Packaging and Deploying Sharepoint 2013 Apps : Anatomy of an App (part 1)

For any SharePoint 2013 apps to deploy and be of use to anyone, they must be first packaged into .app packages, which in turn are Open Packaging Convention (OPC) packages, and therefore Zip files in disguise. If you rename them with a .zip extension you can open and extract them much like you would any other Zip package. The OPC packaging format is fully documented and standardized. You can read more about it and working with packages at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163372.aspx.

A SharePoint app package has four main parts:

• Manifest
• SharePoint solution package
• Web deploy package
• Database package

For those developers familiar with full-trust solution .wsp files in SharePoint 2010, this concept of a single file containing multiple subparts might seem familiar (excluding the database package portion). In SharePoint 2010, WSP solutions also included a manifest, files and assets, and code packages (DLLs). However, in SharePoint 2013 the format and deployment of these assets varies greatly.

The manifest in an app package contains important information such as the app’s name and version.

The SharePoint solution package contains XML-based declarations for SharePoint components such as lists and content types that should be deployed as part of the app.

The Web deploy package is the code portion of your app. It is the package that will be deployed to Azure as part of an Autohosted app.

Finally, the database package contains the SQL Azure deployment package that deploys and creates a database as part of an Autohosted app deployment, and might include post deployment scripts to populate tables with data.

To better understand the format and contents of an app package, take a look inside one in the following Try It Out.

Exploring an App Package (SharePointAppPackage.app)

In this exercise you open an .app package file and explore its parts.

1. Copy the SharePointAppPackage.app file to a location on your hard drive; for example, c:\tmp\SharePointAppPackage.app.

2. Right-click the file and choose Rename.

3. Remove the .app extension and replace it with .zip. You might need to turn on Show file extensions in Windows Explorer options if you don’t see the .app extension when you go to rename it.

4. If you are asked whether you are sure you want to rename the file choose OK.

5. After renaming it, open the Zip file. You should see a set of files similar to the one shown in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1

6. Select all the files and copy them to a new location outside of the Zip file. This step assists with opening and exploring them.

7. Open the AppManifest.xml file. You will see the manifest markup as shown in the following code snippet. This contains the name of the app, ID, version, and other information about the app code and where it’s located.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<App xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/2012/app/manifest" 
Name="SharePointAppPackage" ProductID="{6b80672f-3edc-409c-94fe-608ee4264280}" Version="1.0.0.0"
SharePointMinVersion="15.0.0.0">
  <Properties>
    <Title>SharePointAppPackage</Title>
    <StartPage>~remoteAppUrl/Pages/Default.aspx?{StandardTokens}</StartPage>
  </Properties>
  <AppPrincipal>
    <AutoDeployedWebApplication />
  </AppPrincipal>
  <AppPermissionRequests>
    <AppPermissionRequest Scope="http://sharepoint/content/sitecollection/web" 
Right="FullControl" />
  </AppPermissionRequests>
  <AppPrerequisites>
    <AppPrerequisite Type="Capability" ID="A83C8D70-71DE-4260-9FB8-677418EB47F2" />
    <AppPrerequisite Type="Feature" ID="5B79B49A-2DA6-4161-95BD-7375C1995EF9" />
    <AppPrerequisite Type="AutoProvisioning" ID="Database" />
    <AppPrerequisite Type="AutoProvisioning" ID="RemoteWebHost" />
  </AppPrerequisites>
</App>

How It Works

The fundamental part of an app package is the app.manifest file. As you have seen in this example it is straightforward to open and look around inside an app package. It is also recommended you take a look inside the SharePointAppPackage.Web.zip file. This is the app code and pages packaged in a Web deploy package.

The Database1.dacpac file is the SQL Database project for the app that will be deployed to SQL Azure when the application is installed.

The last important element is the SharePointAppPackage.wsp file. This is the SharePoint Solution package that contains definitions for things such as content types, columns, lists/libraries, and features.

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In the following sections you will explore each of these main components that go into an app package in more detail and also try out building your own.