‘BobW’ from our “Stump The Panel” forums asked, “Is there a way to automatically change from View A to View B when a user opens a SharePoint folder?”

Normally, I’d say “Unfortunately, the answer is No” since folders are part of the list and will always use whatever Views have been setup for the list itself (no separation in “Default” view between folders – they all will use the same), but after reading this question, I decided to take on the problem to see what (if anything) could be done to get around this.

After working on this for a few days (thanks for the help Paul!!), I was finally able to come up with a way to accomplish this through the use of JavaScript and “Content Types”.

The process to create this functionality involves three main steps:

1. Create “Folder” Content Types for each folder you wish to have a different view associated with.
2. Create Views for each Content Type in the list.
3. Add the JavaScript to a CEWP on your default view page.

Step 1: Create the “Content Types”

In your site, go to the “Content Types Gallery” (Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Content Gallery) and click “Create”.

Add a name for the “Content Type”, choose “Folder Content Types” and “Folder” from the dropdowns, leave the rest as is and then click “OK”.

For this, I’ll be using three new “Content Types” named:

1. “Financials_Folder”
2. “Personnel_Folder”
3. “Records_Folder”

Add the Content Types to your list.

In your list, click “Settings -> List Settings”, then “Advanced Settings” and choose “Yes” for “Allow management of content types”.

In the list settings, click “Add from existing site content types” to add in our types.

On the next screen, filter the list by choosing “Custom Content Types” then select each of the three new types and click “Add” to add them to the list.

After clicking “OK”, you should see your types added to the list in the settings page and as options on the “New” link when you create a new item for the list.

Step 2: Create custom Views

Now that you have the “Content Types” added and ready to use, create a matching custom view for each type using the same name (do this for each “Content Type”).

Once completed, you should have views for each “Content Type” (folder):

Create several new folders based on the content types we’ve setup (I’m using simple names for testing purposes to indicate each folder’s CT):

Clicking on each will take you into the folder, but will also continue to use the same “View” we were on before entering the folder (”All Items”).

To get around this, we’ll add our JavaScript to a “Content Editor Webpart” (CEWP) on our “Default View” page.

Step 3:Add JavaScript to CEWP

Add a new CEWP to the page. The page is “AllItems.aspx” in this case, since it’s our default view page. Make sure to “Drag” it below the list webpart.

As with all solutions involving the use of JavaScript in a CEWP, we place the webpart at the bottom of the page in order for it to be able to look through the entire HTML on the page that exists before it to find specific data.

Once you have the CEWP on the page, open its “Tool Pane” then its “Source” option, and add in the following script:

<script type="text/javascript">
var splitStr = document.location.pathname.split("/");
var newStr="";

for(i=0;i<splitStr.length-1;i++)
{
  newStr+=splitStr[i]+"%2f";
}

var tbls = document.getElementsByTagName("table");

for(i=0;i<tbls.length;i++)
{
  if(tbls[i].CType!=null)
  {
    var linkHref = document.getElementById(tbls[i].id).getElementsByTagName("a");
    var linkText = document.getElementById(tbls[i].id).innerText;

    for (j=0;j<linkHref.length;j++)
    {
      linkHref[j].setAttribute("onclick",document.location.pathname.replace("AllItems.aspx","")+tbls[i].CType+".aspx?RootFolder="+newStr+linkText);
      linkHref[j].href = document.location.pathname.replace("AllItems.aspx","")+tbls[i].CType+".aspx?RootFolder="+newStr+linkText;
    }
  }
}
</script>

How the Script works:

The script grabs the current path of the page and splits it into a list (”Array”) of objects based on the forward-slash (”/”) character in the URL.

Example:

Full URL to list: http://www.myportal.com/abc/123/def/lists/MyList/AllItems.aspx

Page path would be: /abc/123/def/lists/MyList/AllItems.aspx

Splitting on the “/” character will create a series of objects as:

Index[0] = abc
Index[1] = 123
Index[2] = def
Index[3] = lists
Index[4] = MyList
Index[5] = AllItems.aspx

Counting these, we have a total of 6 objects starting at the first index position [0].  The Script trims the list by one (the “splitStr.length-1″ part) and then loops through the remaining objects building them back into a complete string, but separates each piece by the HTML-Encoded equivalent of the forward slash (”/” becomes “%2f”) in order to format it properly for the new URL.

Next, the Script looks for and reads all tables (in the page’s HTML) and begins to loop through each one looking for an attribute that indentifies it as having a “Content Type” (the “tbls[i].CType” part).  If it does, this informs us that it’s one of our “Folder” links on the page, so we can begin to process its link properties.

Once we have our tables, or more literally – as we find a table that has a “Content Type”, we create two placeholders for the “a” tag (the actual link object) and its text (the text displayed for our folder).

The Script closes out with a simple loop through each link where it overrides the built-in (SharePoint) JavaScript action for the link’s “onclick” method and actual “HREF” property, by updating its target URL (where it will take you after clicking the link) to point to a dynamically built address consisting of a new “View” page that matches up with the “Content Type”, our modified page path (from the beginning of the Script), and the appropriate link text (this makes sure we not only go to the correct “View” page, but also that we arrive in the correct folder as well).

Conclusion

The Script itself is pretty simple in its design (many thanks again to Paul Grenier in his suggestion of the use of “Content Types” with this to simplify things), but what it does is so much more.

Till next time…

- Dessie