How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Posted Friday, February 22, 2008 10:01 AM by CoreyRoth

Today, I am continuing my series of posts on how to do basic tasks in SharePoint.  Sometimes there is a need to activate a feature on a site collection or site using code.  There are various reasons why you want to do this, but in my case, I needed to activate multiple features on multiple sites.  The SPFeatureCollection object keeps track of which features are activated on a given site or site collection (not all features available for activation).  There are a number of ways to access it.  You can use the Features property on a given SPWeb or SPSite object.  You can also make use of the WebFeatures or SiteFeatures from SPContext.Current.  To activate a feature, call the Add method and pass it the GUID of the feature.  Be warned that it will throw an InvalidOperationException if the feature is already activated.  As with all SharePoint collections, the only way to determine if it exists is to use the indexer and see if it throws an exception.  Here is an example of activating a feature at the site level.

SPWeb currentSite = SPContext.Current.Web;

{

    currentSite.Features.Add(new Guid("{043C4BDD-9745-441a-A9A7-0BCD9B910319}"));

If you don't know the GUID of the feature but you do know the name of the Feature, you have to the FeatureDefinitions collection off of the SPFarm object.  Unfortunately, you have to iterate through the whole collection and look at the title to find the feature you need.  There is an example of it in the SDK.

Deactivating a feature is just as simple (provided you know the GUID).  In this case I am using the WebFeatures properties off of the current context.

SPContext.Current.WebFeatures.Remove(new Guid("{043C4BDD-9745-441a-A9A7-0BCD9B910319}"));

I know some might consider this a simple topic, but my goal is to help newcomers to SharePoint as much as possible.

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# Links (2/24/2008) « Steve Pietrek’s SharePoint Stuff

Sunday, February 24, 2008 7:06 PM by Links (2/24/2008) « Steve Pietrek’s SharePoint Stuff

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# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Thursday, March 27, 2008 2:37 PM by willuwait

Looking to activate multiple features on multiple sites.  Could you post an example of your solution.

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Thursday, March 4, 2010 1:54 AM by Perry

SPSite.Features.Add will always appear to succeed, even returning a valid SPFeature return value.

Yet if the calling process identity is not an SCA, it will actually silently and secretly fail.

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Friday, October 1, 2010 3:24 AM by Samuel

To obtain the GUID of a solution...

use powershell cmdlet

get-SPSolution

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Monday, October 4, 2010 2:38 AM by Si

you shouldnt be wrapping "SPContext.Current.Web" in a using block.

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Monday, October 4, 2010 8:46 AM by CoreyRoth

Ack.  Good catch.  I can't believe I did that.  I updated the post.  Thanks.

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Monday, October 11, 2010 6:38 AM by Andreas

Hello Si, hello CoreyRoth,

can you please tell me why you removed the using statement for "SPWeb currentSite = SPContext.Current.Web;" as that's the way I'm working right now.

Also topic related, is there a way to activate the Enterprise Site Collection Features at once instead of activating the 10-15 features which are part of the enterprise features?

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Thursday, October 21, 2010 12:37 AM by Sam Venables

Andreas, he removed the using block because he wasn't the owner of the object. SharePoint instantiated that particular object, SharePoint is responsible for disposing of it - if you instantiate an SPWeb using the constructor then you own it, so you dispose of it (likewise if you use SPSite.OpenWeb(url) for instance).

If you dispose of SPContext.Current.Web then anything later in the page lifecycle that tries to access the object will not be able to find it and will throw an exception.

Roger Lamb's "SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 Dispose Patterns by Example" blog really helped me get my head round this:

blogs.msdn.com/.../sharepoint-2007-and-wss-3-0-dispose-patterns-by-example.aspx

You may also want to look up "stack heap c#" - garbage collection makes it all to easy to develop in c# without understanding memory management!

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# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Thursday, September 22, 2011 10:31 AM by ericmeister

Hi Corey,

If the feature has event receiver attached, shouldn't it also fire during activation?

I've managed to do this only via UI feature activation so far

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 5:58 PM by CoreyRoth

@Eric you may need to put your event receiver in a separate assembly in this case.  I've seen issues with this before.

