Set up Sitecore PowerShell Extensions development environment

Since we’ve seen some interest from developers wanting to join the Sitecore PowerShell Extensions team, I thought it might be worth documenting how my development environment is put together to allow for easier on-boarding of new members (Yes, we’re hiring! No, we can’t pay you ;) ). Maybe you just want to compile it yourself to make sure we’re not up to no good, or just plain see inside and play with it… First of all you need to have Sitecore installed somewhere (obviously). For the purpose of examples I’ll assume your instance is located at *C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Sitecore8* and has the 3 standard folders Data, Databases and Website in them as it normally has. For that very same reason I’ll also assume that your Sitecore PowerShell Extensions project folder is located at *C:\Projects\SitecorePowerShell*

Upgrading your Sitecore PowerShell Extensions from 2.x to 3.x - what you need to know

I’m really excited to see the 3.0 version of Sitecore PowerShell Extensions released. There have been more effort, love and sweat poured into this version by the whole team than I would ever expect. This blog has been written to assert the smoothest upgrade experience possible. While we’re always striving for the smoothest upgrade possible - this version introduces some changes that require you to perform a manual step or two. While those could be automated to a degree, making those manual was a conscious choice as I didn’t want to break e.g. your Insite instance that stores some of its files in the “Console” sub-folder of the Website folder. Before upgrading your instance from Sitecore PowerShell Extensions 2.x to 3.0 please make sure you have your scripts backed up as the upgrade process might cause some of your scripts to be removed. This is especially true if you used the integration script libraries and you are upgrading from SPE 2.7 or earlier. If you’re upgrading from version 2.8 and your script live in your own modules You should be safe although it’s always smart to back up. The steps you need to take prior or after installing the new version of the PowerShell Extensions:

Introducing PowerShell Actions for Sitecore Workflows

This has been on my plate for a while and to be honest I’m not sure what took me so long as it literally took around 4 hours from start to completion which I consider a testament to how easy it is to create additional integrations with PowerShell akin to the Gutter integration or the login/logout integration Michael West has recently introduced in the platform.

What this integration allows you to do is to eliminate the need for code deployment when you’re in need for a quick action here and there for when a user executes a workflow command. You might find this article helpful by a Cognifide colleague of mine. I especially like this image which illustrates nicely where actions fit in a Sitecore workflow.

Update to State of knowledge for PowerShell Extensions for Sitecore - November 2014

It’s been a while since my last summary on April 2012 but finally getting to update the Reference page with the latest community summary for Sitecore PowerShell Extensions.

Following are the updates I will be pushing onto the reference page I’m trying to keep up to date and failing miserably most of the time.

101 level tutorials for PowerShell Extensions for Sitecore (updated)

• Working with Sitecore items
• Bulk Item Updates

How PowerShell console can help you extend Sitecore? (updated)

• Scheduled Tasks – Video tutorial
• React to Sitecore events with PowerShell scripts
• Execute PowerShell Scripts in Scheduled Tasks
• Add Scripts to the PowerShell Toolbox
• Launch PowerShell Scripts in the Item Context Menu

Sitecore PowerShell Extensions 3.0 Modules

A large problem with Sitecore PowerShell Extensions up to version 3.0 was the lack of proper separation of solutions provided on top of it from the core of the module. The problem is that all integrations look for scripts in the main Script Library but they look for them solely in their single libraries. The specification outlined in this blog aims at solving this issue. The current structure of the tree looks somewhat as follows:

Sitecore PowerShell Extensions Persistent Sessions

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve probably read about the ways of putting scripts in the Content Editor ribbon or Context Menu. Those are some simple and quick ways of extending the Sitecore UI to do quick actions accessible for your users without them having to even know about the existence of PowerShell in your system. Up until now however we’ve not been very vocal about the fact that those does not really have to be quick one-off actions but they can indeed form a broader solution to your problem through the use of persistent, named sessions. In fact Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE) allow you to manage sessions and decide that it should stay in memory after the script have executed. In fact SPE does quite a bit of session maintenance itself that you might want to be aware of.

Creating beautiful Sitecore reports easily with PowerShell Extensions

Creating reports is probably a task that every developer dread. I for once always felt like listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford’s ?16 Tons? every time when I was supposed to do it for yet another project audit – especially this part resonated with me:

I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal And the straw boss said “Well, a-bless my soul”

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Working with Sitecore items in PowerShell Extensions

Reading some of the blogs from the Sitecore community I find it pretty apparent that we didn’t do a great job advocating the optimizations that PowerShell Extensions have introduced for working with Sitecore items. This blog attempts to rectify this problem to a degree.

How do I retrieve my Sitecore items the PowerShell way?

The most natural way to retrieve Sitecore items is with use of Get-Item and Get-ChildItem commandlets. That is because those 2 commandlets add a PowerShell wrapping around them that allows the functionalities that I’m going to describe in the next section of this blog after I’ll tell you all about retrieving items. If you have retrieved your item directly using the Sitecore API you can still add the nice wrapper when you pipe them through the Wrap-Item commandlet as well. Some of those enhancements work in the older versions of PowerShell Extensions but I would encourage you to upgrade to the latest version (2.7 at the time this blog was written) to leverage the full potential of the environment.

Sitecore PowerShell Extensions Remoting

I’ve been meaning to write this article for quite a while since the functionality to remote into the Sitecore environment exists in the module at least for at least a couple of versions now and the recent email from one of the Sitecore PowerShell Extensions users convinced me this cannot wait any longer.

When would I remote into my Sitecore instance?

You would probably need this as part of your Continuous Integration or installation scripts. If you need to manipulate Sitecore data from your deployment script remoting is the right solution for you.

Zip and Download Sitecore Media Library Folder with PowerShell

I’ve decided to 1-up the game from my previous post and zip something that isn’t really a real file but rather a blob in a Sitecore database. The script below is based heavily on the last post but instead of just zipping content of a flat folder traverses the Sitecore item tree and zips all files beneath the current folder. If you have downloaded the 2.1 version of the Sitecore PowerShell Console from the Sitecore Marketplace you will actually have the script deployed on your system already. Here’s how it looks like for your user in the Content Editor: