Should my connected web parts support IWebPartField, IWebPartRow and IWebPartTable?

Question

I've been writing some simple webparts, and they communicate via a custom interface type. That's working fine.

I've got one ConnectionProvider, with a variety of ConnectionConsumers.

I see that the OOTB SharePoint webparts provide many standard connections, apparently through IWebPartField and IWebPartRow (IWebPartTable seems less supported).

I've tried to add a IWebPartRow interface to a provider, and found that it's not actually useful (apparently), unless it's sharing data that the OOTB components use, such as images, urls and users. Well, that's the impression I got, anyway... I've only done a quick experiment, and found it quite difficult to implement and test.

Is there any point in spending time trying to add support for the standard webpart interfaces?

Answer 1

Web part connections are a bit of a nightmare especially as to make them useful you will end up implementing both the old style 2003 interface and the new style 2007 interface because (for just one example) the OOTB list web parts in 2007 use the old style interface....

Is there any point in spending time trying to add support for the standard webpart interfaces?.

Yes if it makes sense to be able to connect OTTB and 3rd party web parts to your own web parts.

Also look at the implementing Filter interfaces - they are normally of more use than IWebPartRow etc.