HOWTO: Create and Deploy a "Hello World" WebPart for SharePoint

Assuming I have a SharePoint site ready to go, I will be using My Site for Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 for my example. (NOTE: I will be creating links in this document to screen shots to help clarify what I'm writing about).

1.  Install the Web Part Templates for Visual Studio .NET
2. Start Visual Studio and create a new C# Web Part Project named HelloWebPartLib as illustrated.
3. Visual Studio will automatically create several files for you. Delete the files: WebPart1.cs and WebPart1.dwp.
4. Add a Web Part class to the project named HelloWorld.cs as illustrated.
5. Add a new Web Part DWP item to the project named HelloWorld.dwp as illustrated.
6. In the Properties window for the DWP file, set the Build Action property to "Content". This will be needed later when you build a CAB file for deployment.
   
   
    
7. Create a new key pair using sn.exe so you can give the HelloWebPartLib a strong name as illustrated.
   
   For example:  sn -k c:\keypair.snk
    
8. Edit the AssemblyInfo.cs file to change the AssemblyKeyFile attribute to point to the key pair file you just created.
   
   [assembly: AssemblyKeyFile("c:\\keypair.snk")]
    
9. In the HelloWord.cs file, edit the RenderWebPart method to write out "Hello World!"
   
   
   protected override void RenderWebPart(HtmlTextWriter output)

   {

         //output.Write(SPEncode.HtmlEncode(Text));

       output.Write("Hello World!");

   }
   
   
10. Build the HelloWebPartLib project.
11. Now that you have built the project, we need to extract the PublicKeyToken value of the assembly to specify in the HelloWorld.dwp file. I use Lutz Roeder's Reflector utility to pull this information, however you can use sn -T from the Visual Studio command prompt as well.
    
    
     
12. Edit the HelloWorld.dwp file so that the XML entity named <Assembly> contains the PublicKeyToken value that you extracted using Reflector or sn.exe. Also, add the TypeName value as shown below.
    
    NOTE: Make sure you replace the highlighted public key token value in the example below with your own!
     
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <WebPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2" >
          <Title>Hello World</Title>
          <Description>Hello World WebPart</Description>
          <Assembly>HelloWebPartLib, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4a5727bcff5dd0bb</Assembly>
          <TypeName>HelloWebPartLib.HelloWorld</TypeName>
          <!-- Specify initial values for any additional base class or custom properties here. -->
    </WebPart>
     
13. Edit the Manifest.xml file to specify the HelloWorld.dwp file in your project. Note that you can simply alter the existing text that reads "<DwpFile FileName="WebPart1.dwp"/>" and change it to the following:
     
    <DwpFile FileName="HelloWorld.dwp"/>
     
14. Now we are ready to deploy our Web Part. The easiest way to do so is to create a CAB project.
15. Right-click on your solution and then click Add New Project.
16. As illustrated, create a Setup and Deployment CAB project named HelloWPCab.
17. Right-click on the CAB project, point to Add, and then click Project Output.
18. When the Add Project Output Group dialog box appears, specify "primary output" and "content files" and then click OK.
    
    
     
19. Rebuild the entire solution. At this point a CAB file will have been created in the project directory you specified when creating the CAB project.
20. To install our CAB file on the SharePoint server, copy the generated CAB file to the server. For this example, I am copying to the C:\ drive of the server.
21. Once our CAB file has been copied over to the server, we can run the SharePoint command-line administration tool named stsadm.exe. This will deploy our CAB file containing the HelloWorld WebPart.
    
    NOTE: The stsadm.exe file on the server is in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN\ by defult.
     
22. As illustrated, run the stsadm.exe utility using the following parameters to install the HelloWorld WebPart. Note that you may need to change the highlighted path below depending on where you copied the CAB file on the server.
    
    stsadm -o addwppack -globalinstall -force -filename C:\HelloWPCab.cab
     
23. As illustrated, now you can add your WebPart to a SharePoint portal page! In this case, I am adding it to the default page in "My Site". Do this by clicking on the Modify My Page link, point to Add Web Parts, and then click Browse.
24. When you click on the Virtual Server Gallery link on the right window pane, you will see the Hello World Web part available for use.
    
    
     
25. Drag and Drop your Hello World WebPart into one of the available zones as illustarted. That's it!