SharePoint 2010 - Adding your created visual web part to the schema.xml of a list definition

Hi guys,

Today I tried to add a visual webpart to a list definition, especially to an indidividual edit form of the list definition.
I created a visual webpart in visual studio and a list definition with a list instance.
For the list defintion, I wanted to add a custom editform.aspx in the <forms> area of the schema.xml.
That can be done this way:

Find the <forms> area in the schema.xml:

    <Forms>
      <Form Type="DisplayForm" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" Url="Forms/DispForm.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
      <Form Type="EditForm" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" Url="Forms/EditForm.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
      <Form Type="NewForm" Url="Forms/Upload.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
...

We see the 3 standard forms (display, edit and new). Now we can add a custom editform.aspx by defining a new form with the type "editform":

      <Form Type="EditForm"
            SetupPath="pages\form.aspx"
            WebPartZoneID="Main"
            Url="Forms/MyEditForm.aspx"
            Default="TRUE"></Form>

Important are the "type", "url" and the "default" property. The type as the name says, defines the type of the form. The url property can be defined free. You can enter there any name. And the last property "default", if this form will be the standard / default for the specific type.

If we start our solution now, we would have the same result as the standard editform.aspx. There would be no difference for the user. We, of course, can see that the url is different than the standard editform.aspx.

Now we want to add another webpart to our new editform.aspx (in my case myeditform.aspx):
First we have to add a container for all webparts, we want to add to the myeditform.aspx. This code has to placed between the <form> tags:

<Form Type="EditForm"
            SetupPath="pages\form.aspx"
            WebPartZoneID="Main"
            Url="Forms/MyEditForm.aspx"
            Default="TRUE">
        <WebParts>

        </WebParts>
</Form>

Then we need to add the webpart itself:

<Form Type="EditForm"
            SetupPath="pages\form.aspx"
            WebPartZoneID="Main"
            Url="Forms/MyEditForm.aspx"
            Default="TRUE">
        <WebParts>
          <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="Main" WebPartOrder="1">
            <![CDATA[

            ]]>
          </AllUsersWebPart>
        </WebParts>
</Form>

In the cdata area we can copy the complete code of our visual webpart file (*.webpart) except the first line:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

So we get this result in the end:

<Form Type="EditForm"
            SetupPath="pages\form.aspx"
            WebPartZoneID="Main"
            Url="Forms/MyEditForm.aspx"
            Default="TRUE">
        <WebParts>
          <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="Main" WebPartOrder="1">
            <![CDATA[
<webParts>
  <webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3">
    <metaData>
      <type name="SharePoint_Z_Drive_Project.WP_ErrorField.WP_ErrorField, $SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" />
      <importErrorMessage>$Resources:core,ImportErrorMessage;</importErrorMessage>
    </metaData>
    <data>
      <properties>
        <property name="Title" type="string">Error</property>
        <property name="Description" type="string">Error Field WebPart</property>
      </properties>
    </data>
  </webPart>
</webParts>
            ]]>
          </AllUsersWebPart>
        </WebParts>
</Form>

If we start the solution now and edit an item in our list instance, we see the properties of our item and our visual webpart.