Yes...Fitz is blogging again. At last Mike Fitzmaurice one of the primary links between the SharePoint team and the outside world is blogging again.

No...Maurice Prather one of the few hardcore SharePoint bloggers around has posted that he is leaving the SharePoint team. That's a real loss, overall compared to say the PowerShell team the state of blogging from the SharePoint team has been really poor over the last year, but as blogs come second best to shipping a product out the door perhaps that's understandable, hopefully things will improve once the RTM celebrations have finished. 

In a previous post I've added content to the publishing pages in the legal and finance divisions and its useful to know what fields are in a list when working with the SharePoint API or say the Query By Content WebPart . Yes you can do using the UI but its a pain.

First get the SPWeb object for our site

$site=spweb "http://sps:2828/divisions/finance"
$web=$site.Openweb()

now show the lists on the site

$web.lists | select title,contenttypes

Title                                   ContentTypes                          
-----                                   ------------                          
Documents                               {Document, Folder}                    
Images                                  {Document, Folder}                    
Master Page Gallery                     {Master Page, Folder}                 
Pages                                   {Page, Article Page, Welcome Page, F...
Workflow History                        {Workflow History}                    
Workflow Tasks                          {Task, Folder}                        

The Pages list holds the publising pages so let's list its fields

$web.lists["Pages"].Fields | select title, internalname, typedisplayname | sort title

Title                      InternalName               TypeDisplayName         
-----                      ------------               ---------------         
Approval                   Approval                   Workflow Status         
Approval Status            _ModerationStatus          Moderation Status       
Approver Comments          _ModerationComments        Multiple lines of text  
Article Date               ArticleStartDate           Date and Time           
Byline                     ArticleByLine              Single line of text     
Check In Comment           _CheckinComment            Lookup                  
Checked Out To             CheckedOutTitle            Lookup                  
Checked Out To             CheckoutUser               Person or Group         
Checked Out To             LinkCheckedOutTitle        Computed                
Client Limit               Client_x0020_Limit         Number                  
Collect Feedback           CollectF                   Workflow Status         
Collect Signatures         CollectS                   Workflow Status         
Contact                    PublishingContact          Person or Group         
Contact E-Mail Address     PublishingContactEmail     Single line of text     
Contact Name               PublishingContactName      Single line of text     
Contact Picture            PublishingContactPicture   Hyperlink or Picture    
Content Type               ContentType                Choice                  
Content Type ID            ContentTypeId              Content Type Id       

etc...

There are a lot of fields, to get the count use $web.lists["Pages"].Fields | measure-object
That gives 92 fields for the Pages library.

To see the content publishing pages themselves use

$web.lists["Pages"].Items | select name, file, level

Name                       File                                           Level
----                       ----                                           -----
default.aspx               Pages/default.aspx                             Draft
Client1.aspx               Pages/Client1.aspx                             Published

and finally two functions for our toolbox to make calling these easier

function get-SPListFields([string]$URL, [string]$ListName)
{
$site=get-spweb $URL
$web=$site.OpenWeb()
$list=$web.Lists[$ListName]
$list.Fields
}

function get-SPListItems([string]$URL, [string]$ListName)
{
$site=get-spweb $URL
$web=$site.OpenWeb()
$list=$web.Lists[$ListName]
$list.Items
}

These functions will come in useful later when we approve pages in a site with PowerShell.

One of the things that the PowerShell team has always pointed out is the importance of naming conventions in functions.
Most of the bult-in PowerShell functions have a verb-noun format i.e. get-process, get-service etc..
Keeping things consistent across the different types of providers helps with the learning process as you can almost guess what a cmdlet would be called once you know the noun.

Up to now I thought this was just a syntax sugar but this blog entry from the main PowerShell guy Jeffrey Snover points out an important benefit if you name your functions correctly.
When you type a function name, and PowerShell tries to match the correct code to call, it will automagically add a get- to the function name and try to match on that if it fails to find a function of the exact name.

Heres an example take the simple get-SPSite function

function get-SPSite([string]$url)
{
   new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($url)
}

I've been using this as $a=get-spsite "http://server" but I could have used $a=spsite "http://server". Its a small thing but if you're typing on the command those extra four characters add up plus it almost looks like C# code not having to use a lengthy namespace prefix.

Likewise for get-SPWeb

function get-SPWeb([string]$url)
{
   $site=new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($url)

   $site.OpenWeb()
}

Everyone and their dog will have this link but I'll post it anyway.

Windows PowerShell 1.0 has been released. This page has a list of the download links for XP, Windows Server 2003 and Vista .

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx

You might have to be patient as the links were a bit flakey when I tried them.

A point to note is that the Vista version is at RC2 status. Jeffrey Snover explains the Vista release delay here http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2006/11/15/windows-powershell-windows-vista.aspx. Checking the comments it seems some people are getting hot under the collar about the delay but as I see it the PowerShell team have done a great job and by all accounts the only difference between RC2 and RTM is the installer. Personally given my bad beta experiences of Vista I'm happier installing the RC2 of PowerShell than the RTM of Vista.

