17
Prerequisites
Download the AzureToolkit from Sitecore.
Powershell 4.x or newer ($PSVersionTable.PSVersion to check your current version)
Download and install MSDeploy.
SQL Server (The express version is enough)
Microsoft SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (DacFX) for SQL server 2012 or later.
Steps
1 - Import the methods you will need from ...
16
Internal File Structure
A big difference is the internal structure of the .update package file. If you open up an update package file you will see the following folder structure:
A standard .zip package does not contain all the folders for added, changed or deleted data. So an update package can do more than a standard zip package. IIRC you can't delete ...
14
Here is a nice blog post from Akshay Sura describing how to export and import packages:
http://www.webdatasource.com/2011/08/exporting-and-importing-packages-from-sitecore-through-code-using-sitecore-api/
Code for import is:
using (new SecurityDisabler())
{
using (new ProxyDisabler())
{
using (new SyncOperationContext())
{
...
12
Yes you can but not with 1 click.
It will require some manual work but if your tree is not too big then it would be fine.
Open the Package Designer.
Add the items you want (Add Items statically)
Type the Source Name
Select the SOURCE and click on PREVIEW
Select the item versions you want to remove, right click and EXCLUDE
I hope that helps :)
All the ...
11
When you get seemingly odd behavior like this, it's always a good idea to check the Network tab in Chrome Dev Tools (or Firebug in Firefox or whatever it's called in IE/Edge).
When you click the "Generate ZIP" button, the Sitecore client makes a POST request to /sitecore/shell/Applications/Tools/Installer/Designer. Because nothing was logged to the ...
11
Ok. Well. Would definitely be possible to set something up with Unicorn for this - albeit it a highly unusual configuration. Steps I would take would look something like this:
Set up Unicorn on the CM box to serialize all of the web content you want to regularly push across to CD
This will ensure, the file system always has a copy of everything that is ...
10
As Geoff already pointed out; the package seems to contain content for a database called "live".
You can see (and remove, if you want) this by opening the package file. I'm using WinRAR for this example:
When opening up the package archive, you will find package.zip.
And opening that up, you will find a structure like this:
The "items" folder is the one ...
10
If you are making Web.config changes (which would be required for adding an HTTP handler), I would say that this is not something that should be just "installed" on your servers. You want to maintain the accuracy of your Web.config in your source, right? I'd also be worried about deploying Web.config changes in such an ad-hoc way (rather than following a ...
10
To pull content from a PROD instance back to a QA instance I would highly recommend using Sitecore Sidekick - Content Migrator
This tool uses Rainbow Serialization under the hood to quickly migrate content from one Sitecore database to another.
From Jeffs blog:
The Content Migrator will move content in a multi-threaded way. The system is designed to ...
10
You could create a patch file that sets all the indexes strategies to manual, that would effectively disable any automated updates that might happen as a result of installing a package or other content updates.
Something like this should give you a start. NOTE: I have not tested the patches or patched all the required indexes, but this should give you a ...
9
Based on the Sitecore documentation:
You should use static sources when you want to include all the items or files that are stored under a
specific node or folder in the content tree or if you only want to include a few specific items or files.
You should use dynamic sources when the items or files that you want to include cannot be easily
...
8
Your question did not specify which language the code needed to be written in, so here is an example in PowerShell.
PS master:\> Install-Package -Path YourPackageName.zip -InstallMode Merge -MergeMode Merge
Unless you have a really good reason to use C# code to install the packages, I would recommend you use Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE).
Check ...
7
You could use Powershell (Sitecore Powershell Extensions).
https://doc.sitecorepowershell.com/appendix/packaging/install-package
Install-Package [[-Path] ] [-InstallMode ] [-MergeMode ] [-DisableIndexing]
This will install a Sitecore package from the specified path.
You could add several of these statements into one powershell script if needed.
7
Adding to what Tamás answered
Static items: is a flat list of items that you want to add to a package. This is useful if you want to move items x, y and z from environment A to B.
Dynamic items: you select the items you want but want to apply custom filters to it(such as item name, creation date, updated within the past x days or within a range of dates, ...
6
Make a copy of databases you need to port items from and restore them on your QA instance.
You will lose time only for transferring the database from one server to another.
I did it many times and I can recommend this approach. No modules, no additional setup needed.
Not sure if this fits your needs. In my case there were no differences between ...
6
You can find the connection xml under
C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Sitecore\Sitecore.Rocks.VisualStudio\Connections
Open the xml file and edit the timeout attributes as needed.
<binding hostName="sc81" useWindowsAuth="false"
userName="sitecore\admin" password="b21d95ba8b8afb0d"
dataService="Hard Rock Web Service"
webRootPath="E:\SC81\Website" ...
6
Ignoring my NuGet approach above; the only obvious option you have available is a lesser-known feature in Sitecore packages called "poststep". Essentially you can instruct Sitecore to execute some code, after your package has installed.
Sean Holmesby describes it here: Sitecore Upgrade Post Step Scripts
While the blog post mentions this in regards to ....
5
This is due to the Sitecore.Analytics.config. In the config file, you have the handler
<handler type="Sitecore.Analytics.Data.Items.ItemEventHandler, Sitecore.Analytics" method="OnItemSaved"/>
This is triggered when the item is being saved. So, the event item:renamed will trigger the event item:saved, hence executing the above handler.
So, in order ...
5
Given this works for you on other environments with (presumably) the same code, the problem is most likely somewhere in the databases or files not in version control (including tokenized files).
Whenever I see a NullReferenceException without any obvious clue as to what was null, I go straight to the source code.
Sitecore.UIUtil.GetBrowserClassString(), ...
5
You might take a look at the new Vault product from XCentium. They do some really interesting things with moving content between environments using Git. Not sure whether your network restrictions would be prohibitive but might be an option.
5
You can install packages via DSC - but I don't think automating the UI is the right way to go about it. When I worked through this issue I dealt with it by creating an endpoint that DSC can push the packages to without bothering with the UI:
Dependencies for getting the install done
First up, you'll need an endpoint to trigger the install. My DSC approach ...
5
If you added/changed/removed item access for a role, you don't need to package that role and install it in the other environment. Role is not changed.
The only thing you have to do is to add the item which has new security rules to the package.
Find your item in Content Editor, make sure that Standard Fields checkbox is checked and scroll to the Security ...
5
As @Mark Cassidy pointed out in his comment. The best remedy in this situation is DbBrowser.
Log in to your authoring instance as an admin.
Navigate to /sitecore/admin/dbbrowser.aspx
From there, you will see your content tree. You can navigate to the problem items and either delete the single item or delete children.
DbBrowser is a slimmed down version ...
5
Is this the recommended way to include Support Packages and have them
available for an easy deploy?
The answer to your question will depend on your development environment and team setting. Below is the solution that works with our development process.
We include support packages in our git repo and Visual Studio solution. So for CI/CD we do not have any ...
5
So yeah, my DacFX was installed properly, but...
The only thing that I missed is that SQL Server itself is a prerequisite as well.
Since I'm working in a VM which doesn't host any Sitecore instance (it only builds the packages) I didn't realize that quickly.
4
If you only want to run your custom logic when the user saves an item from within the Sitecore client, you could use a saveUI pipeline processor instead. This would eliminate the need to check for these background job scenarios. Here is the basic structure of a saveUI processor:
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Pipelines.Save;
namespace Example....
4
You can achieve this with
Sitecore.Context.Job.Name
During installation it will return: "Install"
During normal item saving action Sitecore.Context.Jobproperty will be null
4
Creating a secure VPN to the CD environment, possibly temporarily for the publish operation would seem like a straightforward way of fulfilling the brief without engineering something new.
Obviously this just swaps a firewall rule for SQL to a firewall rule for VPN, but it's not clear from the question why such restrictions exist.
4
If you are talking about following templates (not any custom that I am not aware of):
Dictionary folder: {267D9AC7-5D85-4E9D-AF89-99AB296CC218}
Dictionary entry: {6D1CD897-1936-4A3A-A511-289A94C2A7B1}
Then the answer is YES.
In one open source module we haven't change many dictionary items for a long time (5 years already) and everything is fine..
...
4
You can adjust the security rights In the core database
item:
/sitecore/content/Documents and settings/All users/Start
menu/Right/Development Tools/Install Package
default: read right for sitecore\Sitecore Client Developing
You can remove that right, see the Security Field of that item. Than only the admin has access to the Package installation ...
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