..example:
UrlAction Url=http://www.google.com

This article will show you how to work around this problem by applying a bit of Javascript and additional custom code.

The tutorial will show all the steps required to get our URLAction in the EditControlBlock to initiate a postback and we will then trap the postback in another (second) custom action which has a control class in place. From here we can then execute any custom code.


So, We will change to UrlAction from:
     UrlAction Url=http://www.google.com/
to
     UrlAction Url="javascript:__doPostBack('MyEventTarget',{ItemId});"

Here are the steps:



1. Install WSPBuilder


2. To start, go ahead and create a new WSPBuilder project called “LaunchDocItemCustEvent”.

and add a Blank Feature to it named “WriteTextFile”.

 Construct the elements.xml file (I removed the '<' and '/>' characters in this post) :
?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?

Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
CustomAction
Id="WriteDocId"
Title="Write Doc ID to Text File"
Location="EditControlBlock"
Description="Write Doc ID to Text File"
RegistrationType="List"
RegistrationId="101"
ShowInLists="TRUE"
UrlAction Url="http://www.google.com"/
CustomAction
Elements


Build the project.



Enable Output Window.

Build WSP

 
 





View results in Output Window. Ensure there are no errors.

Deploy the solution

Remember that your solution will deploy to the web url you specified in the project properties...go to Project --&gt; Properties --&gt; Debug.. enter the web url to which you want to deploy.

After deployment go to your SharePoint site, refresh and then navigate to a document library. Select a document item and click on the dropdown actions menu.
You will see the new custom action menu item.
When you click on the custom action you will see that you are redirected to Google.com

OK, so we have a foundation in place and now we can start tweaking it to NOT redirect, but rather to execute our custom code.

Add new C# class your solution – name it LaunchDocWriter

In the new Class add references to:
Microsoft.SharePoint
System.Web

Add the following Code:
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;
using System.IO;


Inherit from SPLinkButton. The IMPORTANT thing is also that your class must be public.

public class LaunchDocWriter : SPLinkButton
{
} 

Overwrite the onload event:

protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{
this.EnsureChildControls();
base.OnLoad(e);


if (this.Page.Request["__EVENTTARGET"] == "MyEventTarget")
{
int itemId = Convert.ToInt32(this.Page.Request["__EVENTARGUMENT"]);


System.IO.TextWriter mywriterFired = new StreamWriter(@"C:\zzz_CodeBehindFileItemMenu.txt", true);


mywriterFired.WriteLine("Event Fired at:" + DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString() + ": Item ID:" + itemId.ToString());


mywriterFired.Close();
}
}


Now we need to somehow instruct SharePoint to NOT redirect to a url, but to rather execute the new code.

In Elements.xml change (I left out the '&lt;' and '/&gt;' characters for this post to work, but you should include them in your code):
UrlAction Url=http://www.google.com/
to
UrlAction Url="javascript:__doPostBack('MyEventTarget',{ItemId});"

?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?
Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
CustomAction
Id="WriteDocId"
Title="Write Doc ID to Text File"
Location="EditControlBlock"
Description="Write Doc ID to Text File"
RegistrationType="List"
RegistrationId="101"
ShowInLists="TRUE"
UrlAction Url="javascript:__doPostBack('MyEventTarget',{ItemId});"


CustomAction
CustomAction Id="UserInterfaceCustomActions.SiteActionsToolbar"
GroupId="SiteActions"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
Sequence="1000"
Title="MY SITE ACTIONS BUTTON"
ControlAssembly=""
ControlClass="LaunchDocItemCustEvent.LaunchDocWriter"
CustomAction
Elements

Rebuild your project.

Add

ControlAssembly="LaunchDocItemCustEvent, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=63316a326efb84ec"
To
CustomAction Id="UserInterfaceCustomActions.SiteActionsToolbar"
GroupId="SiteActions"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
Sequence="1000"
Title="MY SITE ACTIONS BUTTON"
ControlAssembly="LaunchDocItemCustEvent, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=63316a326efb84ec"
ControlClass="LaunchDocItemCustEvent.LaunchDocWriter"
/CustomAction
/Elements

Right click on your project and select "Build WSP"
Right click on your project and select "Deploy WSP"


If you did not get any errors you can refresh your SharePoint site.
Attach your project to all w3wp processes and add a breakpoint.
you will now see that your code execute when the user click on the menu item.

Enjoy !