Scripts To Create Scripts…

Meet Bhimani

March 07, 2012

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Everyone writes PowerShell scripts, but writing scripts to create scripts?

I had an interesting challenge.  I needed to create a full site hierarchy in “the cloud” that mirrored my production environments, to enable offsite consultants to design our navigation.

We’re talking hundreds of sites and libraries.

The challenge was to automate it and not use any internal content.

PowerShell to the rescue!  First let’s in one line write the script to output all the PowerShell statements that will create all the sites we need:

get-spwebapplication "http ://SharePoint/" | get-spsite -limit ALL |  get-spweb  -Limit ALL | ForEach-Object { "new-spweb -url `"$($_.url)`" -name `"$($_.title)`"  -Template `"STS#0`"" } > siteScript.ps1

This statement does the following:

• Iterates through the entire production web application
• Pushes all the Site Collections into the Pipeline
• For each site collection, pushes all the SPWebs (sites) into the Pipeline
• Generates the New-SPweb command for each site

Note I used the “backtick” (`) so I could force each ‘$’ and each quote as literals. For my purposes the standard team site (STS#0) was sufficient.

All I then did was to run the sitescript.ps1 output in the cloud. Of course the web application, managed paths and site collection scripting was run in advance.

Next I needed to create the hundreds of Document Libraries in the cloud to mirror production.

That script required multiple script lines to be output, and I needed to filter out several kinds of document libraries that didn’t need to be created.  Here’s the script:

$siteCol = Get-SPSite "http ://SharePoint/"
write-host "`$templateName=`"Document Library`""
get-spwebapplication "http ://SharePoint/" | get-spsite -limit ALL |  get-spweb  -Limit ALL | ForEach-Object {
foreach($JPLib in $_.lists)
{
  if ( ($JPlib.BaseType -ne "DocumentLibrary") -or ($JPlib.hidden) ) {}
  elseif ($JPLib.Title -Match "Photo|Image|CustomizedsReports|Templates|Pages|Picture|cache|style|Slide") {}
  elseif ($JPLib.Title -Match "Assets|Collection") {}
  elseif ($JPLib.BaseTemplate -ne "DocumentLibrary")  {}
  elseif ($JPLib.Title -eq "Shared Documents")  {}
  elseif ($JPLib.Title -eq "Documents")  {}
  else
  {
      write-host "`#   $($_.url)   $($JPLib.Title)"
   write-host "`$SPWeb=get-spweb $($_.url)"
   write-host "`$listTemplate = `$SPWeb.ListTemplates[`$TemplateName]"
   write-host "`$JPGuid=`$SPWeb.Lists.Add(`"$($JPLib.title)`",`"$($JPLib.title)`",`$listTemplate)" 
   write-host "`$ls=`$SPWeb.Lists[`$JPGuid]"
   write-host "`$ls.onquicklaunch=`$true"
   write-host "`$ls.update()"
  }
} #foreach list
} #foreach object

It worked like a charm.  Plus the scripts can be run again to recreate the cloud copy.   The “Cloud” to which I refer is CloudShare.  So far, I am very pleased with the service and functionality for the price.