Chapter 14. Connecting Web Parts
This chapter covers
- Web Part connections
- The consumer/provider model
- Standard SharePoint connection interfaces
- Filter Web Parts
Up to now you’ve focused on one Web Part at a time, but in this chapter I’ll show you how to get your Web Parts to work together. By creating connections, you ensure that one Web Part can communicate with other Web Parts using specific contracts. For instance, say you have a Web Part containing a list of orders; when a user selects one of the orders, another Web Part shows its details. Connected Web Parts are often used in dashboards and reporting scenarios in which you’d like to “slice and dice” the information. You can configure the connections in code or directly in the user interface without any coding (which allows end users to create their own applications or mashups using different Web Parts).
Nearly all out-of-the-box Web Parts in SharePoint support connections in one way or another. In addition, if you’re fortunate to be working with the Server edition of SharePoint, you get a whole bunch of filter Web Parts that you can use to filter the information in your Web Part pages.