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

Similar Posts

8 Comments

  1. 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).

    1. 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.

  2. Hi Mark,
    If a dropdown is set to mandatory then also I need an option to set (None), is it possible?

    Thanks in advance.

    1. 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.

      1. 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

      2. 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

        1. 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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.