Also worth a download is the Documentation Pack as it contains a Getting Started Guide and a User Guide.

Ok now we have the main structure of our Portal with the new Areas we wanted and we need to start adding some content.

As the Area's we have created are Publishing sites we're going to start using the new Publishing API's in WSS to add content.

The first function to help us with this is called Add-Content. This function takes a Site Collection URL, Area URL, Contents Title, Content Text in HTML format and a check-in comment. This function adds the given text and title to the default content page in the Publishing site.
With a few changes you could modify it to add to a specific content page.

# Function: Add-Content
# Description: Add the given text and title to the default publishing page in the publishing web
# Parameters: SiteCollectionURL URL for the root of the Site Collection
# Area Relative URL to the site/subweb/area
# Title Title string for the page
# Text Content to publish
# Comment Checkin comment
function Add-Content($SiteCollectionURL, $Area, $Title, $Text, $Comment)
{

$url = $SiteCollectionURL + "/" + $Area

write-host "Adding content to " $url

$site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($url)

$web = $site.OpenWeb()

$pubweb = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::GetPublishingWeb($web)

$pp=$pubweb.DefaultPage

$pp.CheckOut()

# Set the properties
$item=$pp.Item
$item.set_Item("Title",$Title)
$item.set_Item("PublishingPageContent",$Text)
$item.Update()

# Checkin, Approve and Publish
$pp.CheckIn( $Comment )
$pp.Approve( $Comment )
$pp.Publish( $Comment )


}

Note the set_Item syntax, the SharePoint item property seems to conflict with PowerShell's built in properties.
This code assumes Moderation is turned on the Publishing Site.

So we have a handy function to add content but again I want to source that content from an external source.
In this case it's an XML file called content.xml the start of which looks like this:
<contents>
<content>
<area>Divisions/Finance</area>
<title>
Finance Division
</title>
<text>&lt;b&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; Nullam hendrerit lacinia purus. Proin vulputate porta nisl. Aliquam commodo lobortis lacus. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Sed quis leo imperdiet nisl ultrices fringilla. Praesent enim est, commodo sed, pharetra mattis, condimentum ut, arcu. Morbi aliquet lacus vel elit. In quis nibh. Vestibulum tincidunt. Sed quis sem.
Maecenas lobortis convallis dolor. Nunc rutrum, nunc ac elementum tempor, velit est vehicula libero, eu fermentum lacus lacus ac diam. Curabitur risus quam, dignissim ut, mollis vel, nonummy at, metus. Mauris elit libero, interdum sit amet, sollicitudin nec, eleifend vel, magna. Aliquam at ipsum. Ut rutrum convallis turpis. Quisque urna quam, tincidunt id, pretium a, dignissim ac, neque. Donec ipsum. Sed ornare pretium diam. Phasellus massa. Morbi porttitor purus eget turpis. Sed vel lectus. Etiam egestas nibh vitae augue. Ut felis arcu, fermentum sed, venenatis eget, tincidunt et, lorem. Etiam commodo nisi ut nisl. Morbi augue enim, accumsan eu, dignissim a, scelerisque non, nunc.
Praesent mauris ante, pretium eget, volutpat quis, congue eget, odio.&lt;br/&gt; Praesent sed orci nec sapien molestie viverra. Aenean pulvinar dictum mauris. Quisque ligula est, vestibulum id, consequat vel, ullamcorper id, libero. In tristique. Duis turpis augue, egestas sed, semper eget, dignissim sed, nisl. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Curabitur feugiat dolor cursus lacus. Curabitur dui augue, tempus id, sollicitudin vel, pharetra a, augue. Donec vestibulum dictum ligula. Ut velit dui, dignissim at, interdum quis, convallis a, arcu. Vivamus neque lorem, sollicitudin et, malesuada sed, rhoncus eu, pede. Aliquam hendrerit imperdiet lacus. Duis iaculis fringilla risus. Aliquam pretium ante quis arcu. Nam erat est, porttitor non, venenatis at, auctor sed, libero. Sed condimentum, ante vitae dignissim egestas, dolor nisl rutrum elit, nec ultrices lacus ipsum et pede. Duis dolor turpis, lacinia eu, facilisis ut, fermentum sit amet, nisl. Proin imperdiet mauris a lacus. Nullam suscipit imperdiet tellus.
</text>
........

Its a simple format that has the relative URL of the destination area, the content title and the contents in encoded HTML in its XML nodes. I've encoded the HTML as support for CDATA sections is not as easy as it should be in PowerShell at the moment.

