Feature in SharePoint

Features

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services features are collections of logically related items and operations that can be added to and used repeatedly across site definitions.

Advantage: Features reduce versioning and inconsistency issues that can arise among front-end Web servers. Feature activating or deactivating functionality in the course of a SharePoint deployment easier.

Implementing Features

To implement a feature, you need to add a subfolder that contains the feature’s definition to the Features setup directory at the following location:

\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES
OR
\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES

Solutions structure can be like below:-

Here “Home.Project.Solution.MyDocs” is custom folder name which contains feature and elements xml file.

solution_Feature

The Structure of Feature.xml

A Feature.xml file can contain the following elements:

Feature
..ActivationDependencies
….ActivationDependency
..ElementManifests
….ElementFile
….ElementManifest

Feature Scope

Features can be scoped at the level of a site, site collection, Web application (virtual server), or server farm. A particular feature can be activated for a single scope. The scope of a feature is determined by the value of the Scope attribute of the Feature element.

■      Web Site scope Feature (Scope=”Web”):   A Web Site scoped Feature is one that can be activated only at the individual Web site level .

■      Site Collection scope Feature (Scope=”Site”):  A Site Collection scoped Feature is one that can be activated at the site collection level and contains items that apply to the site collection as a whole (for example, content types that are shared across the site collection), as well as items that can be activated per site (for example, list instances, etc).

■      Web Application scope Feature (Scope=”WebApplication”):          A feature scoped for a Web application, or virtual server, can be activated or deactivated and can contain the elements for virtual server assemblies.

■      Farm scoped Feature (Scope=”Farm”):          A farm feature is scoped for an entire server farm. A farm feature can contain links to _layouts pages and files, _admin pages, and other elements

Activation Dependencies and Scope

A feature can be dependent on another feature activation. Activation dependencies can be expressed for features of the same scope, or a feature at a particular scope can be dependent on a feature at a different scope (a cross-scope activation dependency).

For example:- Below feature can be activated if site has enabled publishing feature.

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<?xml  version="1.0"  encoding="utf-8"  ?>
<Feature
Id="0000001-00001-00001-00001" Title="Test feature  Services"
Description="This activate if publishing feature enabled on site."
Scope="Site">
 
<ActivationDependencies>
    <ActivationDependency FeatureTitle="Publishing Infrastructure" 
	  FeatureDescription="Publishing Infrastructure need to be activated prior 
	    to deploying the Custom PageLayouts, Site Content Types and Site Columns feature." 
      FeatureId="f6924d36-2fa8-4f0b-b16d-06b7250180fa" />
  </ActivationDependencies>
 
</feature>

Creating Custom feature

Here I am going to give below article url where I have implemented custom feature. Visit these to understand how you can implement custom feature.

  1. Create and Deploy custom webpart
  2. Custom action in sharepoint
  3. Feature Receiver
  4. Adding list event on specific list. 

Thanks & Regards,

Avinash

calendarApril 22, 2012 · cardInfoyen · commentsNo Comments
tagTags: , , , ,  · Posted in: MOSS, SharePoint

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