sharepointspcontextapplicationpage

SharePoint SPContext.List in a custom application page

I have a custom SharePoint application page deployed to the _layouts folder. It's a custom "new form" for a custom content type. During my interactions with this page, I will need to add an item to my list. When the page first loads, I can use SPContext.Current.List to see the current list I'm working with. But after I fill in my form and the form posts back onto itself and IsPostBack is true, then SPContext.Current.List is null so I can't find the list that I need to add my stuff into.

Is this expected?

How should I retain some info about my context list across the postback? Should I just populate some asp:hidden control with my list's guid and then just pull it back from that on the postback? That seems safe, I guess.

FWIW, this is the MOSS 2007 Standard version.

Solution

  • Generally speaking I try and copy whatever approach the product group has taken when looking to add functionality of my own. In this case they add their own edit/view/add pages via the list definition itself.

    I built a solution that also needed its own custom "New" form, not open source unfortunately, though if you are interested you can download it, its called "Tagged Links" (Social Bookmarking for SharePoint) and you can find some links on my blog.

    To give you a few hints and tips, the following should set you off in the right direction:

    1. Created a new list definition.
    2. Created a new Content Type In the content type you can define your own "FormTemplates" that references a Rendering Template which determine what gets displayed in the "Middle" bit of those forms.
    3. Copied the standard Rendering Template, but then made the changes to it that I needed.
    4. Wrapped it all up in a solution, and deployed.

    My Rendering Template actually included an overridden "Save" Button where I did a lot of the extra work I needed to do during the save.

    Anyway, it is a little too much work in my opinion but, I think, it most closely matches the standard approach taken by the product developers. Let me know if you need more detail and I will see if I can put together a step-by-step blog post, but hopefully this gets you off on the right direction.