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Saturday, November 5, 2011 7:39 AM by izzy

I wanna activate bbm but how

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Thursday, December 15, 2011 3:40 PM by Mike

It did indeed help a newbie!

Thanks!

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 2:17 AM by Wim Hill

Hi Corey,

What if you need to activate a feature (SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure)  with a less privileged account. Your code works when I run it as a site collection admin but fails even when I put the following code arround it:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate(){          

 SPSite CurrentSite = SPContext.Current.Site;            

CurrentSite.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

CurrentSite.Features.Add(new Guid("{f6924d36-2fa8-4f0b-b16d-06b7250180fa}"));

CurrentSite.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false; });

}

The page thows an access denied and I see the following in the logs:

Feature Activation: Activating Feature 'PublishingPrerequisites' (ID: 'a392da98-270b-4e85-9769-04c0fde267aa') at URL

Feature Activation: Threw an exception, attempting to roll back.  Feature 'PublishingPrerequisites' (ID: 'a392da98-270b-4e85-9769-04c0fde267aa').  Exception: System.Threading.ThreadAbortException: Thread was being aborted.    

at System.Threading.Thread.AbortInternal()    

at System.Threading.Thread.Abort(Object stateInfo)    

at System.Web.HttpResponse.End()    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.Redirect(String url, SPRedirectFlags flags, HttpContext context, String queryString)    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.RedirectToAccessDeniedPage(HttpContext context)    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.HandleAccessDenied(HttpContext context)    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility.HandleAccessDenied(Exception ex)    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurableObject.CheckPermissions(SPBasePermissions permissionMask)    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.ValidateSecurityOnOperation(SPOperationCode code, SPSecurableObject obj)    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeature.AddRowToFeaturesTable(SPFeaturePropertyCollection props, SPSite site, SPWeb web, Boolean fForce)    

at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeature.Activate(SPSite siteParent, SPWeb webParent, SPFeaturePropertyCollection props, Boolean fForce)

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Monday, February 6, 2012 11:56 PM by CoreyRoth

@Wim activating the publishing infrastructure feature requires pretty hefty permissions.  I don't think you'll have much luck activating it with a low-privilege user even if you do delegate.

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Sunday, March 11, 2012 5:44 PM by Ishai Sagi

Actually, @Wim's issue is due to the fact he is getting the SPSite object from the context object inside the SPSecurity delegate. This instantiates the object with default permissions - not with elevated ones. Instead, do something like:

SPSite CurrentSite = SPContext.Current.Site;

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate(){          

using (SPSite currentSiteElevated = new SPSite(CurrentSite.ID))

{

currentSiteElevated .AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

currentSiteElevated .Features.Add(new Guid("{f6924d36-2fa8-4f0b-b16d-06b7250180fa}"));

currentSiteElevated .AllowUnsafeUpdates = false; });

}

# re: How to: Programmatically Activate a Feature

Friday, June 19, 2015 1:52 AM by I have created a Azure web jobs to provision the site collection remotely. I have registered the app in SPO with Tenant, Taxonomy, Site Collection & Site with Full control privilege. My Azure job is creating the site collection successfully but am unable to create a Term in Term store. I am getting an error - "Access denied. you don't have permission to access or read this resource" :( I am using Term store for Custom Global Navigation for across site collections. Can you please help me on this?

I have created a Azure web jobs to provision the site collection remotely. I have registered the app in SPO with Tenant, Taxonomy, Site Collection & Site with Full control privilege. My Azure job is creating the site collection successfully but am unable to create a Term in Term store. I am getting an error - "Access denied. you don't have permission to access or read this resource" :(

I am using Term store for Custom Global Navigation for across site collections.

Can you please help me on this?I have created a Azure web jobs to provision the site collection remotely. I have registered the app in SPO with Tenant, Taxonomy, Site Collection & Site with Full control privilege. My Azure job is creating the site collection successfully but am unable to create a Term in Term store. I am getting an error - "Access denied. you don't have permission to access or read this resource" :(

I am using Term store for Custom Global Navigation for across site collections.

Can you please help me on this?

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