Chapter 4

Understanding Your Development Options

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Understanding the different options for your SharePoint development
• Understanding common developer tasks and skills required for each of them

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-1118495845.html on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

• C4_Code_Options.zip

Thus far, you’ve been introduced to SharePoint 2013, learned about the different app models that are new to SharePoint, and walked through the tooling options for SharePoint. By now, you should have a pretty good understanding of the fundamentals from a development perspective. However, when you embark on your development journey with SharePoint you will be confounded with one question again and again: How should I develop this in SharePoint?

This might seem like a simple question, but the answer relies on factors not only within the technical scope of SharePoint features (that is, “What feature can I use to fulfill this business requirement?”), but it also relies on factors outside of your SharePoint project (for example, “Does this need to be in source code?” or “Can I accomplish this with an out-of-the-box feature?” and so on). To answer the question, you’ll need to understand the features built into, for example, each SharePoint site template, what APIs to use when, and what solution type to use (∗.WSP versus ∗.APP). Thus, knowing and understanding your options is key to successful development in the SharePoint world.