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up vote 4 down vote favorite

I'm writing an SPE script and am looping over my site nodes. For each site node, I want to check if a particular descendant exists and if not then create it. I have the list of top-level nodes, but cannot figure out how to query each of those nodes for a descendant.

If I was writing in regular query syntax, I could write something like this:

var sites = database.SelectItems("fast:/sitecore/content/Master/*[@@templatename='Website']");
foreach (var site in sites)
{
    var settingsItem = site.Axes.SelectItem("descendant::*[@@templatename='Settings']");
    //now check if SettingsItem is null, if so create etc
}

What I have in my SPE script:

#get the list of top-level site nodes
$sites = Get-Item master: -Query "fast:/sitecore/content/Master//*[@@templatename='Website']";
foreach ($site in $sites)
{
    # get descendant of each $site item that inherits from "Settings" template 
    $settings = ???
    if ($settings == null) {
        #create settings item etc...
    }   
}
share|improve this question
up vote 3 down vote

In your code, $site will be of the type Sitecore.Data.Items.BaseItem, so it has all the standard API available.

You can achieve the desired behavior like this:

$settings =
    $site.Axes.GetDescendants() |
        ? { $_.TemplateName -eq "Settings" } |
        select -first 1

if($settings -eq $null) {
    # create settings etc
}

If performance is important for you, you can use Fast Query:

$query = "fast:" + $site.Paths.Path + "//*[@@templateid='{your-template-id-here}']"

$settings = Get-Item master: -Query $query | select -first 1

Note that I used the ID of the template instead of its name. This reduces the need for SQL joins and makes the query much faster.

share|improve this answer
    
Cool, I didn't know about calling methods like that. $site.Axes.GetDescendants() will be a bit of a killer though won't it.. Presume I could also do $site.Axes.SelectSingleItem() right? – Matthew Dresser 8 hours ago
    
@MatthewDresser Your original SelectSingleItem query will perform exactly the same as GetDescendants. See my updated answer for a faster solution. – Dmytro Shevchenko♦ 33 mins ago
up vote 1 down vote

Try this snippet.

# get descendant of each $site item that inherits from "Settings" template 
# $site = gi .
$settingsBase = "{6669DC16-F106-44B5-96BE-7A31AE82B5B5}"
$settingItems= Get-ChildItem -Path $site.Paths.Path | Where-Object { 
    [Sitecore.Data.Managers.TemplateManager]::GetTemplate($_).InheritsFrom($settingsBase) 
}

$settingsBase is a base settings template ID or base settings template Name.

Be careful. If you have multiple settings it will return an array, so select single (first element) you can use $settingItems | select -First 1

share|improve this answer
    
I just need to find descendants of the site item based on my "Settings" template. – Matthew Dresser 8 hours ago
    
Isn't my code doing that? (removed -Recurse switch) – Alan Płócieniak 8 hours ago
    
Apologies, my question was badly worded, it should have said "...of an item using a template" – Matthew Dresser 8 hours ago
    
No worries. I am glad you've got a solution for your problem. – Alan Płócieniak 8 hours ago
up vote 0 down vote

Dmytro Shevchenko's answer did what was needed, but the Axes.GetDescendants() call will, as the name suggests, retrieve all items which is a pretty expensive operation. The code below seems to work ok:

$settings = $site.Axes.SelectSingleItem("descendant::*[@@templatename='Settings']")
share|improve this answer
    
It doesn't meet that criteria: "get a descendant of an item inheriting from a template", which is important if your solution must work on instances where somebody wants to override Settings template. – Alan Płócieniak 8 hours ago
    
Please note that, since your query is not a Fast Query, this solution will be equivalent to .GetDescendants(), i.e. it will iterate through each item's children recursively. If you really need good performance, you can try converting your query to a Fast Query. Keep in mind that descendant:: won't work with Fast Query unless you change the value of the FastQueryDescendantsDisabled setting to true in the Sitecore.config. – Dmytro Shevchenko♦ 59 mins ago

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