Listview webpart in custom site definition

Question

When defining a listview webpart in a custom site definition, how can I make sure that the view has the columns that I want it to show?

The standard view shows these column: Title, Assigned To and Modified. What I want it to show is these columns: Title, Due Date.

What's the best way of doing so?

Answer 1

The easiest way is to build the View you want into your list definition. Then in your ListViewWebPart refer it to that view.

In CAML, this will be something like:

<View List="Lists/Tasks" BaseViewID="7" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="5" />

BaseViewID is the identifier for the View in your List Definition.

However, you might want to do this programmatically - for example, if you create the view within your list programmatically too. In that case, you'll need something like:

SPView myView = ...
using (SPLimitedWebPartManager manager = web.GetLimitedWebPartManager("default.aspx", PersonalizationScope.Shared))
{
    using (ListViewWebPart webPart = new ListViewWebPart())
    {
        webPart.Title = "My List";
        webPart.ListName = web.Lists["MyList"].ID.ToString("B").ToUpper();
        webPart.ViewGuid = myView.ID.ToString("B").ToUpper();
        manager.AddWebPart(webPart, "Left", 3);
    }
}