Developing Solutions for SharePoint

In this chapter, we'll take an in-depth look into the SharePoint Framework, and how it relates to the other, and often older, development approaches. In addition, we'll also need to understand what the limitations of the SharePoint Framework are and what can be done to implement solutions that are beyond the scope of this development approach. From there, we'll introduce the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) capabilities for SharePoint developers.

Any type of framework typically requires a fair amount of time from developers to understand its essence and usage. As such, we'll introduce the basics of the SharePoint Framework in this chapter, and in the following chapters, we will open the features and possibilities even further. This includes:

• A general introduction and overview to get more familiar with the SharePoint Framework as a development framework
• The toolchain, which includes the necessary tools that developers must be familiar with when developing solutions for the SharePoint Framework
• Office developer patterns and practices, a community-supported project that is highly active and produces a lot of great tools, guidance, and sample code for SharePoint developers, including the SharePoint Framework
• ALM considerations for the SharePoint Framework-related deployment