Whats new in SharePoint framework v1.7?

Microsoft is releasing updates very frequently and its very hard to keep upto date with latest updates. You need to be on your toes to keep up the pace with rest of the world.

Last week Microsoft has release SharePoint framework version 1.7 and there are lot of new capabilities which has been introduced in the latest version of the framework.

What’s new in SharePoint framework v1.7?

Let’s summarize the new capabilities of the framework:-

Below are Generally Available(GA):

Support to SharePoint 2019 – You can now target SharePoint 2019 in the generator
Dynamic data – This is an update to the original classic feature around connected web parts. This feature implements the pub-sub model.One SPFx component publishes data and another component can consume that data. This can be any type of SPFx component including web parts and extensions!

Several developer preview features are also introduced:

SPFx for Teams Tabs & Teams-based Apps in SharePoint – Now you can create solutions using SharePoint framework which can show up as Tabs in Microsoft Teams. If you are creating a provider-hosted app, you can use the same solution that you created for Microsoft Teams and use it in SharePoint.
Full page apps – As a developer, you can create modern pages with the same look and feel as the rest of the site, where the main body of the page is a single large web part. Its much awaited feature in modern SharePoint. People are used to single page apps a lot that they wanted to create same experience in SharePoint.
Domain Isolated WebParts – If you create SPFx solutions that require different permissions that the rest of your tenancy, you can now host them in their own domain with their own permissions while still leveraging all of the SharePoint Framework (without having to deal with creating a provider hosted add-in/app).
ListSubscriptions in the browser – Get real-time notification delivered to your component when changes occur to registered document libraries.

How to check if you have the latest SharePoint framework installed?

You can use below command to check.

npm outdated --global

spfx

Now you have found out that @microsoft/generator-sharepoint generator is not latest, lets get the latest version.

npm install @microsoft/generator-sharepoint --global

After you run the above command, the latest packages will be pulled and updated.

spfx

Whats updated and whats left behind?

SPfx v1.7 targets:-

React:- Earlier we were targeting v15.6.2, with latest update it will target v16.3.2
Fabric React:- It still targets v5(specifically v5.131.0), even though v6 is out for a while.
Webpack:- Still using v3.6 even though v4 is out for a while.
TypeScript:- Still using v2.4.2 while v3 is out for a while.

Now lets start creating new project and see what new options you can see. Create a new project using below command.

yo @microsoft/sharepoint

Once you select the project target type, name, description, you will be new option related to Isolated Webparts. In Apps for SharePoint the webparts were rendered in iFrame. Spfx webparts are currently rendered in <div>. With new version of spfx the webparts will be rendered in iFrame rather than div. Now with domain isolated webparts, you can isolate access to APIs secured with Azure AD and ensure that only specific SharePoint Framework web parts are allowed to obtain an access token for the particular API.

spfx

In package-solution.json file you see a new property “IsDomainIsolated“, which is what above option tells you. When you do this, all web parts in the solution will run in a separate domain with its own set of permissions

spfx