SharePoint 101 I. Client side dev ~ Choosing your SharePoint App development pattern

SharePoint 2013 pushes developers hard in the direction of "not-on-the-server". Microsoft introduced the new SharePoint App model, which greatly increases the isolation of SharePoint custom components by forcing them to run from the client-side.

App Development and Hosting Patterns

• The whole idea to is abandon the farm solution, full-trust model in order to gain stability for critical SharePoint infrastructure. For any new custom functionality, the idea is to build it as sandboxed as possible in an App with permissions set as low as you can crank them down. Do one thing, do it right, and use SharePoint as a simple backend database.
• The two different models:
  • SharePoint hosted, the simplest model
  • Provider hosted, where your app can run on any server with a technology of your choosing
• Two discontinued models:
  • Sandbox solutions never took off; running (sandboxed as it was) code on the server with them has become deprecated; they got re-branded as No-Code Sandboxed Solution
  • Auto-hosted apps are a thing of the past, RIP

References:

• MSDN - Choose patterns for developing and hosting your app for SharePoint
• GREAT summary of App possibilities/limitations and the Sandbox Solution fiasco: MSDN - Apps for SharePoint compared with SharePoint solutions
• Entry-point to MSDN's App dev guide: Build apps for SharePoint
• Three ways to think about design options for apps for SharePoint
• SlideShare - En français - SPS Montreal 2014: Bien comprendre le nouveau modèle Apps de SharePoint 2013

App Development Prerequisites

• Microsoft are trying really hard to sell you into their Office 365 (cloud hosted SharePoint) offering
• The Office 365 App development loop, coupled with Azure Web Sites for provider-hosted apps (with remote debugging through the Azure Service Bus) is really nice.
• For On-premises development, you have to setup your SharePoint instance for App development
  • How to: Set up an on-premises development environment for apps for SharePoint
  • How to: Create high-trust apps for SharePoint 2013
  • A good blog post if you're getting 404 errors while trying to run an app: http://www.jeremythake.com/2013/12/troubleshooting-sharepoint-2013-hosted-apps-on-premises-404-not-found-error/
  • Or clone the SharePoint-101 repository, create your own Tokens.YOURHOSTNAME.ps1 file then and run the Setup-AppDevPrerequisites.ps1 PowerShell script found here.

Tutorial: Creating your first SharePoint hosted app

Reference:

• How to: Create a basic SharePoint-hosted app
• Blog - Client webpart in SharePoint 2013