Feature Stapling in WSS V3

Article
10/31/2006

Background:

New to the WSSv3 Platform is a concept called Features. These enable you to package chunks of functionality and allow this functionality to be turned on or off in a WSSv3 based site. This could be things like:

- List templates

- List instances

- Menu Items

- Workflows

- Web Parts

- ...

I am not going to go into these in a lot of detail here, but if you want to read more about them then you can here:

https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms460318.aspx

One of the big problems people faced in WSS (V2) was that we did not support you making changes to the out of the box site definitions. One of the big reasons for this was that we might need to update that site definition in a Service Pack and overwrite your changes.

This meant that you need to take a copy of our out of the box site definitions and then hide the originals from the user ... and then make all the changes you like. This would ensure we would not break the site definition in a Service Pack for example.

I guess I like to refer this to who “owns” a site definition. Microsoft “own” the out of the box site definitions and you “own” any that you create and add to the product. That way in a service pack we will only update the site definitions that we ship with the product and not step on any site definitions you might have added.

So! What am I attempting to get to :)

We built Features so that you can turn functionality on and off in a site after it was create ... even if it was not in the original site definition.

So what happens if you want to associate a Feature with a site definition?

Well, as you should know by now, it is not advisable to modify the out of the box site definitions. So how do you do this?

This is where Feature Stapling comes in...

Solution == Feature Stapling

Feature Stapling allows you to “staple” a Feature to a site definition without modifying it in any way. This means you can add your feature to all sites created using that site definition.

E.g. You want to add your WidgetFeatureXYZ to the out of the box Team Site definition. Simple ... use a Feature Staple!

So how do you do this?

How-To:

To create a staple you actually create another Feature that does the staple. Below is an excerpt from a staple feature we use in the product to staple a Multilanguage feature to the STS, BDR & SPS site definitions.

Feature.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Feature Id="82E2EA42-39E2-4B27-8631-ED54C1CFC491"
Title="$Resources:MultiLangStaplingFeatureName"
Description="$Resources:MultiLangstaplingFeatureDescription"
Version="12.0.0.0"
Scope="Farm"
xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
DefaultResourceFile="_Res">
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location="TransMgmtFunc.xml"/>
</ElementManifests>
</Feature>

TransMgmtFunc.xml file that contains the FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation element:

In the above example it “staples” the Feature with the ID “29D85C25-170C-4df9-A641-12DB0B9D4130” to the STS#0, STS#1, BDR#0 & SPS#0 site definitions.

This is very powerful as it allows you to add functionality to site definitions without having to modify the site definitions themselves.

Now ... one last final note on this, if you want to staple your Feature to ALL site definitions then you can staple it to the GLOBAL site definition and it will be added to all sites that are created.

Pretty cool huh!

TIP: ADDED BONUS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE READ THIS FAR:

Replacing ExecuteURL:

You can use Feature stapling to effectively replace your use of the ExecuteURL property in a site definition.

Scenario: You want to run some custom code whenever a site is created. (a typical use of the ExecuteURL property in V2)

Solution: Build a Feature that has an Event Receiver defined on it; & have it catch the Feature activation event. Run your custom code in there. Then, use a Feature Staple to staple your Feature to the site definition e.g. FOO#0 (or whatever one you want to run your code for).

Bingo! You can now run your custom code whenever a site is created :)

Hope this helps...

-Chris.

