SharePoint DevOps tasks

These are the tasks generally required for building a sharepoint add-in successfully in Azure DevOps:

• Use vs2017-win2019 agent in devops build pipeline due to sharepoint.targets error
• ASP.Net website
• Set output directory to 'bin\' rather than 'bin\debug'
• Open project property pages (right click -> properties)
• Open Build tab
• Set the 'Output Path' property to 'bin\'
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-change-the-build-output-directory?view=vs-2019
• Build Pipeline
• Add three publishing profiles with following settings

Variable	DEV
Publish Method	Web Deploy
Server	<Dev IIS Server name>
Site Name
User Name	<user name>
Destination Url
Configuration	Debug
Db connection string	#{connectionstring1}#

• Remove Microsoft.SharePoint.Client and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime dlls and add packages SharePoint.Client and SharePoint.Client.Runtime from nuget
• Add Microsoft.SharePoint.Client and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime dlls to sourcecontrol
• Use nuget.config in restore nuget packages task
• Add Microsoft.IndetityModel.dll and Microsoft.IndetityModel.Extensions.dll to source control
• Replace AppForSharePoint16WebToolkit v4.0 with v.3.1.5
• Add publishing profiles to source control

• Sharepoint addin project
• Add a list to make sure app web is provisioned

msdeploy to a remote server

If we want to publish files to a remote iis server, msdeploy can be used in a format similar to:

msdeploy.exe 
    –verb:sync 
    -source:contentPath="C:\temp\files-to-pub" 
    -dest:contentPath='sayedupdemo/files-to-pub'
            ,ComputerName="https://waws-prod-blu-001.publish.azurewebsites.windows.net/msdeploy.axd?site=sayedupdemo"
            ,UserName='$sayedupdemo'
            ,Password='thisIsNotMyRealPassword'
            ,AuthType='Basic'

More information can be found at https://devblogs.microsoft.com/aspnet/web-deploy-msdeploy-how-to-sync-a-folder/

Azure DevOps - React Native CI/CD pipelines

These blogs describe the steps to include in CI/CD pipelines for react native build and deployment

https://dev.to/staff0rd/building-a-react-native-pipeline-for-android-and-ios-2bo5

https://medium.com/@liam.e.andrew/continuous-integration-for-react-native-with-azure-pipelines-245d90948f6a

https://www.salesscreen.com/blog/cicd-for-react-application-using-azure-devops-pipelines-and-webpack

Azure DevOps deploy classic html and javascript website

To deploy a classic plain html and javascript website IIS Web App Deploy task can be used. The underlying technology used is MSBuild.exe

More information is available at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/apps/cd/deploy-webdeploy-iis-deploygroups?view=azure-devops

Azure Build react native app with gradle

I found this blog explains the steps to build a react native app with gradle in azure ci/cd pipelines. The only confusion was regarding keystore files, after searching a bit on internet I realized that keystore files can have both .keystore and .jks extension.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-dev-appconsult/using-azure-devops-to-create-a-ci-cd-pipeline-for-an-android/ba-p/1094422

SharePoint: Invalid SP Host Web Token - RedirectionStatus is CanNotRedirect after CheckRedirectionStatus

This is one of the most confusing errors I have seen, not because the error message is ambiguous, but rather because it was difficult to find the root cause (at least for me anyway).

This error is thrown at the code in sharepoint context filter:

switch (SharePointContextProvider.CheckRedirectionStatus(filterContext.HttpContext, out redirectUrl))

            {

                case RedirectionStatus.Ok:

                    ok = true;

                    break;

                case RedirectionStatus.ShouldRedirect:

                    filterContext.Result = new RedirectResult(redirectUrl.AbsoluteUri);

                    break;

                case RedirectionStatus.CanNotRedirect:

                    throw new Exception("Invalid SP Host Web Tocken");

            }

Redirection status is determined in SharePointContextProvider class at this line:

if (StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase.Equals(httpContext.Request.HttpMethod, "POST"))

            {

                return RedirectionStatus.CanNotRedirect;

            }

Though this sound bit un-intuitive, this error is caused by AnonymousAuthentication property set to the value 'Enabled'.

Claims Identity - Extract UPN from a claim (IIdentity)

A claim with the type IIdentity can contain multiple claims and quite often we may need to extract the value of a particular claim within. This is fairly simple like so:

var email = principal.FindFirst(ClaimTypes.Upn)?.Value;

Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/multitenant-identity/claims