ntcoder

SQL: Column metadata query

A friend of mine asked a question on how to retrieve SQL column metadata, hence wrote this query with help from stack overflow. I had to make some adaptations; basically used a nested query to create temporary result set in order to apply a filter on a column alias. In order to use this query please remember to change value for the Where clause on column alias TableName. For e.g. ‘%MyTableName%’…

PowerShell: Working with System.Security.Claims.ClaimsIdentity to manage user identity

System.Security.Claims.ClaimsIdentity is the .Net class that helps management of a claims based user identity using which you can add claims to a .Net application for more granular user control based on the user claims provided by the issuer in your application. MSDN Link to class documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.security.claims.claimsidentity?view=netframework-4.…

SharePoint: Find an SPFeature by DisplayName

I needed to find a particular SPFeature across a SharePoint farm so wrote up this PowerShell script. Sharing with you all this PowerShell script, also this script has some neat formatting code which you could find useful.

Add-PSSnapin *SharePoint* function WriteFeature($features, $tabs) { if($features -ne $null) { ForEach($feature in $Features) { Write-Host $("`t" * $tabs)"-> Found…

PowerShell provides multiple ways to access Excel. My favorite so far is via COMObject Excel.Application. This object provides direct access to Excel workbooks, worksheets. In this short article we’ll see how to accomplish this using PowerShell and Excel’s COMObject.

Instantiating Excel COM Object using New-Object PowerShell CmdLet

Using following line of code to instantiate Excel COM object.

$ex…

Why?

While debugging a crash on a customer SharePoint farm, we had to do constant checks on all SharePoint servers for latest entries in the ‘System’ eventlog. So wrote this PowerShell one-liner, using Get-EventLog, to help him out…

How?

Get-SPServer | Where-Object{$_.Role -ne "Invalid" } | %{ Write-Host "++++++++++++++++++ComputerName: $($_.Name.Split('.')[0])+++++++++++++++++++++++";…

Use following PowerShell commands to list all printers installed on any machine…

First command uses WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation)…

Get-WmiObject -Class "Win32_Printer" -ComputerName "localhost" | ft -Property Name, DriverName, SystemName, ShareName -AutoSize

Command Output

Name DriverName SystemName ShareName ---- ---------- ---------- --------- Send To OneNote 2016 Send to Microsoft…

Why application crashing with HeapCorruption failure?

What’s a Heap?

Before understanding HeapCorruption here’s a quick review of the Heap. The HeapCreate function creates a private heap object from which the calling process can allocate memory blocks by using the HeapAlloc function. HeapCreate specifies both an initial size and a maximum size for the heap. The initial size determines the number of committed, read/write pages initially allocated for…

How to configure SharePoint SearchCenter URL?

What’s a SearchCenter?

A Search Center site, or Search Center, provides an interface for users to submit search queries and view search results. A Search Center site is the top-level site of a site collection that a farm administrator creates by using the Enterprise Search Center template or Basic Search Center template. Sample search center screenshot…

How to Create a Search Center Site…

How to set ServerRender property of a SharePoint WebPart via Powershell?

What’s ServerRender?

ServerRender is a property of a webpart which disables client-side rendering for a webpart. You’ll lose some cool features of a webpart once you enable this feature for e.g.

Inline editing of a list item, or in other words “Quick Edit”.

Look and feel of the list changes to the traditional view, from a excel like view.

But this feature is quite handy when it comes to…

How to restore deleted default farm and web application level SharePoint timer jobs?

Introduction

I’ve been working on a case where customer accidently deleted a bunch of timer jobs. He came to us with a question on how to restore the timer jobs back. We found a way to restore the timer jobs but just a few of them. So if the timer jobs are out of the box (OOB) jobs we can restore them in this manner. If there are other timer jobs you’ll have to just re-deploy the timer job…

SharePoint 2013 August 2015 CU Bug

Issue

Just be careful with the SharePoint 2013 August 2015 Cumulative update. One of the security fixes in this cumulative update package has a bug: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3085501. Because this is a security fix most companies will push this fix to their servers.

The bug pops up when you try to attach a file to a list item or a calendar item. Here’s how the error message will look…

How to manipulate strings using PowerShell?

PowerShell comes with the following string manipulation operators…

split – case sensitive split

isplit – case insensitive split

csplit – case sensitive split

join – joins an array into one string

replace – case sensitive split

ireplace – case insensitive split

creplace – case sensitive split

Split Demo

#store comma delimited wild animals list into a string $wildanimals =…

How to get rid of orphaned features in a SharePoint farm using PowerShell?

Ideally a feature will be scoped to a Farm, WebApplication, Site, or Web, but orphaned features won’t be having a scope. The command to list all orphaned features in a SharePoint farm is as follows…

PowerShell command to list all orphaned features…

Get-SPFeature | ? { $_.Scope -eq $null }

Sample output…

PS C:\windows\system32> Get-SPFeature | ? { $_.Scope -eq $null } DisplayName Id…

How to use Get-SPFeature to list features in a SharePoint farm?

Introduction

Get-SPFeature is a command used to list out all the features in a SharePoint farm (scope can be set). You can scope this command to different levels, the levels are…

Farm – Only SharePoint farm level features are displayed

Web Application – Only web application level features are displayed

Site – Only site level features are displayed

Web – For sub sites Examples…

#Display all…

Manipulate XML Using PowerShell and XPath

Here are some sample PowerShell commands to manipulate XML contents in memory and then later dump them to an XML file. I’ve added comments inline to explain a line of PowerShell command.

#Clear output cls

#Sample XML content $xml = [xml][/xml]@' The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 19.95 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver 11.99 The Bean Trees Barbara Kingsolver 5.99 '@

What’s ResourceDigger

Wrote a utility (long back) for displaying resources from binary files, recently did some modifications as well. We know visual studio does provide a similar functionality but this one’s better with respect to viewing resources. You can view as many resource files as you like (haven’t put a limit). You can drag and drop folders or binaries into the application to get them…