Comments

Anonymous
November 01, 2006
Chris, If I feature staple my CustomDocLib to the standard team site, how do I get my custom document templates (*.dgn) that is defined in our CustomDocLib schema.xml to appear? Is this what the 12TemplateDocumentTemplates directory is for? My CustomDocLib works fine on my CustomSiteDef, which includes the DocumentTemplate files. TIA. Tom.
Anonymous
November 01, 2006
You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from SharePointKicks.com
Anonymous
November 02, 2006
Very nice feature :-) Question though... When I read your post I understood that the feature you are stapling to a site definetion will be activated on both already created sites and new sites. I guess this is wrong and it only works on new sites created after the stapling because I can't get it to work ;) Can you please clearify on this? -Peter
Anonymous
November 11, 2006
By combining a few blog entries I just read – Arpan's ROI post which talks about ROI/Chargeback and Chris
Anonymous
November 14, 2006
Continuing from last month’s list of recommended reading, here’s my short list of favorite blog entries
Anonymous
November 14, 2006
Sharepoint 2007 Features Stapling
Anonymous
November 23, 2006
Hi, thanks for a great article! I've tried feature stapling to GLOBAL (and GLOBAL#0) but my feature is not activated automatically on new site creation....do I need to do anything extra to make the feature active automatically? The feature works when manually activated and has scope=Web (it is an event handler so cannot be scope=Site). Thank you, Adam
Anonymous
November 29, 2006
How do I staple to GLOBAL? It doesn't work on my install (B2TR) but does work for specific site definitions. Would you be able to provide an example of this please? Thanks for all this info!
Anonymous
December 06, 2006
Этот пост содержит ссылки на важные материалы, c помощью которых можно качественно повысить уровень знаний
Anonymous
December 18, 2006
Thank you very much,do your last statements mean when a site is created it will invoke the "feature activation event"??
Anonymous
December 19, 2006
Is it possible to Activate a feature via feature stapling?
Anonymous
December 21, 2006
I'd like to report that GLOBAL is working in RTM...thanks this is very useful. BTW, the MSDN article on this refers to it as GLOBAL#0 which is wrong obviously.
Anonymous
February 12, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 14, 2007
Can you addremove webparts from a new site inside the FeatureActivated event handler? I am getting error while trying to access the SPLimitedWebPartManager object. It says the new site doesn't exist since it is not yet provisioned. Is there any work around for this? Thanks Musa
Anonymous
February 18, 2007
Purpose: Apply a Sharepoint Theme to any provisioned webs based off any Site Definition...
Anonymous
March 22, 2007
Hi, this is Steve Peschka from the SharePoint Rangers team again, and in this blog entry I’ll discuss
Anonymous
April 10, 2007
Do you know if you can pass a parameter to a feature? For example, can i staple to all SPS sites and also set the <Properties> values of the feature being called or do i need to create a "new" feature for each property change i want? Thanks, Rob
Anonymous
April 13, 2007
I'm stuck trying to figure out how to use a feture that will allow me to disable the wiki and blok create withing the "mysite". These guys want blogs and wiki's at the top level sites.....portal...but not withing the mysites. Anysuggestions
Anonymous
April 13, 2007
I'm stuck trying to figure out how to use a feture that will allow me to disable the wiki and blok create withing the "mysite". These guys want blogs and wiki's at the top level sites.....portal...but not withing the mysites. Anysuggestions
Anonymous
May 15, 2007
Feature Stapling allows you to “staple” a Feature to a site definition without modifying it in any way. This means you can add your feature to all sites created using that site definition. E.g. You want to add your WidgetFeatureXYZ to the out of
Anonymous
May 15, 2007
Feature Stapling allows you to “staple” a Feature to a site definition without modifying it in any way. This means you can add your feature to all sites created using that site definition. E.g. You want to add your WidgetFeatureXYZ to the out of
Anonymous
August 01, 2007
Hi, I have the same problem as Adam - has anyone found a resolution? I've tried feature stapling to GLOBAL (and GLOBAL#0) but my feature is not activated automatically on new site creation. The feature works when manually activated and has scope=Site. I've also tried other template types such as STS#0, MPS#0 and BDR#0 Thank you, David
Anonymous
September 12, 2007
2007 MOSS Resource Links (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) Here is an assortment of various 2007 Microsoft
Anonymous
October 16, 2007
I have seen several questions, posted in various newsgroups and forums, regarding activating features
Anonymous
October 18, 2007
Petit message à tous mes lecteurs développeurs SharePoint Je répete encore et encore que 90 % du temps,
Anonymous
November 01, 2007
I have the same issue as David & Adam... I've created a feature scoped at the site collection level (i.e. scope="site" within feature.xml), and have used feature stapling to attach it to GLOBAL site definition - so that it appears as a feature, on every site collection created. My only issue is that I would like this feature to be programmatically activated for every site collection. Any advice on how I could go about achieving this would be greatly received.
Anonymous
November 15, 2007
Hopefully it isn't any sort of a great revelation to anyone that the latest versions of SharePoint
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
This is a repost of an article i upped on my blog back in Feb 2007 Purpose: Apply a Sharepoint Theme
Anonymous
February 18, 2008
Reading things like this reinforces my experience that sharepoint's a complete trainwreck of mismanaged features (in a traditional sense, not in Sharepoint speak) rife with neologistic descriptions without context or meaning.
Anonymous
March 02, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 24, 2008
Is it possible to present a custom page somehow to a user after a site template provisioning? For example a configuration page?
Anonymous
July 28, 2008
I have the same issue as David, Adam and Steve... I've created a feature scoped at the WEb level (i.e. scope="web" within feature.xml), and have used feature stapling to attach it to GLOBAL site definition - so that it appears as a feature, on every site created. My only issue is that I would like this feature to be programmatically activated for every site created. It would be really great if you can help me regarding this.
Anonymous
December 03, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 16, 2008
I am using FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation to activate the "publishing" feature, and also a custom feature. The problem is, that when my custom feature featurereceiver code is called, the site is still not considered a publishing site at that point (despite the fact that the publishing feature is specified as a feature dependency!) The (awful) solution seems to be to add the following code to my featurereceiver: bool pubWeb = false; while (!pubWeb) { if (PublishingWeb.IsPublishingWeb(web)) pubWeb = true; } // this will only evaluate to true because of // the above loop if (PublishingWeb.IsPublishingWeb(web)) { ... }
Anonymous
January 19, 2009
The FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation element is used to implement what is commonly referred to as "Feature Stapling". This allows you to automatically turn on features for spoecific site definitions without needing to modifiy the definition itself....
Anonymous
February 27, 2009
Hi Chris, I have a feature of scope web. This feature is having ItemEventRecievers defined in it. Using Feature stapling I tried to append this feature with the site definition. However, When a new site is created I get an error saying that it cannot associate ItemLevelEventreceiver with Featurereceiver. To put it other way: Web Level Feature : consists of elements.xml file which consists of Item handling events. Farm level feature : Consists of elements.xml file with featuresitetemplateassociationId of web feature. Now, the question is how to build a feature that has an Event Receiver attached to it and associate this in feature stapling?
Anonymous
June 18, 2009
One of the most common and simple ways to customise SharePoint is to directly modify the files that are
Anonymous
October 12, 2009
Dear Chris, As for your example, I need to have 2 features? 82E2EA42-39E2-4B27-8631-ED54C1CFC491 AND 29D85C25-170C-4df9-A641-12DB0B9D4130? Thank you, Yair

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Feature Stapling in WSS V3

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