Some questions about SharePoint 2013 provider hosted app

Question

I started to study how we can reproduce our project in a SharePoint 2013 app. I've made some test and I saw that the provider hosted app generates a normal web application that will be hosted outside SharePoint environment.

I have some question about.

How create site pages?

Usually in a farm solution I create a Visual Web Part and the site page using CAML declarative mode with a module and a base layout aspx page.

How can I reproduce it in this new context? Can I to create a client web part and the page as before?

How to get SPContenxt?

I saw that when I start my project Default.aspx opens with SPHostUrl query string that is used to get ClientContext in Page_Load event. So, wherever I need to interact with SharePoint I have to open the page with this query string? Is there some other "more elegant" way to generate this query string instead to hard code it? And I have to refresh it? I saw method to refresh the access token.

Get SPHostUrl in web application

I find that in mark up I can create a link link with href='javascript:location.href="Page.aspx" + location.search' that redirects me to Page.apsx with SPHostUrl query string, is there a way to do it also in server side code?

Web service

Cannot add ISAPI folder anymore, have I to create a custom WCF service and deploy it in the remote web app url?

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

So you are actually trying to translate a farm solution to a O365 friendly solution?

What can a provider-hosted app do?

A lot - BUT

A provider-hosted app isn't a generic replacement for farmsolutions. It's a solution with specific field of use. I like to compare them to custom webparts and application pages. It CAN do more, but likely there are better ways.

How to create elements (pages, webs, lists, etc.)?

• Declarative in a NCSS (No Code Sandboxed Solution)
  • Quite limited but still valuable for most scenarios
• CSOM Provisioning

If you want to provision pages and webs, the answer is CSOM. It does not really matter if you package that CSOM in a provider-hosted- / sharepoint-hosted-app, a simple console application or something else.

The people behind Office PnP created a awesome provisioning engine that can consume declarative templates https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/pnp_articles/pnp-provisioning-engine-and-the-core-library.

How to get the SPContext?

It's ClientContext in CSOM and you will find here all answers https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/a/134489/10271

Get SPHostUrl in web application

The URL is given via the querystring when the app is called. Create a hello world app and you will see.

Web service

A provider-hosted app is essentially a IIS-hosted website that can make secure connections to sharepoint. You have to create at least that. If you need a webservice you can do so, but it's not necessary for a provider-hosted app.

You have to know that you can't call the webservice directly from SharePoint (cross-origin) but only in your providerhosted-app context.