what is a feature in sharepoint?

Question

...what are the essential components(files required) for a "Feature".. and can anyone point to any best practice tutorials on creating features (using the "12 hive")...

sharepoint dev is new to me, and im just looking for best practice development. tutorial/screencasts will be a bonus

thanks

Answer 1

This webcast about how to add social networking features to Sharepoint might be helpful.

And there's lots of videos here, some free and some not.

Answer 2

Check out the SharePoint Patterns and Practices information here and here

I also highly recommend picking up a copy of Ted Pattisons book Inside SharePoint Windows Services 3.0

These should be required reading for noob SharePoint developers. Good luck on your SharePoint journey.

Answer 3

A major headache, grounds for divorce, plausible excuse for murder, etc...

But actually the answer is a lot more complicated. The quick answer is it's a unit of deployment that generally includes content such as .aspx application pages, list schemas, customizations expressed in CAML (potentially huge XML files without much documentation.)

JD's suggestion for Ted Pattison's book is a good one but I suggest picking up a few books because you'll usually find something in one that you don't find in another and it will help you to see what is required by convention and what is just a particular author's preference.

You will really need to comb a lot of different sources and plan on spending a considerable amount of time with SharePoint before becoming comfortable with these concepts.

Answer 4

The minimum you need is feature.xml, and elements.xml if you want the feature to actually do something. I recommend the templates from WSPBuilder as a starting point.