Create Sitecore Link with Powershell

Question

I'm working on some reports using Sitecore Powershell Extensions. One requirement is to provide the public URL for various Sitecore items. I'm thinking this isn't really possible via Link Manager because I don't have proper site context when running the report.

Is my thinking correct? Is there another non-hardcoded way to generate the URL in this scenario? Does the concept of context switching exist within PSE?

Probably important to note that this instance supports multiple sites so I can't assume a static domain for the URL.

UPDATE

After some Guidance from @Rirchard Seal and @Michael West below, here is what a function looks like to return a url:

function Get-UrlForItem($item) {
    $linkUrl = ""

    $siteContext = [Sitecore.Sites.SiteContext]::GetSite("website");

    New-UsingBlock(New-Object -TypeName "Sitecore.Sites.SiteContextSwitcher" -ArgumentList $siteContext) {
        $linkUrl = [Sitecore.Links.LinkManager]::GetItemUrl($item);
        $linkUrl
    }
}

Next up is to get the correct sitecontext for the item; right now I have it hard-coded to "website".

Thanks guys!

Answer 1

With PowerShell you can use the New-UsingBlock cmdlet to mimick C#'s using statement.

So assuming that you can use ancestors of the item to get the Site Root and then get the SiteContext from that you could do this to get the link:

New-UsingBlock(New-Object -TypeName "Sitecore.Sites.SiteContextSwitcher" -ArgumentList $siteContext) {
    $linkUrl = [Sitecore.Links.LinkManager]::GetItemUrl($item);
}

Answer 2

Just adding to this answer. I wanted to use something similar but on a list of items, thus, couldn't really use a using statement.

[Sitecore.Context]::SetActiveSite("Website")
$urlop = New-Object ([Sitecore.Links.UrlOptions]::DefaultOptions)
$urlop.AddAspxExtension = $true
$urlop.AlwaysIncludeServerUrl = $true
$items | select Name, @{Label="URL"; Expression={[Sitecore.Links.LinkManager]::GetItemUrl($_,$urlop)} }