Programmatically Update Web Part Properties
Have you ever wanted to give your users access to the personalized properties of a web part through a custom interface built into a web part? In ASP.NET, updating these properties and more importantly persisting the changes was a pretty straight forward process. Unfortunately, the same straight forward techniques can not be used when developing a SharePoint web part.
The code below is a very simple web part inheriting from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart. It consists of a TextBox and a Button but it illustrates a complete solution for persisting personalization changes to the SharePoint database programmatically.
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;
namespace UpdatePropertiesWithCode.UpdateMeWebPart
{
public class UpdateMeWebPart : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
{
protected TextBox MessageTextBox;
protected Button SaveButton;
[Category("My Configuration")]
[WebBrowsable(false)]
[WebDescription("Message to display.")]
[WebDisplayName("Message")]
[Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.User)]
public string Message { get; set; }
protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
MessageTextBox = new TextBox();
MessageTextBox.Text = this.Message;
SaveButton = new Button();
SaveButton.Text = "Save";
SaveButton.Click += new EventHandler(SaveButtonClick);
Controls.Add(MessageTextBox);
Controls.Add(SaveButton);
}
protected void SaveButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.Message = MessageTextBox.Text;
SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web;
SPFile file = web.GetFile(HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.ToString());
SPLimitedWebPartManager manager = file.GetLimitedWebPartManager(PersonalizationScope.User);
System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart webPart = manager.WebParts[this.ID];
((UpdateMeWebPart)webPart).Message = this.Message;
try
{
web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
manager.SaveChanges(webPart);
}
finally
{
web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
}
}
}
}