Ensuring a Valid SPContext via Feature Activation

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while but just haven’t gotten around to it.  Have you ever needed to add a web part to a page during Feature activation?  Of course you can do this declaratively using CAML but I usually prefer to do this stuff via code.  The challenge is that occasionally you will need to activate the Feature outside the context of a web request – such as via STSADM – this becomes critical for certain web parts, such as earlier versions of the KPI List Web Part, which required a valid SPContext in order to be added to a page (this web part was fixed in the August 2008 Cumulative Update (or thereabouts) so that it no longer requires a valid SPContext object).

If you’re faced with adding a web part (or any other artifact) which requires a valid SPContext object outside of a web request than you can create your own context with the following three lines of code:

   1: HttpRequest httpRequest = new HttpRequest("", web.Url, "");

   2: HttpContext.Current = new HttpContext(httpRequest, new HttpResponse(new StringWriter()));

   3: SPControl.SetContextWeb(HttpContext.Current, web);

I actually can’t take the credit for this – I was talking with Dan Attis during the summer about an issue and he pointed out this simple little fix for me.  Using this I created a simple helper function that allows me to easily add a web part to a page within my Feature activation event.  The code is below – just pass in the SPWeb object, the URL to a page, and the path to the web part file.  I put this in a shared library which I use for all of my Features thus making it super easy to add a web part to a page:

public static void AddWebPart(SPWeb web, string page, string webPartXmlFile, string zone, int zoneId, bool deleteExistingIfFound)
{
    bool cleanupContext = false;
    try
    {
        if (HttpContext.Current == null)
        {
            cleanupContext = true;
            HttpRequest httpRequest = new HttpRequest("", web.Url, "");
            HttpContext.Current = new HttpContext(httpRequest, new HttpResponse(new StringWriter()));
            SPControl.SetContextWeb(HttpContext.Current, web);
        }

        using (SPLimitedWebPartManager manager = web.GetLimitedWebPartManager(page, PersonalizationScope.Shared))
        {
            string err;

            XmlTextReader reader = null;
            System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart wp;
            try
            {
                string webPartXml = File.ReadAllText(webPartXmlFile);
                webPartXml = webPartXml.Replace("${siteCollection}", web.Site.Url);
                webPartXml = webPartXml.Replace("${site}", web.Url);
                webPartXml = webPartXml.Replace("${webTitle}", HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(web.Title));
                reader = new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(webPartXml));
                
                wp = manager.ImportWebPart(reader, out err);
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(err))
                    throw new Exception(err);
            }
            finally
            {
                if (reader != null)
                    reader.Close();
            }

            // Delete existing web part with same title so that we only have the latest version on the page
            foreach (System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart wpTemp in manager.WebParts)
            {
                if (wpTemp.Title == wp.Title)
                {
                    if (deleteExistingIfFound)
                        manager.DeleteWebPart(wpTemp);
                    else
                    {
                        wpTemp.Dispose();
                        return;
                    }
                    break;
                }
                wpTemp.Dispose();
            }

            manager.AddWebPart(wp, zone, zoneId);
        }
    }
    finally
    {
        if (HttpContext.Current != null && cleanupContext)
        {
            HttpContext.Current = null;
        }
    }
}