SharePoint PnP Webcast – Provisioning SharePoint assets for your SharePoint Framework solution

[Nigel Price]

Hi

I have just watched the above webcast and it was like going back to 2007 with declarative XML, schemas elements.xml.  I thought we had got rid of that stuff with the new SPFx. Obviously not !  I would rather use the Office Dev PnP PowerShell commands.  If only Microsoft would take on the support of the OfficeDev PnP PowerShell commands.  Then perhaps enterprises would use it rather than going back to 2007.  Enterprises, in my experience, will not use the OfficeDev PnP PowerShell because they "have not got a neck to wring" when something goes wrong.  But OfficeDev PnP PowerShell is infinitely better than using Declarative XML. IMHO.

Nigel

[#2]

Hi  @Nigel Price,

Are PnP templates not full of elements that used to live in onet.xml, .webpart, etc. files?

[#3]

Hi @PieterVeenstra

I dont think so the format of the template file is unique to PnP. @Vesa Juvonen @Paolo Pialorsi ?

Regards

Nigel

[#4]

the .pnp file fomrat is an open xml format. If you use the .xml format you will see a lot of the old elements coming back. this is simply how the SharePoint datamodel has been put together.

[#5]

Hi @Pieter Veenstra

Agreed.  But the XML is generated by the PnP Provisioning engine rather than hand crafted by an IT Pro which is required if you have to provision using SPFx.  A lot less error prone.

Regards

Nigel

[#6]

Not adding much extra info, but I asked something similar to @chakkaradeep on twitter when I saw the "new" approach a couple of weeks ago. Here is the thread:
https://twitter.com/luismanez/status/835170650562134016
The interesting chunk says "advanced yet to come" ...

[#7]

@Luis Mañez   Interesting - I wonder what he means by "Advanced yet to come" - but the genie has been let out of the bottle.  I can see old feature framework people using this alot as it is familiar terratory.  But then we are back to the (lack of credible ) upgrade story with declarative xml and all that entails.

[#8]

Hi @Nigel Price,

Upgrading is not an issue with PnP as Pnp takes each bit of the xml and updates elements if needed. The upgradability is part of the fundamentals of the pnp templates whereas the feature based approach had that built in at a later stage.