Image Renditions in SharePoint 2013

There is a new cool feature introduced in 2013 called Image rendition, which is very helpful to the content writers to crop or resize (technically ‘Optimize’ J ) the images on the fly. In 2010 there was no such kind of feature to change the image sizing through the UI. For this we used to approach the designers. But with this Rendition feature in 2013, we can resize/crop the images in a simple way.

This feature improves the user experience for the sites by optimizing the images. The original (actually uploaded) image will be saved in the site and you can use different scaled sizes of the image throughout the site.

This will be very helpful when posting content, writing blog posts and developing mobile applications which has images.

These are the prerequisites to enable this feature

1>     Enable the Blob Cache for the webapp where you need this feature

2>     Publishing Feature must be enabled(if your site is not using publishing template)

Here I am taking the publishing portal to show you this. (so my 2^nd prerequisite is done)

Now

Enabling the Blob Cache:

The dynamic changes in the images affects the performance of the application, internally the image rendition capability depends on the Blob Cache to cache the renditions. So to work this feature perfectly without any performance impacts, enable the blob cache for your web application.

For this go to the web.config of your webappplication and make sure that Blob Cache is enabled like here

Now go to the site settingsàSelect Image Renditions under Look and Feel Category

You will find some of the predefined renditions like this

 

You can edit, delete these existing or you can create the new rendition.

So now let’s have a look how these works,

Upload a picture in to the image gallery and click on the … symbol to open the menu. And then select the Edit Renditions

Then you can see the image with different renditions (The default four renditions)

Now, I am editing the third “Display Template Picture On Top” rendition. By default it has 300x100 in size. I am cropping the image to show only bottom portion like this.

So we have edited the image (here I have cropped it, you can set the size by creating the new rendition too). So now use this on the page.

I have created a page and inserted my uploaded (original) image on to it.

Now, I am selecting the third rendition (which we modified earlier i.e “Display Template Picture On Top”) .So the image changes to its scaling, like this

And save it.

Some other information about renditions:

·         This rendition is not only for images, this can be used with videos too.

·         It supports lot of image and video types(like jpeg, png, wmv ,avi etc)

·         All the image rendition information you can see at 

              ~yoursitecollectionurl/_catalogs/masterpage/PublishingImageRenditions.xml

·         You can programmatically do the renditions using the ImageRendition and ImageRenditionCollection classes.

·         When we use an rendition for the image, SharePoint will append an Rendition ID to the image url, which will be used to load the renditioned image instead the original image on to the page when requests it.

       Eg : http://purnaintra:4923/SiteCollectionImages/Buildings.jpg?RenditionID=2

This is all about Image Renditions...!

Thank you.

 

Developing a SharePoint-Hosted App in SharePoint 2013 Part -I

Hi Guys,

This is the first post from me on SharePoint 2013. As part of R&D on SharePoint 2013 Apps, I got some good information from the msdn site and others. So I wanted to share with you…

Before start reading this post, have a look at this post to know basics about apps and why aapps?

In simple words, apps are of three types based on their hosting model

SharePoint Hosted: If you deploy/install your app with in the sharepoint server it is called sharepoint hosted app. In this, when we deploy the app a sharepoint site will be created and all the app content stored in the sharepoint itself. The app content will be lists/pages/content types etc.   

Auto Hosted (Azure): If we host the app on Windows Azure, it is called auto hosted. The app will sit in the cloud, we will download and install this app in to the sharepoint. When we install, the app will automatically create a site and provides us a windows azure site.

Provider Hosted: If you host your app in any other cloud (other cloud providers) environment, it is called Provider hosted. The logic and code related to app will be resided external to sharepoint. The code/logic might be in C# or JavaScript or php or java or anything. Here sharepoint just work as a place holder for the app.

Apps are isolated identities and they need a separate domain(called app domain) to deploy/install.one app cannot communicate with other apps. Once you deploy/install a sharepoint hosted app, it creates a separate site.

E.g. :  http://app-6d52f0e761fc86.apps.purnam.com/DemoApp1/Pages/Default.aspx

 i.e. http://[Appprefix]-[App Id].[App domain name]/[AppName].

Now let's create a simple sharepoint-hosted app with a static text and an alert message..

Developing a SharePoint Hosted App :

Go to visual studio 2012 à Create -> New -> Project -> select Office/Sharepoint category and then select the Apps under that.

Choose the App for SharePoint 2013 template .And give the required information

Give the name of the app, the url of the sharepoint site, give the hosting option as “SharePoint-hosted”. In this post I am showing only how to develop a sharepoint hosted app. If you want to deploy your app to windows azure, you need to select the “Auto-hosted”. If you want to deploy your app to any other cloud (or your own cloud) select “Provider-hosted” option.

Once you say finish, Your App Solution structure will be like this :

If you notice this, there is one feature, some css, image , javascript files along with a default.aspx page.

This default.aspx page is the landing page of your app site (When you deploy your app a site will be created and this page will be the home page of this site).

If you have look at to the Default.aspx page, you will find a head and main place holder and references to the App.css and App.js files. Along with this it calls the sharePointReady function of App.js file.

