Prologue:
In this article, we shall discuss how to create extensions for LightSwitch
2011 using Microsoft's Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit.
Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit:
Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch gives you a simpler and faster way to create
high-quality business applications for the desktop and the cloud. We can extend the functionality of LightSwitch by creating
extensions using Visual Studio 2010 or higher, the Visual Studio SDK, and the
Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit.
Requirements:
The following pre-requisites are required in order to create LightSwitch
extensions. You cannot create extensions using LightSwitch alone.
Installing the Toolkit:
- Download and extract the LightSwitch
Extensibility Toolkit .exe file to your local machine. You will see the
extraction window as shown in the below figure.
![ExLS1.gif]()
Once you click on the OK button, you will be getting the success message as
shown in the below figure.
![ExLS2.gif]()
- Double-click the
Microsoft.LightSwitch.Toolkit.vsix file. You will get the below
installation window.
![ExLS3.gif]()
Once you click on the Install button, you will get the success message as shown in the below figure.
![ExLS4.gif]()
Then you need to copy the Microsoft.LightSwitch.Toolkit.targets file which is in
the folder where you extracted the toolkit into:
\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\LightSwitch\v1.0, if you're
running a 32-bit machine, or
\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\LightSwitch\v1.0, if you're
running a 64-bit machine.
Types of LightSwitch extensions:
There are six types of extensions for LightSwitch:
- Business types
- Let you wrap a base data type in a
semantic type, providing additional validation and display capabilities
in LightSwitch while continuing to store the data in its underlying
type. They can include a Silverlight control for displaying data.
- Custom controls
- Silverlight user controls with
additional attributes to make them usable in and better integrated with
LightSwitch.
- Data sources
- Domain service adapter class that
enables LightSwitch to work with other data sources.
- Screen templates
- Can be used to create screens that
have common layout patterns different from the standard screen layouts
provided by LightSwitch.
- Shells
- Let you create an application shell
with a different layout and capabilities than the standard
LightSwitch application shell.
- Theme
- Let you create a different appearance
and behavior for LightSwitch applications and controls.
The Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011
Extensibility Toolkit includes templates that contain the necessary files for
each extension type.
More information regarding these extensibility points can be found
here.
LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit Project Templates:
The Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit installs two new
project templates, LightSwitch Extension Library (Visual Basic) and LightSwitch
Extension Library (Visual C#), that can be used to create extensions. When you
select one of these project types, a solution with seven projects is generated:
- The projects with names that end in
.Client, .Client.Design, .Common, .Design, and .Server contain the various
parts of the extension items that will be added to the library.
- The .Lspkg project packages the previous
five projects so that LightSwitch can unpack and reference them when the
package is installed.
- The .Vsix project packages the generated
.Lspkg file into a .Vsix package so that it can be added to LightSwitch
through the Extension Manager.
Summary:
In this article, we have seen how to create extensions for Visual Studio
LightSwitch 2011 using Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 extensibility tool kit. In
my next article we shall discuss creating extensions.
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