Create user security groups in Site Definition using visual studio

Question

I am creating a site definition by code and I have a requirement to create the security groups in the site definition.

How can I create the user security groups in the site definition using the Visual Studio code?

Please guide.

Answer 1

You can staple a feature to do this programmatically.

Add a Feature and associate it an event receiver. Then, in the public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) method add the following code:

public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
    SPWeb web = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent;
    web.SiteGroups.Add("NameOfTheGroup", web.CurrentUser,
                    web.CurrentUser, "DescriptionOfTheGroup");
   web.Update();
   //If you want to add users to the group
   web.SiteGroups[NameOfTheGroup].AddUser("UserLoginName", string.Empty, "UserLoginName", string.Empty);
}

In your onet.xml to staple the feature you have to reference in like this:

<Configurations> 
  <Configuration ID="0" Name="Your-Name-Space" MasterUrl="_catalogs/masterpage/Your-Master(If-you-use-it).master">
    <SiteFeatures> 
      <Feature ID="Add-Here-The-ID-of-Your-Feature" />
  </Configuration>
</Configurations>