Razl scripting with PowerShell

Razl, tool from Hedgehog Development, that was designed to transfer items between Sitecore instances and compare them, has some nice scripting features.

I needed to use Razl scripting for Sitecore upgrade process. I created new fresh Sitecore instance (it was big jump, from 6.5 to 8.1) and started preparing what should be moved to new database. Old instance had a lot of datasource items and huge amount of media library items. Transfer all of this things was huge deal and was processing for over a dozen of hours. I decided to make some changes in my approach.

Preparation of Sitecore instances

I was using Razl 3.0.5. Unfortunately I had some problems with my solution that I couldn't connect with this tool to the Sitecore that had all of solution code deployed, so I've created a clean instance of version 6.5 and a clean version of 8.1. I've changed the connection strings of this two to the correct solution databases and I used this two clean instances just for transferring purposes - worked like a charm. You might not have exact problem, but this is how I went through that.

Preparing Razl script file

First you have to prepare the script file in the Razl. You can do it just like in general, by adding tasks to Task List:

Then, instead of running transfer, you can click 'Export Tasks' button. You will be prompted to save the script file. Let's take a look into the one:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<razl>
  <connection name="SC65VanillaWithSW.Master" readOnly="false" install="true">
    <url>http://sc650vanilla/</url>
    <accessGuid>047c5600-e111-449c-9e2b-179b06f17190</accessGuid>
    <database>master</database>
    <path>C:\inetpub\wwwroot\sc650Vanilla\Website</path>
  </connection>
  <connection name="SC81VanillaForSW.Master" readOnly="false" install="true">
    <url>http://sc81u2vanillaforconnection/</url>
    <accessGuid>8db29355-a8d4-4102-969a-537cc8c54f30</accessGuid>
    <database>master</database>
    <path>C:\inetpub\wwwroot\sc81u2vanillaforconnection\Website</path>
  </connection>
  <operation name="CopyAll" source="SC65VanillaWithSW.Master" target="SC81VanillaForSW.Master">
    <!--Copy with overwrite '/sitecore/templates/SW', all missing parents and all child items from 'SC65VanillaWithSW.Master' to 'SC81VanillaForSW.Master'-->
    <parameter name="itemId">b80ae69f-4212-43e6-af97-2f86ddcddae1</parameter>
    <parameter name="overwrite">True</parameter>
    <parameter name="lightningMode">False</parameter>
  </operation>
  <operation name="CopyAll" source="SC65VanillaWithSW.Master" target="SC81VanillaForSW.Master">
    <!--Copy with overwrite '/sitecore/templates/User Defined', all missing parents and all child items from 'SC65VanillaWithSW.Master' to 'SC81VanillaForSW.Master'-->
    <parameter name="itemId">b29ee504-861c-492f-95a3-0d890b6fca09</parameter>
    <parameter name="overwrite">True</parameter>
    <parameter name="lightningMode">False</parameter>
  </operation>
  <operation name="CopyAll" source="SC65VanillaWithSW.Master" target="SC81VanillaForSW.Master">
    <!--Copy with overwrite '/sitecore/layout/Layouts/SW', all missing parents and all child items from 'SC65VanillaWithSW.Master' to 'SC81VanillaForSW.Master'-->
    <parameter name="itemId">2141e479-3f72-447c-9afa-3b4db1ea283d</parameter>
    <parameter name="overwrite">True</parameter>
    <parameter name="lightningMode">False</parameter>
  </operation>
</razl>

It has a two connections for the instances which will be used in transfer. It comes from the Razl configuration, where firstly I created that connections. Under that elements there is a list of operations with specified source instance, target instance, ID of the item and configuration of the operation type - in my case it will be CopyAll with overwriting the target instance.

As far as I knew at that time, there was no way to edit exported script with Razl, so I was editing it manually.

Preparing PowerShell run script

At last I wanted to have a PowerShell script that will run my transfer script with just one click. I have prepared a PSs that run razl.exe with specified scripts. For core database this is quite simple - set your directory where Razl script are located in:

For master database I decided to split Razl script into smaller parts, so the I was able to comment out some of them to run just specific ones:

Also these scripts log full log into specific files. So everything that happens while transfer is saved for analysis. Here is some example part of the log:

    1 13:00:31,579 INFO CopyAll Started Id: 563a2ddb-ad89-4182-9706-eb1512abe0b1, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core, Overwrite: True
   1 13:00:31,579 INFO CopyAll Processing /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist
   1 13:00:31,580 INFO CopyItem Started Id: 563a2ddb-ad89-4182-9706-eb1512abe0b1, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:31,847 INFO CopyItem Finish Id: 563a2ddb-ad89-4182-9706-eb1512abe0b1, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:31,928 INFO CopyAll processing children of /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist
   1 13:00:31,928 INFO CopyAll Processing /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu
   1 13:00:31,929 INFO CopyItem Started Id: 60daf681-8069-46a2-aa39-5490741f6cec, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:32,196 INFO CopyItem Finish Id: 60daf681-8069-46a2-aa39-5490741f6cec, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:32,252 INFO CopyAll processing children of /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu
   1 13:00:32,252 INFO CopyAll Processing /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Show Map
   1 13:00:32,252 INFO CopyItem Started Id: ce073686-11cb-4921-b4db-61c98bc1f54a, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Show Map, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:32,519 INFO CopyItem Finish Id: ce073686-11cb-4921-b4db-61c98bc1f54a, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Show Map, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:32,576 INFO CopyAll processing children of /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Show Map
   1 13:00:32,576 INFO CopyAll Processing /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Select All
   1 13:00:32,577 INFO CopyItem Started Id: bbe0cd71-aac7-47bc-971a-49265078d17c, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Select All, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:33,153 INFO CopyItem Finish Id: bbe0cd71-aac7-47bc-971a-49265078d17c, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Select All, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:33,209 INFO CopyAll processing children of /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Select All
   1 13:00:33,209 INFO CopyAll Processing /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Deselect All
   1 13:00:33,209 INFO CopyItem Started Id: b54acbc5-0fc0-4d6d-a863-0f8657e50504, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Deselect All, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:38,480 INFO CopyItem Finish Id: b54acbc5-0fc0-4d6d-a863-0f8657e50504, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Deselect All, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core
   1 13:00:38,537 INFO CopyAll processing children of /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist/Menu/Deselect All
   1 13:00:38,593 INFO CopyAll Finish Id: 563a2ddb-ad89-4182-9706-eb1512abe0b1, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/List Types/Google Maps Multilist, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core, Overwrite: True
   1 13:00:38,705 INFO CopyAll Started Id: 5cee31bf-120d-4936-b9c6-930cbf63cb57, Path: /sitecore/system/Field types/Simple Types/Google Maps Single Point, From: SC65VanillaWithSW.Core, To: SC81VanillaForSW.Core, Overwrite: True