In this default page im writing a content with the h1 tags like this

 

In App.js by default CSOM code will be there. Here Sharepoint Ready function calling the  getUserName function. Now I am adding a simple function called ShowAlert(), just to show an alert when we access the app. Check this

Now build the project and then try to deploy it. You will find this below error (if you are trying to deploy the app for the first time without service apps creation and app domain creation).

The reason for this deployment error is you need set some prerequisite settings before deploying the app. These are the below settings/configurations to install and configure the apps in SP2013 successfully. 

·         Create an Isolated domain for the app

·         Create/Configure the App Management Service

·         Create/Configure the Subscription Settings Service

Creating Isolated Domain for the Apps :

Create the app domain using PowerShell cmdlets (There are some other approaches to create the app domain but I am showing here with the PowerShell as i am deploying in a single server work group environment )

Step 1 : 

Open the SharePoint 2013 Management PowerShell with Admin rights

Check the Admin and timer services running or not (if you say start it will start if they are stopped) with these commands

 

net start spadminv4

net start sptimerv4

For continuation click here..Developing a SharePoint-Hosted App in SharePoint 2013 Part -II

Developing a SharePoint-Hosted App in SharePoint 2013 Part -II

Continuation to the post Developing a SharePoint-Hosted App in SharePoint 2013 Part -I .

Once we verified that the above services are running do these next steps..

Step 2 :

Now we need to create domain for apps and register this domain to sharepoint. So that our apps will be hosted separately when we deploy them.

Run this PowerShell command to create the app domain. You should be an administrator with the Managed Account. Here my domain name is nature.com

So for naming conventions (or to follow principles J) , If your domain name is nature.com, give your domain name for apps as like natureapps.com

Set-SPAppDomain  "natureapps.com".

Now we need to create the AppManagement and subscription service applications as mentioned above.

Step 3 :

Creating the App Management and Subscription Setting Service applications

Ensure that the SPSubscriptionSettingsService and AppManagementServiceInstance services are running with these below cmdlets(if they are not running this cmdlet will make them to run)

Get-SPServiceInstance | where{$_.GetType().Name -eq "AppManagementServiceInstance" -or $_.GetType().Name -eq "SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceInstance"} | Start-SPServiceInstance

You will get this message if they are already running

 If you will not get this message, check whether they are started or not by going to

Central AdministrationàManage services on server under System Settings category

These services are running now, so the next step is we need to create the respective service applications with the below cmdlets. To do this you should have a SPManagedAccount.(or u can run with farm admin if it is a managed account).

If you want to create new managed account follow these steps : This **** marked step is optional if you have already a managed account

*****************************************

$account= New-SPManagedAccount

It will ask the credentials for the user to whom you want to make the Managed Account(in my case im giving farm admin  credentials itself, since i want to use my farm admin as a managed account for this )

******************************************

Now create the service apps with below cmdlets using this Managed Account.

$account = Get-SPManagedAccount “nature\administrator”(your domain name\user name)

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

$appPoolAppSvc = New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name AppServiceAppPool -Account $account

$appSubSvc = New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplication –ApplicationPool $appPoolSubSvc –Name SettingsServiceApp –DatabaseName SettingsServiceDB

$proxySubSvc = New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplicationProxy –ServiceApplication $appSubSvc

$appAppSvc = New-SPAppManagementServiceApplication -ApplicationPool $appPoolAppSvc -Name AppServiceApp -DatabaseName AppServiceDB

$proxyAppSvc = New-SPAppManagementServiceApplicationProxy -ServiceApplication $appAppSvc

 If you notice the above cmdlets, here we are creating the AppManagement Service application and SubscriptionSettingsServiceApplication. This will create two databases too.

Check this Msdn url to get all the cmdlets at a place.

So now lets verify whether these service applications are created or not .

Go to Central Administration àApplication Management àManage service applications check these two

And also verify ourAppdomain(natureapps.com) configured or not. Go to Central AdministrationàSelect Apps àThen select Configure App Urls under App Management.

Now you can find the App Domain as “natureapps.com”.And give app prefix for the app. This will be used in the app url. Here I have given as “spapps”.And says OK.(This app prefix can be given through powershell as like appdomain name, but i missed it).

With these, you have completed the settings required to deploy the sharepoint-hosted App. Now try to deploy the app. Once it got deployed successfully you will find this message in the output window

If you notice this message, it is showing that the app is successfully installed at

http://spapp-cdab466a043db3.natureapps.com/SharePointDemoApp1/.

Here

Spapp  - is the prefix what we have provided just now

cdab466a043db3- is the app id dynamically generated one

natureapps.com- is our app domain name

SharePointDemoApp1- is our app name

Now check the app from the SharePoint site (where we deployed our visual studio app solution ) à Site ContentsàCheck our App .

Now Click on it.It will redirect to our app site.( http://spapp-cdab466a043db3.natureapps.com/SharePointDemoApp1/.)

So FINALLY we achieved it...

Hope this will helpful ...Thanks.