About extending the Map Web Part

ArcGIS for SharePoint allows you to develop custom functionality for the ArcGIS Map Web Part. Extensions are simply Silverlight assemblies that contain one or more commands or map behaviors that interact with the Map Web Part. To help you write extensions, the Map Web Part provides a lightweight and flexible extensibility API. The API provides access to the map and selected layer and allows you to show dialog boxes within the Map Web Part that can contain any Silverlight FrameworkElement.

While the extensibility API provides a few simple points of interaction with the Map Web Part, what you can include in an extension is open-ended. Within an extension, you may leverage any Silverlight library, including the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight and the native Silverlight API. You are free to manipulate the map and layers, display any Silverlight UI, make your components configurable, interact with other Silverlight or JavaScript components on the page, make calls to web services such as those provided by SharePoint or ArcGIS Server, and much more.

Once you have written an extension, the process for adding it to the Map Web Part is straightforward. Add the compiled Silverlight application (.xap) file to the ArcGIS Mapping Extensions library. Then, when designers edit a Map Web Part within the same site collection, they can add the commands and behaviors contained in your extension through an easy-to-use UI. Commands that are added are exposed as buttons on the ribbon with a label and icon specified by the designer. Clicking a button invokes its associated command. Behaviors that are added are enabled when the Map Web Part loads and can be managed through a simple dialog box.