For one of our projects I created several WebParts as part of a Sandboxed Solution. These WebParts were developed to be used on sites for which ultimately a SiteDefinition needed to be created. Since the WebParts are part of a Sandboxed Solution, my goal was to provision this solution as part of the SiteDefinition to the Solution Gallery located in the RootWeb.
Since the Solution Gallery is just a specialized Document Library in which .wsp Files get placed, I thought using the Module element would help me here. Off course, you could use the Module element inside as a Feature element too, instead of the SiteDefintion I’m using it in. So, first of all I declared my Module element as follows:
<Module Name="Solutions" Path="Solutions" Url="_catalogs/solutions">
<File Url="HelloSandbox.wsp"/>
</Module>
After creating a new SiteCollection based on the SiteDefinition containing this Module, I navigated to the solution gallery to find my .wsp file there in order to Activate the solution but it wasn’t there. It took me a while to figure out that in order to actually find the .wsp here, I needed to specify the Type within the <File>element with the value “GhostableInLibrary”.
<Module Name="Solutions" Path="Solutions" Url="_catalogs/solutions">
<File Url="HelloSandbox.wsp" Type="GhostableInLibrary"/>
</Module>
Changing this made the .wsp appear but I wasn’t able to Activate the solution. I was wondering why until I chose to edit the properties of the .wsp and Save the changes without changing anything. After this, I was actually able to activate the solution!
So, editing the properties apparently caused some properties to be set under the hood. In order to figure out which properties, I decided to fire up SharePoint Manager 2010. This is a great tool to get useful insights. It helped me to figure out the following properties were added after editing the .wsp properties:
- ContentType
- ContentTypeId
- SolutionHasAssemblies
- SolutionHash
- SolutionId
I decided to (as far as possible) specify the properties listed above one at a time in <Property> elements within the <File> element within the <Module>. By adding them one at a time I was hoping to find the minimum set of properties needed to be set.
I tried the ContentType property first. The value for ContentType (as I could see in SPM2010) was set to “Solution Gallery” so I declared the following <Property> element:
<Property Name="ContentType" Value="Solution Gallery"/>
I then created a new SiteCollection and now I was able to activate the solution! So this one property did the trick! Switching back to SPM2010 showed me that the other 4 properties from the listing above were also set now…
Hope this helps you too!
