Link to SharePoint List in Navigation is not visible for Anonymous user.

Recently working on a SharePoint Project wherein I wanted to have Calendar list as a link in main navigation of the site. I rushed to Site Settings and went inside Navigation in Look and Feel section. I added main heading as "Calendar" and under "Calendar" heading, I added "Events" link which was pointing to Calendar list. Everything was looking great until I checked it with Anonymous user.

Surprisingly, Anonymous user couldn't see "Events" link. I was baffled and was scratching my head as to what would have caused this behavior.  I started to dig out in more detail, checked permission, and I discovered that it all boils down to one feature "Limited-access user permission lockdown mode". If this feature is activated, fine-grain permissions for limited access users are reduced. Hence, Application Pages won't be visible to Anonymous user. If you want Anonymous users to see Application pages, this must be deactivated.

Here are the steps which will help you sail through the issue.

1. As you can see in below screenshot, Events link is not visible for Anonymous user.

 

2. Now, Login with Admin user. Go Site Settings >> Site Collection Features , you would see that

"Limited-access user permission lockdown mode" feature is activated.

 

3. Deactivate this feature.

 

4. Now, checking "Events" link with Anonymous user. It should be visible.

If you have any questions you can reach out our SharePoint Consulting team here.

Prepare environment for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) Development

Microsoft has already announced the General Availability for SharePoint Framework. We can develop modern web parts for SharePoint using SharePoint Framework (SPFx). Web Parts developed using SPFx can be added to modern view pages as well as classic pages in SharePoint.

Prepare your development environment for SharePoint Framework development:

A. Install Node Dependencies for SharePoint Framework.

1. Download and Install Node.js.
2. Open command prompt and execute below commands one by one to install bower, grunt-cli and yeoman respectively.

i. npm install -g bower
ii. npm install -g grunt-cli
iii. npm install -g yo

3. Install Microsoft SharePoint Generator by executing below command in command prompt.

i. npm i @microsoft/generator-sharepoint -g

4. Install Gulp by executing below command in command prompt.

i. npm install gulp -g

B. Install desired source code editor (e.g. Visual Studio Code, ATOM, Sublime).

Build your first web part using SharePoint Framework (SPFx):

A. Open Node.js Command Prompt.
B. Navigate to the directory where you want to have your solution located at (e.g. cd c:\SPFx).
C. Execute command: yo
D. This will list down the available generators. As we have already installed Microsoft SharePoint Generator, this will appear as an option here.
E. Select “Microsoft SharePoint Generator” and press enter.

F. This will ask for below details, enter appropriate details and move forward:

i. Solution Name – e.g. “HelloWorld”.
ii. Select “Use the current folder” option.
iii. You can select the JavaScript Web Framework from available options. I have selected “No JavaScript Web Framework” option for this application.
iv. What is your webpart name? – e.g. “HelloWorldWP”
v. What is your webpart description? – e.g. “Hello world web part developed using SharePoint Framework.”.
vi. This will take a few minutes to prepare the solution.

G. Once solution is created, we can see success message for solution creation as shown below:

H. To check the solution, open the solution in Visual Studio Code from file system directory (C:\SPFx) where we created the solution.

I. As this post is focused on to prepare the development environment for SPFx, we will not go in depth with the source code, but as we can see in below screenshot, default Hello World web part appears in the solution:

Run SPFx solution on development environment:

A. Open Node.js Command Prompt and navigate to the directory where we created the solution (C:\SPFx).

B. Execute command “gulp serve” as shown in below screenshot:

C. On execution, we get SharePoint User Interface in browser on localhost (It is NOT required to have SharePoint installed on development environment). And when we click “+” button on modern UI, we can see Hello World web part in available options as show below:

D. When web part is added on the page, we can see the same as shown below:

So, the environment is prepared and verified for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) development. For verification, we have used default Hello World web part, we can develop the web parts as per requirements. 

If you have any questions you can reach out our SharePoint Consulting team here.

How to escape a special character in filter parameter using REST API

Scenario: 

Recently working with REST API to get items from SharePoint list filtered by title field, I got stuck. it was working fine while having data without special character. But having special character - single quote/apostrophe (') in filter parameter was giving an error. I tried by passing value using EncodeURIComponent, but it didn't work either and getting the error as shown below:

Reason: 

EncodeURIComponent, Escape or EncodeURI functions can’t escape few special characters: - _ . ! ~ * ' ( )

 

Solution:

For such special characters as filter parameter, we should double the character (2 single quotes) and use it.

Example:

Non-working REST API:
https://{Site URL} /_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('listname')/items? select=ID&$filter=Title eq 'what's up'

Working REST API:

https://{Site URL} /_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('listname')/items? select=ID&$filter=Title eq 'what''s up'

If you have any questions you can reach out our SharePoint Consulting team here.