SharePoint PowerShell cmdlets Equivalents for SharePoint 2007

 

SharePoint 2007 administrators may feel a bit left out when the see all of the articles showing how to do quick and powerful things with SharePoint 2010 PowerShell cmdlets. In this article I will show how to create common SharePoint objects without using the cmdlets.

This article is not done… I will be adding to it. Let me know if you need any other cmdlet replacements. When I get a chance I'll wrap up and publish my collection of 2007 "cmdlets" so you can generally just use the 2010 scripts.

 

Most of the examples below are in the form of "replace this cmdlet based code fragment with this SharePoint API fragment".

 

Hooking PowerShell to the SharePoint API

For all of the following script samples start your script with this line:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

This line is only need once at the beginning of your script.

 

Get-SPFarm

Replace:
  $farm = Get-SPFarm

With:
   $farm = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm]::Local

Notes:

• The cmdlet's default property is the name of configuration database. OM's default return is a list of all properties.
• The output of the above can be piped just like Get-SPFarm.
    [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm]::Local | select servers
  or
    $farm | select servers

 

Get-SPSite

Returned Data with URL parameter

Replace:
  $site = Get-SPSite http://intranet

With:
  $site = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://intranet")

Notes:

• The cmdlet's default property is the Url of the site collection. OM's default return is a list of all properties.
• The output of the New-Object can be piped to another cmdlet just like Get-SPSite. You cannot pipe into New-Object.

 

Target of a Pipe passing a SPWebApplication or a collection of SPWebApplications

Replace:
$webapplication | Get-SPSite

With:
$webapplication | select -ExpandProperty Sites

Examples:
  2010: $webapplication | Get-SPSite | Select url, {$_.rootweb.title}
  2007: $webapplication | select -ExpandProperty Sites | Select url, {$_.rootweb.title}

 

Get-SPWeb

Returned Data with URL parameter

Replace:
  $site = Get-SPWeb http://intranet/sailboat

With:
  $web = (New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://intranet/blog")).OpenWeb()
or
  $web = (New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://intranet")).allwebs["sailboat"]

Notes:

• The above is identical to the Get-SPSite replacement with the addition of .OpenWeb().
• Get-SPWeb typically is used with "-Limit All" to display more than 20 webs. That is not needed with the 2007 equivalent which will always return all webs.

 

Target of a Pipe passing a collection of SPSites

Replace:
  collectionOfSites | Get-SPWeb

With:
  collectionOfSites | select -ExpandProperty AllWebs

Examples:
  2010: $webapplication.Sites | Get-SPWeb | Select title, url
  2007: $webapplication.Sites | select -ExpandProperty AllWebs | Select title,url

 

Get-SPWebApplication

Returned Data using URL parameter

Replace:
  $webApplication = Get-SPWebApplication http://servername

With:
$webApplication = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication]::Lookup("http://servername")

 

Returned Data without parameter (return all web apps)

Replace:
$webApplications = Get-SPWebApplications

With:
$webApplications = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService.WebApplications

 

more to come…

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