sitecore unicorn - synchronize easily

Synchronize easily

Sitecore Unicorn

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Few words about me• My name is Radek Kozłowski• I’m Senior Sitecore Developer at Coders Center• I work with Sitecore for over 3 years• I really enjoy Sitecore community, so I contribute to it

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> Why do we need serialization?> What is Unicorn?> Why should we use it?> Serialization improvements> Demo

Agenda

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> Moving Sitecore development items between environments

> Templates> Presentational items: layouts, renderings and sublayouts> Setting items

> Populating test/local environments with content from live instances

Why do we need serialization?

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> Sitecore packages> Simple> Error-prone> Suitable for ad-hoc actions and full module packages

Basic approaches

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> Simple serializing items> Default Sitecore mechanism> Need manual action> Very dangerous

Basic approaches

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> Utility that solves the issue of moving items between Sitecore instances.

> Automatically serialize item changes as they are made to Sitecore

> Sitecore items are serialized to files and moved by the repository, insted of error-prone packages

What is Unicorn?

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> Advanced serialization and comparision system for Sitecore

> Complete replacement for the Sitecore serialization format and filesystem organization

> YAML-based serialization formatter> Serialization File System (SFS)

Rainbow

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> Serializing only the needed data> Getting rid of merging conficts> Getting rid of field content-length recalculation

YAML - based serialization formatter

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> Nonessential data - are in YAML comments> Ignoring fields (e.g. __Updated)

YAML - based serialization formatter

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> Human readable file hierarchy> Extremely long item name

support> Unlimited path length support> Stores each included subtree in

its own hierarchy, reducing file name length

> Supports non-unique paths, while keeping it human-readable

Serialization File System (SFS)

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> Solves the problem of moving Sitecore items between instances

> Helps merging changes in Sitecore items> Saves the time of items deployment> Transparent Synch – automated synchronization

Why we should use it

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> Great tool from Hedgehog development

> Focused on user’s choice rather than repository

Something similar? TDS

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> Selecting items from Visual Studio

Something similar? TDS

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> Choosing what to do with changes

Something similar? TDS

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Demo time

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> Extremely good Sitecore module

> Very easy to synchronize> Can automate serialization> Bit harder to configure

than TDS> A lot of improvements

Conclusions

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Thank you My blog: SitecoreCoffee.comTwitter: @Radek_KozlowskiE-mail: rkozlowski@post.plMy company’s page: http://coders.center/