Now I was going to use the import-xml cmdlet that was available in Monad but that seems to have disappeared in recent builds so to import this file I'm going to use the get-content cmdlet, create a variable from it (the $() syntax) and cast it to XML

$xml=[XML]$(get-content Content.xml)

The [XML] is a shorthand way to load the XML into an XMLdocument class
so

$xml | get-member

shows the typename as being the XmlDocument class. If you're used to using this in C# or VB.Net then you have access to the class as normal but the cool thing about PowerShell is the $xml variable now has extra properties that match the nodes in the XML file

$xml.contents.content

will list the content nodes and

$xml.contents.content[0].area

will show Divisions/Finance

The import-content function will do all the hard work.
I'm just piping the list of content nodes into the add-content function and referencing the node name as properties

# Function: import-content
# Description: Use the XMl import file to import some sample content into the Publishing Web
# Parameters: SiteCollectionURL URL for the root of the Site Collection
# ImportFile XML file containing the sample data
function import-content($SiteCollectionUrl,$ImportFile)
{

$xml=[XML]$(get-content $ImportFile)

# Loop through the xml items
$xml.Contents.Content | foreach-object { Add-Content $SiteCollectionUrl $_.Area $_.Title $_.Text }


}

So with a few lines of code this function is loading the contents of the XML file and piping the values of the nodes into our add-content function.

Lets have a look at what the Portal looks like so far

All this and we have not had to use the MOSS UI at all!

Now all those imported content pages will need to be approved. Do it by hand maybe? nope, thats our next PowerShell powered step.

In this step I want to start filling out the Portal with some business areas from a list that has been defined for us

We're going to use a CSV file in the same way as we did for the users. The start of the file looks like this

AreaURL, AreaName, AreaTitle, AreaDescription, AreaTemplate
"Divisions","Divisions","Divisions Home Page", "This area includes links to content based on divisions in the company.", "BLANKINTERNET#2"
"Divisions/Sales","Sales","Sales Home Page", "This area includes information related to sales.", "BLANKINTERNET#2"
"Divisions/Support","Support","Support Home Page", "This area includes information related to support.", "BLANKINTERNET#2"
"Divisions/HumanResources","Human Resources","Human Resources Home Page", "This area includes information related to human resources.", "BLANKINTERNET#2"
"Divisions/Marketing","Marketing","Marketing Home Page", "This area includes information related to marketing.", "BLANKINTERNET#2"

We have a AreaURL column which is the URL relative to the site collection root and we also have the Area Name, Title and description.
The AreaTemplate field in this example is BLANKINTERNET#2 (format is WebTemplate#Configuration).
Now I know this is the Publishing Site template under the Publishing tab but we could just as easily create a team site, subsites of blogs or WIKI's etc.
The easist way to find out what template and configuration to use is to create a site of the type you want through the UI and use powershell to find out what template is used

Run these commands to get a list of the Templates in use on the portal

$sp=new-object microsoft.sharepoint.spsite("http://sps:2828")
$sp.allwebs | select serverrelativeurl, webtemplate, configuration

also checkout Dan Winter's list of the MOSS 2007 templates on his blog http://blogs.msdn.com/dwinter/archive/2006/07/07/659613.aspx

Now to the PowerShell functions
First a simple wrapper to add a new site to the Site Collection: add-spweb

# Function:         add-spweb
# Description:        Create a new Web
# Parameters:        SiteCollectionURL     URL for the root of the Site Collection
#            WebUrl         relative URl of the sub site
#            Title             Title string
#            Description         Description string
#            Template        Template to use
#
function add-spweb([string]$SiteCollectionUrl, [string]$WebUrl, [string]$Title, [string]$Description, [string]$Template)
{


    # Create our SPSite object
    $spsite=new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite $SiteCollectionUrl

    # Add a site
    $spsite.Allwebs.Add($WebUrl, $Title, $Description ,[int]1033, $Template, $false, $false)
    
    # Note: The new SPWeb will be returned from this call
}

And then a function that will import the CSV file, create a set of objects for each Area line in the CSV file and pipe the list to add-spweb to add a new site.

# Function:         Import-Sites
# Description:        Create a set of subwebs as listed in the import CSV file
# Parameters:        CSVFile         Location of the CSV file containing the list of webs
#            SiteCollectionURL     URL for the root of the Site Collection    
#    
function Import-Sites([string]$CSVFile, [string]$SiteCollectionURL)
{
    Import-Csv $CSVFile | foreach-object { add-spweb $SiteCollectionURL $_.AreaURL $_.AreaName $_.AreaDescription $_.AreaTemplate } | foreach-object {$_.Navigation.UseShared=$true; $_.Update() }
}

I'm also setting UseShared to true which tells the subareas to use the main portal navigation elements.

Use it like this

import-sites "ContosoAreas.CSV" http://sps:2828

The next step will be to import some content into our Publishing Areas...

Ok now we have the users in AD we can add them to the portal. Again we can use import-csv to add them from the users CSV file

heres the routine