Adding custom button to ribbon - Button doesn't get displayed

Question

I'm trying to add a custom button to a SP2010 ribbon in the DisplayFormToolbar for a list item. The list is external, although I don't think that matters but still...

This is my custom action definition:

  <CustomAction Id="{0116B081-B13E-4A4B-8F8D-EF7AC1E43BFD}"
                Location="DisplayFormToolbar"
                RegistrationType="List"
                RegistrationId="600"
                Sequence="1"
                ControlAssembly="myAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=...."
                ControlClass="myNamespace.MyRibbonButton" />

myNamespace.MyRibbonButton class extends System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button and has some basic code inside OnInit.

When I access the display form of an item in the external list, in debug I can see that OnInit is executed, there is no exception in the logs... but the button does not show in the form!

I have specified my assembly with SafeControl so that's not the cause.

Even if I add this to my custom action is still does not display:

<CommandUIExtension>
      <CommandUIDefinitions>
        <CommandUIDefinition Location="Ribbon.ListForm.Display.Manage.Controls._children" />
      </CommandUIDefinitions>
    </CommandUIExtension>

What could I be missing?

Answer 1

SharePoint 2010 ribbon doesn't have anything in common with 2007's DisplayFormToolBar.

The custom action Location attribute should be set to "CommandUI.Ribbon" for adding something to ribbon.

Then, you should provide special XML for button. Since SP2010 ribbon is a client-side thing, no C# code is involved here.

You can find a simple example of adding a button to ribbon here:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jfrost/archive/2009/11/06/adding-custom-button-to-the-sharepoint-2010-ribbon.aspx

P.S. Also, you can consider using SharePoint 2010 Fluent Ribbon API opensource project to work with ribbon in a simplified way. A quick how-to start can be found at project's documentation site. It is my project actually, and I cannot resist mentioning that it is a rather popular project and we use it in real-world projects at work intensively.