Web Part Audience Targeting RoleProvider-roles through SharePoint Groups

I've managed to spend some days to understand the Audience Targeting functionality of SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). I wish to share my conclusions:

* Global Audiences (rule-based, SSP) is OOTB only possible when using SharePoint UserProfiles. I wanted to bind it to an ASP.NET Profile Provider, but that's not possible.

* The Global Audiences (rule-based) functionality is realized directly in-database via stored-procedures.

* It is possible to target (changing visibility) Web Parts to SharePoint Groups.

* If you target a Web Part to a "ASP.NET RoleProvider"-role by adding the role to a Sharepoint Group does not work. (Forms Based Authentication)

* It is possible to override the "TargetTo"-FieldType by replacing the 12\Template\xml\fldtypes_TargetTo.xml file with your own version. This way you are able to hook your own FieldControl into the Audience-functionality.

* Most code which is related to Targeting is hardwired to use "Microsoft.Office.Server.Audience.AudienceManager". It is thus not easy replaceable or extendable

* The ContentByQuery-WebPart is hardwired to use field with ID "{61cbb965-1e04-4273-b658-eedaa662f48d}" as Audience-field.

* The AuthorizationFilter.Editor of Web Parts is buggy. When removing Sharepoint Groups as Target, many strange bugs become apparent.

* It is not possible to manually AudienceFilter the ContentByQuery-WebPart by selecting the "Audience"-field as filter. It gave me an error because it was trying to compare an ntext- with an nvarchar-column.


I wrote the following class to be able to correctly use RoleProvider-roles as Sharepoint-groups for targeting Web Parts. You should register the class as ResourceFilter in the web.config of your SharePoint-site.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

using Microsoft.Office.Server.Audience;

using System.Collections;

using System.Globalization;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace AudienceManagerUI

{

    /// <summary>

    /// Replace <RuntimeFilter Assembly="Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" Class="Microsoft.Office.Server.Audience.AudienceManager" BuilderURL="audience_chooser.aspx" />

    /// With <RuntimeFilter Assembly="AudienceManagerUI, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=6cb89fff80058439" Class="AudienceManagerUI.PatchedResourceManager" BuilderURL="audience_chooser.aspx" />

    /// </summary>

    public class PatchedResourceManager : Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.IRuntimeFilter2

    {

        private Microsoft.Office.Server.Audience.AudienceManager audienceManager = new Microsoft.Office.Server.Audience.AudienceManager();

        public ArrayList InitializeStrings(CultureInfo cultureInfO)

        {

            return audienceManager.InitializeStrings(cultureInfO);

        }

        public IToolPaneControl GetToolPaneControl()

        {

            return audienceManager.GetToolPaneControl();

        }

        public bool IsFilterActive()

        {

            return audienceManager.IsFilterActive();

        }

        /// <summary>

        /// Checks that the values in the IsIncludedFilter property are valid before they are saved

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="PersistedString"></param>

        /// <returns></returns>

        public string ValidateIsIncludedFilter(string PersistedString)

        {

            return audienceManager.ValidateIsIncludedFilter(PersistedString);

        }

        public bool CheckRuntimeRender(string isIncludedFilter)

        {

            bool result = audienceManager.CheckRuntimeRender(isIncludedFilter);

            if (result) return result;

            string[] targets = isIncludedFilter.Split(new string[] {";;" }, StringSplitOptions.None);

            if (targets.Length == 3)

            {

                string[] groups = targets[2].Split(new char[] {';'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

                foreach (string target in groups)

                {

                    try

                    {

                        SPGroup group = SPContext.Current.Site.RootWeb.SiteGroups[target];

                        if (group.ContainsCurrentUser) return true;

                    }

                    catch (SPException)

                    {

                    }

                }

            }

            return false;

        }

    }

}