Question

Is it possible to have a bi-directional web part connection? I am aware that a web part can be both a provider and a consumer but it seems only one connection is allowed between two web parts.

What I am trying to accomplish is a bi-directional connection where a field in web part A can update web Part B and a field in B can update web part A.

Answer 1

You can do this in several ways.

The main things to understand are:

• You’re in complete control of the interface the web parts share
• By default only the consumer knows anything about the other web part

Here is then a couple of ways to implement what you describe:
Option 1: Pull/Push:
You can make your interface such that the consumer can pull the information it needs by either calling function or getting property values
And the consumer also pushes the information the other webpart might need by calling functions or setting property values.

Option 2: Consumer announcing
Here you define your interface (and way of using it) such that when a consumer get’s a connection it make a call back through the interface to give the producer a reference to the consumer. This reference can then implement the same or another interface any way out want.
Now both the consumer and the producer has a reference to another web part where they can get the information they need.