custom functionality on page

Question

I'd like some advice on how to create the following:

My customer has a SharePoint site with an order list on it (just a regular sharepoint list). The orders can have an attachment.

On the main page of the site, the customer would like to see an overview of the orderlist with some search / filter options based upon some of the columns. The default column filtering can't be used, a textbox should be used. Clicking the attachment icon of a line should immediately open up the attached PDF file (when there is one) in a seperate window.

These sites are created from a custom site definition template, with some code attached in a stapled feature.

Now as I see it, I've got some options:

1. Use the default xslt listview webpart to show the orders and the default filterwebparts. Connect those together. Problem with that is that I cannot get the connections to work, adding them programmatically throws an exception as discussed here.
2. Make my own webpart to do this, including filtering and the hyperlink. Seems like more work and more custom code, but I'll know for sure that it works the way I want it to.
3. Create an application page with codebehind. Since this functionality will only be present on a single page, it's not really nescessary to create a webpart for it. An application page would do the same trick.
4. Perhaps another ootb option?

What would you prefer in such a situation?

Answer 1

You list the main options. Depending on how complex the requirement, and what development resources you have, it is often easier to build a custom web part (or parts) than jump through hoops to get the OOB web parts to do what you want. I would recommend a web part rather than a custom application page, as the former is a more flexible solution and keeps your options open.

One other option to consider is Search. The search web parts are surprisingly flexible, particularly in the SharePoint Server SKUs, and used with suitable search scopes can be an efficient way of rendering filtered lists of content on your main page.

Answer 2

I think this can be done very easily using OOB.

1. Option 1)

-> Create DataView Webpart(XSLT) with querystring parameter that passes the value dynamically to the CAML query filter

-> Have text box with go button that would open the same page appending the value given as the querystring property

-> The Attachment can be rendered into a hyperlink to open in new window(not tried but can be possible)

1. Option 2)

-> Rather than a text box, create a view on with only column to the filtered -> Create the view to list all the items -> Connect this two webparts on the column to be filtered