So, the first thing I noticed when testing Events in [DNN] 5 was that it seemed like some of our shared base assemblies weren't being updated to the latest version that comes with Events.  Looking into it further, I realized that those assemblies were associated with the other Engage module I had installed on the site, Engage: Locator.  The short story is that [DNN] now keeps track of assemblies when you install them, to help keep assemblies from being uninstalled or overwritten incorrectly.  When you install a [DNN] 4 module, it appears that it sets the version of the assemblies that it installs to the version of the module.  So, I had installed Locator 1.4, which gave Engage.Dnn.Framework.dll a version of 1.4.0 in the [DNN] database.  When I installed Events 1.1, [DNN] thought it was an older version of Engage.Dnn.Framework.dll (1.1.0), even though it was actually the most recent version.

So, to help fix this as much as we could, I decided it was time to figure out this 5.0 packaging stuff and create a 5.0 package for Engage: Events.  First, I asked [DNN] to make a module package of Events, based on the [DNN] 4 package I had installed.  I looked through that and updated and removed parts to get it closer to what we wanted.  Specifically, I removed the <eventMessage> section from the Module component, since... I couldn't figure out any reason we'd need that.  I think it might be necessary now if you implement IUpgradeable, but it's best to try it out for yourself.

I also removed all of the files other than scripts, cleanup, and assemblies, since we use a Resource File .zip to avoid having to change the manifest whenever the content files in the module change.  In [DNN] 4 manifests, this looked like a <resourceFile> element in the <folder> element for your module, pointing to the file to unzip with all of your files.  In [DNN] 5, that didn't work.  After a bit of searching, I found Erik's blog post, DotNetNuke 5 Extention Packaging.  This helped my a ways along my path, showing that these Resource File .zips have their own section in the manifest file.  After a bit of trying to figure out why his example wasn't working for me, I figured out that he'd left out one of the elements (the interior <resourceFile>) in the XML.  With that figured out, my section looks like this:

<component type="ResourceFile">

  <resourceFiles>

    <basePath>DesktopModules/EngageEvents</basePath>

    <resourceFile>

      <name>Resources.zip</name>

    </resourceFile>

  </resourceFiles>

</component>

Back to the first issue I had experienced, I could now specify my own versions for the assemblies that I included in the package.  This isn't necessarily a magic bullet, though, until all of our modules have a [DNN] 5 package.  This is because the correct version of some of the shared assemblies (e.g. Engage.Dnn.Framework.dll) is still lower than the version of some of our [DNN] 4 modules.  (For example, the version of Engage.Dnn.Framework.dll released with Events is 1.1.0, but the latest version of Locator is 1.4.0).  So, if those are installed, we'll see the same inability to overwrite the shared assemblies with newer versions.  But, this is the first step towards getting there.  Accurate information is better than inaccurate, in my book.

The next change to be made to the generated manifest is to fill in the <owner> section at the top of the package.  We can supply a <name>, <organization>,<url>, and <email> that is shown when the module is installed.  This makes sure people know who wrote the module and how to find us.  From Erik's post, I also found out that you can include HTML in those fields, so you can make the <url> and <email> links, rather than plain text.  Our section looks like this:

<owner>

  <name>Engage Software</name>

  <organization>Engage Software</organization>

  <url><![CDATA[<a href="http://www.engagesoftware.com/">http://www.engagesoftware.com/</a>]]></url>

  <email><![CDATA[<a href="mailto:support@engagemodules.com">support@engagemodules.com</a>]]></email>

</owner>

The last bit of new functionality in the manifest that I worked with is the License and Release Notes.  These are new fields that users see when they install the module.  We were already including a copy of the license in our [DNN] 4 packages, but now we can link to that file and make sure that users explicitly agree to it before installing the module.  We also keep release notes on our website that we can now show upon install, rather than making folks search for them.

So, at this point, I think I'm done with this process.  However, I try to install, and see the following:

Tracking this down, I realized that I had deleted elements with default values in the <moduleControls> section of the manifest.  I didn't want to have a <viewOrder> element making it seem like someone was specifically setting that value, when really we don't care, it's just a default.  Well, one of the elements I deleted was <controlKey> from the default module control.  This is how our [DNN] 4 manifest looks, since the default module control doesn't have a key assigned.  Looking at the error, it looked like that was no longer an acceptable practice, so I added a <controlKey/> to that <moduleControl> entry, and it worked like a charm.  And, really, that makes sense.  I care that <controlKey> is empty, I'm not just accepting the default value for lack of a better value, I'm actively choosing to use an empty <controlKey>.

