SharePoint Framework

SharePoint Framework Nuggets: working with GUIDs

SharePoint developers - we do like GUIDs, don’t we. We all read RFC4122 both once and twice. And now with SharePoint Framework and the goal to embrace all them Macintosh and open source people - they gotta have their fair share of GUIDs. And to aid with that the SharePoint Framework got some really nice GUID features, although a bit unpolished as you might notice - but this is all preview bits at the time of writing.

SharePoint Framework

SharePoint Framework Nuggets: logging like a pro

I guess that almost every application or solution you ever built has contained some portions of a logging mechanism. And how many of you have written your own - yup, all of you! But what about the SharePoint Framework - yes, it has built-in logging! How to log in the SharePoint Framework Logging is a very convenient and easy way to keep track of events happening, instead of having breakpoints, or in JavaScript even worse - alerts.

SharePoint Framework

SharePoint Framework Nuggets: render error messages

Do you write code that potentially can throw an error or an exception? Oh, you don’t - but sure you use a web service or external service or something that can throw an error. Well, it is you responsibility to handle the error and make sure to inform the user in a good way that something bad happened. With that I mean, do not show just a Guid. With the SharePoint Framework being all client side I think it is important to have control of your client side Web Parts and make sure that you properly handle and display error messages in a consistent way.

SharePoint Framework

SharePoint Framework nuggets: the loading indicator

SharePoint Framework is all about rendering stuff on the client side, avoiding the long overdue ASP.NET Web Forms technology that SharePoint (Online) is still fundamentally based on. When rendering things client side everything is done asynchronously, to avoid locking down the UI threads and having a user experience that is fluent. In order to give the user good feedback that things are happening in the background, you need to have some kind of visual cue that tells the user - hey I’m doing stuff now, gimme a minute.