Custom SharePoint List View – can I put it in a feature (WSP)

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Here's my situation:

I'm working in SharePoint 2007 Enterprise, I have a feature that creates a list for me when I deploy and activate it. My usual workflow thus far has been to deploy the solution, activate it, then open up SharePoint Designer to customize the list.

My customizations are typically pretty complex, but I'll keep things simple. In this case, let's just say that I edit AllItems.aspx, convert the data view to an XSLT data view, then I add one column with static text.

I've used a few different tools (SPSource, VSeWSS, SharePoint Manager, OCDExportList, etc) to extract my custom schema.xml and all the default views, but I have yet to have any luck figuring out where the the code for AllItems.aspx is now that it's been customized.

When I extract (using any of the tools above) AllItems.aspx is no different than the default. The <View> element in schema.xml is reduced to one line, for example:

<View DefaultView="TRUE" 
      MobileView="TRUE" 
      MobileDefaultView="TRUE" 
      Type="HTML" 
      FPModified="TRUE" 
      DisplayName="All Documents" 
      Url="Forms/AllItems.aspx" 
      Level="1" 
      ContentTypeID="0x" />

I'm really stuck here… I've got no clue what to do. Is it even possible? It would save me a great amount of time (and documentation) if I could include my customizations in my feature.

If there's any other info I'm missing that would help, let me know… thanks!

Latest findings:

I've found out a bit more in the past couple hours. If I save the list as a List Template, then save the .stp file locally as a .cab file I can extract its contents. One of the files is manifest.xml which contains the schema.xml as well as a few other sections.

One of those sections is a <webparts> section that has a <webpart> for each view. Each of those <webpart> elements contains a really long string of characters… no clue what those characters actually represent.

The important thing is that I think any custom views have to actually be Web Parts if deployed as part of a solution… but I'm not positive.

Best Answer

I have faced a similar issue a while ago. I had to create a very customized view and I had to give up the ListFormWebPart completely, and have created my own webpart to render the data.

Generally, when you customize the aspx file in SPDesigner, all your changes will be in the aspx file itself. Open it in SPDesigner and you will see there all the changes you have made. After you have converted to the XSL Data View, the standard ListFormWebPart is replaced by a DataFormWebPart, which doesn't care about the <View> tags specified in the schema.xml; Look in the aspx file itself for the ListFormWebPart.

Why not do all the customizations you want on a list, save the list as a template (it will include the associated AllItems.aspx) and then use that template in your feature to create your list? You could add the extracolumn from code (if it's dynamic and cannot be included in the template), and so on.

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