Zip and Download Sitecore logs with PowerShell

There was a breaking change in the Console 2.1, if you’re using version 2.1 or newer use Download-File commandlet instad of the “Get-File” as shown in the code below.

You might have have found yourself hunting around in the Sitecore interface for something that would allow you to download all the the log files in a fast and convenient way once time or another. Have you found one? Me neither? but luckily I had the PowerShell console installed on my server so I started looking for a script to zip all files in a folder and luckily because we have a full PowerShell power in the box I could stand on the shoulders of giants and get the zipping part from Stack Overflow – again (which is the majority of my script. The rest was super easy – just call the function and download the file?

Re-create a site structure from its sitemap in your Sitecore instance with PowerShell

Last night I needed to reproduce really quickly a site structure we will be moving from another CMS and create a matching item hierarchy in my Sitecore instance… I could face an hour or so of boring clicking and copying and pasting and hoping I’ve not missed anything or… I could write a short PowerShell script to do the work for me… Guess which path I chose?

Before you use the script you should customize the script parameters:

React to Sitecore events with PowerShell scripts

Kieranties must be the biggest PowerShell nerd (together with yours truly) I’ve had a privilege to chat with (I guess this implies I talk to myself?). So it shouldn’t be a surprise when the two started talking PowerShell/Sitecore pixie dust started sparkling.

This time – events integration.

What does it take to integrate PowerShell with Sitecore events?

This is a fairly easy task that Sitecore pretty thoroughly describes in the ?Using Events? SDN article. So there is little point for me to reiterate it here.

How Sitecore PowerShell got GUI support… a tale of JobMonitor and Sitecore async UI API.

One thing I always wanted to add to the Cognifide PowerShell Console for Sitecore but never had the chance to investigate properly, was GUI and user interaction. For example in a regular PowerShell console when an irreversible action needs to be taken or one that user needs to be notified about – a question is asked:

Unfortunately due to the stateless and non-persistent nature of HTTP connections this is not easily achievable in Sitecore Sheer environment especially since in our case a PowerShell session usually lives in a separate thread within a Sitecore Job.

PowerShell Scripted data sources in Sitecore (Part 2)

There are 2 more ways I’ve managed to find and implement that you can control data sources with PowerShell:

• rendering data source roots
• rendering data source itself

The motivation would be similar to what I’ve described in the ?Part 1? blog post. So without further ado let’s cut to the meat?

Rendering Data Source Roots

You might want your roots to be dynamic and you can deliver those using a PowerShell script!

PowerShell Scripted datasources in Sitecore (Part 1)

Reading some time ago the Item Buckets documentation I discovered something really cool called code data sources. We delivered something similar in our internal libraries and it proved super useful ever since. I’ve also recently read a nice article by Ronald Nieuwenhuis on NewGuid about their approach to the subject.

So what a PowerShell and Sitecore nut does when he sees stuff like that? Obviously delivers a scripted data source!

Be your own Sitecore Professional Services with PowerShell (Part 2)

So I’ve finally found a moment (well a few days actually) to follow up on the previous article, and just about time as there are quite a few more tricks that PowerShell can help you with when assessing the quality of your Sitecore solution. One thing that you need to keep in mind when reading the recommendations is that they are exactly that – recommendations. While Sitecore strongly encourages you that you follow them – I can see how most of those are perfectly fine to be ditched in some situations, you just need to be careful about picking those situations. By the general rule of thumb though, following vendor recommendations is a good thing and they are usually a good metrics of a well put together solution. Most of statistics provided in this post are hard to gather without a scripting solution like Sitecore PowerShell Console or Revolver.

Sitecore PowerShell Console in Visual Studio

A while ago Jakob suggested that putting the Sitecore PowerShell Console in Visual Studio might not be a bad idea. He even provided me with the boilerplate code that served as a stub for the module (Thanks a million Jakob!).

So after some struggling on my part the new module is now on the Sitecore Marketplace. There is really not much to write about. If you like PowerShell and Sitecore Rocks you will find it pretty neat. Otherwise I’m afraid those are not the droids you are looking for

Be your own Sitecore Professional Services with PowerShell (Part 1)

Recently I’ve been asked to audit a site for one of our clients. Overall for a fairly seasoned Sitecore developer it’s rather obvious what to look for in a site and get a feel for whether an a solution is thoroughly thought through or just put together using brute-force development. You can usually tell if the implementation is sloppy or excellent, but how do you quantify that feeling to give the objective view to the person reading your report? Looking at the Sitecore Developer Network I’ve found the following set of recommendations. This is a great help with codifying how a proper Sitecore implementation should look like, what should we pay attention to and most importantly it’s a great reference when you’re trying to prove that your feeling is something more than just nitpicking but rather an industry standard that the developers should adhere to. I recommend strongly that you look at it and think how closely your practices match those that Sitecore recommends.

Using PowerShell Console for Sitecore in your own code

With the latest update of PowerShell Console For Sitecore can run the PowerShell environment in your application and take advantage of its scripting power, by getting the results out of it and pulling them into your app.