So, those are the hassles, issues, and features that I encountered while creating a [DNN] 5 package for our module.  Hopefully this'll give you some better understanding of some of what's involved, and get you more quickly around those obstacles that I ran up against.

[Cross-posted from http://www.engagesoftware.com/Blog/EntryId/194/Packaging-Modules-for-DotNetNuke-5.aspx]

The first major update for Engage: Events has been released!  Engage: Events is the event management module for [DotNetNuke] from Engage Software.

Many of the users of the 1.0 version of Events wanted to display a small, simple list of events in a prominent place on their site, like the home page.  To address this scenario, we created three new templates that look great in a smaller pane, and present a simpler view of the events.

We also recognized that many of our users needed to have access to the list of attendees outside of the website itself.  The responses list is now exportable to Excel or as a comma separated values (CSV) file.

One of the more common requests from our users is to limit the number of registrants to an event.  This is especially important when you are scheduling classes or other activities with limited seating.  You can now set a registration cap for your events, and, if you'd like, provide a custom message to the user if they want to register after the event has filled.

Also known as "Why Did My Skin Just Change?" and "Why Doesn't NavigateURL work?"

When navigating to between controls within your [DotNetNuke] module, you have many options (and would do well to read Michael Washington's Module Navigation tutorial on the subject).

If you decide to use the built-in navigation mechanisms, when you want to navigate to your control with the key "EditItems", you'd get the URL by calling EditUrl("EditItems") (or one of its overloads, depending on what other information you need on the querystring).  This method returns a new URL with three pieces of information on it: the current page (tabId), the current module (mid), and the control key your provided (ctl).

Here's where we encounter module isolation.  When "mid" is on the querystring,  [DNN] loads only that module on the page.  If you try to avoid this by using the NavigateURL method instead of EditUrl, [DNN] won't know which module to load the control for, so it won't load anything.

In addition to not showing the other modules that are usually on that page, one of the biggest side effects of module isolation that you'll notice is that your skin and container change.  When in module isolation, the admin skin and container are used (though, starting in [DNN] 5.0, there is no longer an admin skin, so this shouldn't be an issue going forward starting in [DNN] 5.0, these are called the edit skin and container, rather than "admin").  If you have a different admin skin, this can be quite jarring to you and your users.

If the consequences and side effects of module isolation work for you/your customers/your users, then it is definitely the easiest method of getting around your module's controls.  However, it has its drawbacks.  If you need more control, again, check out Michael Washington's Module Navigation tutorial.

Have you heard of our Engage: Employment module for [DotNetNuke]?  I'm talking about our module for posting job listings on your website and allowing folks to apply for them.  We have today released a new version of the module to fix a number of bugs that have been discovered, while completely revamping the administrative experience.

Where before it took about a million clicks to get the module setup and to get a good understanding of how it was setup and what had already been setup, now you're initially greeted with an administrative overview, with quick, one-click access to every part of the administrative interface.  We think this will save you hours if you're setting up a site of any significant number of job listings.

We've also added the much requested ability to send notification emails to different people for each job, to allow for easier management and delegation of responsibilities when dealing with new applicants.  These new applications can also be given statuses to track the movement of the application through your hiring workflow (before you were stuck giving statuses to the users themselves, even if they were great for one position but terrible for another).

Finally, we improved the searching experience, adding the ability to search by job categories and to use quoted phrases when doing a keyword search.

And this is all in addition to the bugs we found and fixed from the previous version.  We really think this is the slickest, most intuitive, and most stable release of the module yet, and we have some great ideas for where to take it next to increase its appeal even more.  You can see what we've done, where we're headed, and submit your own bugs or suggestions at our issue tracking site.

If you haven't used the module before, or you want to see the new features in action, you should take it for a spin on our demo site.  Here you can login as an administrator and a user, and see what the experience is like from start to finish.

When building [DotNetNuke] modules, a number of times I've run up against the issue of trying to instantiate a ModuleInfo instance with only a module ID.  However, the GetModule signature on ModuleController takes both a module ID and a tab ID.  In this latest instance where I've come against this issue, I was actually trying to get a tab ID based on the module ID, so I obviously didn't already have one to provide. 

