(March Update) Site Definition developer helper scripts

Article
02/24/2008

The first thing you realize when playing with Site Definitions is that "IISRESET" is your next best friend. However, if you plan on deleting your old site collection and create a new one (to test a RootWeb / Site Collection site definition), it's very long to re-open up the Central Administration and do it through the interface since you'll have to reload both the CA and your web site.

Since I'm no master of Site Definitions, I'm still doing a lot of resetting because I like to understand each portion of the site definition. I started by creating a small DOS Batch File (CMD) that was copying my xml, deleting the site collection and recreating it through STSADM. If no error is found, I start Internet Explorer on my URL. Basically, I can drag this CMD file on my Quick Launch, click it, go take a coffee and when I come back, the site will be loaded (unless I made a mistake in the XML!).

Also, I'm using Visual Studio to edit Site Definitions since I am storing them in Team Foundation Server. Why VS? Well since playing with Site Definitions requires that you open up a few XML (the WebTemp*, the onet, the feature.xml that you are linking, etc.), it's nice to have a single GUI with all the editing tools and structure. Of course, the Site Definition Viewer is practical for any Site Definitions, but it's not an editor so VS was my choice.

If you create it, you end up with a structure like this (more or less) picture :

As you can see, you may have a custom web.config as well as RESX files to put in App_GlobalResources. Of course, when you deploy to your production server, you won't use these scripts and rather a WSP that will apply web.config modifications through SPWebConfigModification. This script is merely to have a quick and dirty copy for development box before you are ready to create Builds.

In the root, you can see 4 scripts :

Variables.cmd contains all the required variables to function. You should check that it matches your environment before running the other script.
CopyFiles.cmd will copy your 12 hive, your web site folder (dubbed 80), and your RESX files before any other scripts is ran
CreateSiteDefinition.cmd will call CopyFiles and then delete + create a site collection with the variables defined in Variables.cmd
InstallFeature.cmd is simply a helper that will copy your 12 hive and then install -FORCE all features in the script. If you add a feature, add the command line there.

**March Update** :

I added more scripts :
- CreateWebs.cmd (to create a series of web, explained here)
- DeleteWeb.cmd (to delete webs (in order to launch another creation))
- GAC.cmd (to add DLLs to the GAC)
- Go.cmd (to have a menu of options)

The previous scripts have been updated as well and are cleaner. Here's a screenshot of the Go command:

**/End March Update**

I'm still working on it and plan to add functionalities such as "CreateWeb" list from an Excel spreadsheet **March Update** : read the post here for the CreateWeb **/March Update**. That basically replace most of my "SiteBuilder" STSADM extension (except for creating content pages!) and simply runs a series of STSADM -o CreateWeb commands with an input file that you edit in Excel. You can download the current version here:

Here's the included files:

Variables.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: IF "%variables%"=="true" GOTO END

3:

    4: @SET separator=ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

5:

    6: @ECHO %separator%

    7: @ECHO Creating variables

    8: @ECHO %separator%

9:

   10: :VARIABLES

   11: @SET variables=true

   12: @SET stsadm="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\stsadm"

   13: @SET lcid=1033

   14: @SET description="Test Custom Portal"

   15: @SET title="Test Custom Portal"

16:

   17: @SET owneremail=%USERNAME%@%USERDNSDOMAIN%

   18: @SET user=%USERDOMAIN%\%USERNAME%

   19: @SET sitetemplate="MyCustomSiteDefinition#0"

   20: @SET url=https://%COMPUTERNAME%:80

   21: @SET hive12="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12"

   22: @SET wwwsites="c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80"

   23: @SET gacutil="E:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil"

24:

   25: :END

CopyFiles.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: cd /d %0\..

3:

    4: @CALL Variables.cmd

5:

    6: @ECHO %separator%

    7: @ECHO Copying features and site definitions to 12 hive

    8: @ECHO %separator%

9:

   10: CD 12

   11: XCOPY /y /s *.* %hive12% > nul

12:

   13: @ECHO %separator%

   14: @ECHO Copying Web.config and resources files

   15: @ECHO %separator%

16:

   17: CD ..\80

   18: XCOPY /y web.config %wwwsites% > nul

19:

   20: CD ..\App_GlobalResources

   21: XCOPY /y *.* %wwwsites%\App_GlobalResources > nul

22:

23:

   24: IISRESET

   25: @ECHO.

CreateSiteDefinition.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: cd /d %0\..

3:

    4: @CALL Variables.cmd

    5: @CALL CopyFiles.cmd

6:

    7: @ECHO %separator%

    8: @ECHO Deleting Site Collection

    9: @ECHO %separator%

   10: %stsadm% -o deletesite -url %url% -deleteadaccounts false

11:

   12: @ECHO %separator%

   13: @ECHO Creating Site Collection

   14: @ECHO %separator%

   15: %stsadm% -o createsite -url %url% -owneremail %owneremail% -ownerlogin %user% -lcid %lcid% -sitetemplate %sitetemplate% -title %title% -description %description%

16:

   17: IF ERRORLEVEL 0 GOTO IE

   18: @ECHO %separator%

   19: @ECHO Error while deleting or creating Site Collection

   20: @ECHO %separator%

   21: SET ERRORLEVEL=-1

   22: pause

   23: GOTO:eof

24:

   25: :IE

   26: @ECHO %separator%

   27: @ECHO Operation completed

   28: @ECHO %separator%

29:

   30: IF NOT "%1"=="noie" start iexplore %url%

InstallFeature.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: cd /d %0\..

