jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices) v0.6.2 Released
OK Go released a new album yesterday (180/360, and it’s great – go buy it!) so I figured I’d better release a new version of SPServices. Those guys shouldn’t have anything on me. My release isn’t live, but it’ll do new cool stuff in your live SharePoint pages. But enough tomfoolery.
Yesterday (June 21), I released SPServices v0.6.2. There is some new functionality in this release that people have been asking me for for quite a long time.
First, there’s a new function: SPComplexToSimpleDropdown This function lets you convert the complex dropdowns which SharePoint renders when you have 20+ options. If you’d like to understand the underlying workings of the function, check the docs and/or read my blog post here (following the links to the previous posts will give you even more info).
I’ve also exposed the SPComplexToSimpleDropdown capability as an option in SPCascadeDropdowns. This is probably the best place to use it, as when you are filtering the available options in the dropdown based on the parent selection, there is likely to be a much lower number of options. This makes the simple dropdown a much better UI choice.
I’ve also added a new option to SPCascadeDropdowns which allows you to specify that when there is just a single option available that it should be automagically selected. I’ve resisted this one for quite a long time because it makes the dropdown behave differently than the out of the box behavior, but there have been too many requests for it to ignore.
SPServices v0.6.2 now should work just fine with jQuery 1.6 and 1.6.1. I’ve tested as best I can with jQuery versions from 1.4.2 to 1.6.1, and the issues I know about should be resolved (there’s one open issue with SPDebugXMLHttpResult outstanding).
There are a number of other enhancements and bug fixes (most of which were fairly obscure), and you can read about them in the release notes, which are replicated below:
New Functionality
| Alpha | Issue Tracker Item | Function | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALPHA1 |
5992 |
$().SPServices. SPComplexToSimpleDropdown |
New Function: convert the "complex" input/select hybrid control to a plain old select |
| ALPHA2 |
8638 |
$().SPServices. SPCascadeDropdowns |
Add an option to SPCascadeDropdowns to call SPComplexToSimpleDropdown |
| ALPHA3 |
8653 |
$().SPServices. SPAutocomplete |
rowLimit in SPAutocomplete |
| ALPHA3 |
8723 |
$().SPServices. SPFilterDropDown |
SPFilterDropDown needs a way to localize string "(None)" |
| ALPHA3 |
8757 |
$().SPServices. SPCascadeDropdowns |
SPCascadeDropdowns needs a way to localize string "(None)" |
| ALPHA6 |
5238 |
$().SPServices. SPCascadeDropdowns |
SPCascadeDropdowns: autoselect first item of child dropdown |
Bug Fixes and Efficiency
| Alpha | Issue Tracker Item | Function | Operation | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALPHA3 |
8632 |
$().SPServices |
UpdateListItems | Bad Request Due to Reserved Characters In Data |
| ALPHA3 |
8599 |
$().SPServices |
NA | Replace unescapeURL() with unescape() |
| ALPHA4 |
8778 |
$().SPServices. SPArrangeChoices |
NA | SPArrangeChoices doesn't work with RegExp special characters |
| ALPHA4 |
8328 |
$().SPServices. SPCascadeDropdowns |
NA | SPCascadeDropdowns: Child cascaded fields not updated |
| ALPHA5 |
8807 |
$().SPServices. SPDisplayRelatedInfo |
NA | SPDisplayRelatedInfo showColumn() always rounds to Integer if :Number of decimal places: = Automatic/undefined |
| ALPHA6 |
8579 |
$().SPServices. SPCascadeDropdowns |
NA | SPCascadeDropdowns/jQuery 1.6 bug |
| ALPHA7 |
8791 |
$().SPServices. SPFilterDropDown |
NA | SPFilterDropDown: Filter doesn't work if I click remove from multi select column |
Mark,
Thank you for all the work you do on this library… I was just about to write a discussion topic on Upgrade path and compatibility of SPServices with different versions of jQuery, but this post addresses my concern. I’m still using jQuery 1.4.2 and am looking to upgrade to the latest SPServices, and wanted to know if it was compatible…
May I suggest, if you time allows it, that you include such information, perhaps in a table, on the Downloads page? It will help us “corporate” folks in carefully planning deployments of updated version of SPServices.
Thank you.
(Ps. at some point I will write you an email describing the solution I have developed on top of SharePoint, which has at its heart, your SPServices library… without it, I would not have been able to create such a system in the timeline I was given (note: I’m not a server admin, but rather a user of the system).
Paul:
I’d love to hear what you’ve been able to do with SPServices.
I do try to show what versions work together in two places:
* On the home page of the project, I show some Important Notes in red with some details
* On every documentation page on the right side, there is a System Requirements section
I’ve released a lot of versions of SPServices and there have been a lot of versions of jQuery as well. Obviously, I can’t test them all, so I try to indicate what I recommend.
M.
Hi Mark,
If a dropdown is set to mandatory then also I need an option to set (None), is it possible?
Thanks in advance.
Pruthvi:
That wouldn’t make any sense. If it’s mandatory, then you can’t choose (None) unless it’s one of the values. If it is, then add it to the values available.
M.
Sorry Marc,
Yes I feel the same(it wouldn’t make any sense), but client is asking for that. The reason client telling is: end user’s attention(he should select something manually) .
Thanks
Hi Marc,
The reason behind “none” is that we dont want the first selection of the dropdown be the defaut across all document libraries, also this makes the users who are not aware of the default selection might just save with default selection.
Thanks,
Guru
Guru:
You could certainly add some default setting like “Select one…” and then disallow choosing it in script with the PreSaveAction. You’ll need to consider the possibility that the script might not run for every user.
M.
Thanks, multi-select widths just solved a 9 month issue.