As I started to move down the road of writing my own query to get this simple thing done, I found that the GetModule method and underlying query will take a "null" value for the tab ID!  Unbeknownst to me, the solution was right in front of me, right where I expected it to be the whole time, I just couldn't see it.

So, if you need a ModuleInfo instance and you only have a module ID, call GetModule(moduleId, Null.NullInteger) and you're good to go!

(I've put in a request with the people in charge to add an overload to GetModule so that this is more obvious going forward)

I started on an update to one of our modules for [DotNetNuke] this week, and was surprised to see many of the administrative pages looked like they had no styles applied to them.  Tables were jumbled, with no differentiation between header and or row content; things just didn’t look right.

As I tried to adjust some of those styles, I came to realize that the issue was, in fact, a change in the behavior of [DNN]. While before, when I accessed a control in the admin directory of my module, the module.css file in that directory was referenced; now the module.css in the main folder of my module was referenced (that is, previously DesktopModules/MyModule/admin/module.css was referenced, but now /DesktopModules/MyModule/module.css is referenced).

After some digging, I figured out that the change happened in [DNN] 4.9.0 (the latest version) and found mention of it in [DotNetNuke]'s Issue Tracker.  So, now, the moral of this story.  Starting in [DotNetNuke] version 4.9.0, only the module.css in the main folder of a module is referenced, regardless of where the control being loaded lives (unless there isn't a module.css there).  Therefore, you only need one module.css to control the styles of all of your controls.  This is great news from a maintainability standpoint.

However, if your modules still need to support versions before 4.9.0, we need to figure out how to manage this relationship.  It seems obvious that, to support 4.9.0, we need to combine all of our stylesheets from whatever folders they may be in currently, creating one stylesheet for all our controls in our module’s root folder (I used CleanCss to combine them and remove duplicate styles). 

Now, after the obvious choice, we have to face the less-obvious choice of how to provide those same styles on pre-4.9.0 sites.  My first instinct was to remove all content from the module.css in my admin folder, and replace it with an import to the main module.css, that is @import url('../module.css').  This may work, but I wasn’t sure if the browser would cache that reference, and it seemed wrong to have to load two files just to get to the real one.  What I ended up deciding was to create a Post-Build Event in my project to copy module.css from my module’s root folder into the admin folder (which looks like copy $(ProjectDir)module.css $(ProjectDir)admin/module.css).

Hopefully this provides you module developers with a good guideline for what’s going on and how to deal with it when you come across your modules acting like they’ve never heard of this “stylesheet” you keep telling them about.

We at Engage spent the end of last week in Tulsa, presenting and participating in the 3rd annual Tulsa TechFest.  My colleague Ian has written up a great review, with links to all of our presentations on his blog.

I presented on Building a DotNetNuke Module, walking through the Visual Studio project template that we just released, demonstrating what DNN requires of and offers to developers of modules.

We had a great time and really enjoyed the turnout for our sessions.  We hope that those of you who attended were able to learn from us, and we were glad to get some time to learn from the community as well.  Hope to see you guys again next year!

It shouldn't be hard to get started writing a module for [DotNetNuke], but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of help especially when you are wanting to use C#.  At Engage, we have created a Visual Studio project template which will get you started developing a C# [DotNetNuke] module, using a Web Application project (rather than the, in my opinion, much more cumbersome Web Site project).  It is available for free on our downloads page after registering on the site.

The template will get you started with the basics of a [DotNetNuke] module, providing basic placeholder controls (for view, edit, and settings), base classes to use for your module controls and your settings control, a manifest and NAnt build file to easily package your module, and the basic starting point (and sample code) for your business controller class and data provider.  It should really speed up how you start a new module, and free you from always copying your last module and then having to figure out what to delete and what to leave.

To use the template, put the downloaded zip file into the C# web templates folder for Visual Studio.  This is typically in My Documents/Visual Studio [2005|2008]/Templates/ProjectTemplates/Visual C#/Web (you might have to create the Web folder yourself).  This will make the new project type appear under the Web node for C#, in the My Templates section, when you create a new project.  You might also want to open up the zip file and alter the template manifest (C# Compiled Module.vstemplate) to include your company name (replace the values in the CustomParameters section where it says YourCompany).

Please check it out, we hope it helps you out.  Happy module building!

[Cross-posted from http://www.engagesoftware.com/Blog/EntryID/162.aspx]