3:

    4: @CALL Variables.cmd

    5: @CALL CopyFiles.cmd

    6: @CALL GAC.cmd

7:

    8: @ECHO.

    9: @ECHO %separator%

   10: @ECHO Forcing features installation

   11: @ECHO %separator%

   12: @ECHO.

13:

   14: @ECHO --[ Installing MyCustomFeature ]----------------------------------

   15: %stsadm% -o installfeature -name MyCustomFeature -force

   16: IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 0 GOTO PAUSE

17:

18:

   19: :PAUSE

   20: @ECHO %separator%

   21: @ECHO Error while installing last feature

   22: @ECHO %separator%

   23: PAUSE

CreateWebs.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: cd /d %0\..

3:

    4: @CALL Variables.cmd

5:

    6: @ECHO %separator%

    7: @ECHO Create Website Structure and Content.

    8: @ECHO %separator%

9:

   10: :CREATEWEBS

   11: @ECHO:

   12: @ECHO %separator%

   13: @ECHO Create Site Structure

   14: @ECHO %separator%

   15: @ECHO.

16:

   17: FOR /F "eol=; tokens=1,2,3,4 delims=    " %%i IN (Data/CreateWebs.txt) DO (

   18:     @ECHO ----[ Creating "%%i" ]--

   19:     %stsadm% -o createweb -url %url%%%i -sitetemplate %%j -title "%%k" -lcid %%l

   20: )

21:

22:

   23: :IE

   24: @ECHO %separator%

   25: @ECHO Operation completed

   26: @ECHO %separator%

27:

   28: IF NOT "%1"=="noie" start iexplore %url%/fr/fcdq/

DeleteWebs.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: cd /d %0\..

3:

    4: @CALL Variables.cmd

5:

    6: @ECHO %separator%

    7: @ECHO Delete Website Structure and Content.

    8: @ECHO %separator%

    9: @ECHO.

10:

   11: %stsadm% -o deletesubwebs -url %url%/fr -recurse true

   12: %stsadm% -o deletesubwebs -url %url%/en -recurse true

13:

   14: :IE

   15: @ECHO %separator%

   16: @ECHO Operation completed

   17: @ECHO %separator%

GAC.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: cd /d %0\..

3:

    4: @CALL Variables.cmd

5:

    6: @ECHO %separator%

    7: @ECHO GAC Util

    8: @ECHO %separator%

    9: @ECHO.

10:

   11: IISRESET

   12: @ECHO.

13:

   14: @ECHO --[ Installing MyCustomDll.dll ]---------------------------------

   15: %gacutil% -i "C:\Temp\bin\MyCustomDll.dll" -f /silent

   16: IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 0 GOTO PAUSE

   17: @ECHO.

18:

   19: GOTO:eof

20:

   21: :PAUSE

   22: @ECHO %separator%

   23: @ECHO Error while installing last DLL

   24: @ECHO %separator%

   25: PAUSE

Go.cmd

    1: @ECHO OFF

    2: cd /d %0\..

3:

    4: @CALL Variables.cmd

    5: Color 0A

    6: CLS

7:

    8: :MENU

    9: @ECHO.

   10: @ECHO.

   11: @ECHO.

   12: @ECHO.

   13: @ECHO %separator%

   14: @ECHO MyCustom Sharepoint website

   15: @ECHO %separator%

   16: @ECHO (1) Install Features

   17: @ECHO (2) Create Site Definition

   18: @ECHO (3) Create Webs

   19: @ECHO (4) Copy Files

   20: @ECHO (G) GAC DLL

   21: @ECHO (D) Delete Webs

   22: @ECHO (x) Exit

   23: @ECHO.

   24: CHOICE /C 1234567GDX /M "please make a choice : "

   25:     IF ERRORLEVEL 10 GOTO:eof

   26:     IF ERRORLEVEL 9 GOTO DELETEWEBS

   27:     IF ERRORLEVEL 8 GOTO GAC

   28:     IF ERRORLEVEL 4 GOTO COPYFILES

   29:     IF ERRORLEVEL 3 GOTO WEBS

   30:     IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO SITEDEFINITION

   31:     IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO FEATURES

32:

33:

   34: :FEATURES

   35: @ECHO.

   36:     @CALL InstallFeatures.cmd

   37: GOTO:MENU

38:

39:

   40: :SITEDEFINITION

   41: @ECHO.

   42:     @CALL CreateSiteDefinition.cmd

   43: GOTO:MENU

44:

45:

   46: :WEBS

   47: @ECHO.

   48:     @CALL CreateWebs.cmd

   49: GOTO:MENU

50:

51:

   52: :DELETEWEBS

   53: @ECHO %separator%

   54: @ECHO.

   55:     @CALL DeleteWebs.cmd

   56: GOTO:MENU

57:

58:

   59: :COPYFILES

   60: @ECHO %separator%

   61: @ECHO.

   62:     @CALL CopyFiles.cmd

   63: GOTO:MENU

64:

65:

   66: :GAC

   67: @ECHO %separator%

   68: @ECHO.

   69:     @CALL GAC.cmd

   70: GOTO:MENU

Cheers!

Maxime