Sitecore Update Placeholder Key (Programming)

Question

I'd like to update the value of placeholder(PH) key assigned into each page item.

The problem is I changed the value of PH key in master template (actually combined two templates to make only one template) and a number of pages should be updated with new assigned PH key.

How to update placeholder key without clicking each item and changing the value in presentation? If I do like this, it takes a lot of time.

What I want to do in program is:

Set initial path (/sitecore/home/robot/)
Check each item (with each item's sub-item) in initial path
Retrieve each item's assigned controls in presentation
If there is "Breadcrumbs" control with "breadcrumbs" key name
Then, change the value to "/template/dynamic/breadcrumbs"
Do until it retrives all items in the initial path

If you've made use of template standard values, you might actually be able to do a fair bit of this task by simply updating the placeholder settings on a few templates' standard values items. — Matthew Dresser
Yes, it makes a sense because I used insert option. Otherwise, each page has different additional controls which are not included in standard values. — Jay

Marek Musielak Marek Musielak · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-28T09:41:39

See the code below. What it does, it gets rendering references for the selected items, checks their placeholders and rendering names and updates xml value of the __Renderings field of selected item, based on the unique id of selected renderings. Then it fires same code for all descendants recursively.

This code

does not update placeholders for components which are inherited from __Standard Values
does not publish changed items automatically.
is case sensitive
requires that user has write access for the items that you want to change

public void Start()
{
    string initialPath = "/sitecore/home/robot";
    Item root = Database.GetDatabase("master").GetItem(initialPath);
    UpdatePlaceholderName(root, "Breadcrumbs", "breadcrumbs", "/template/dynamic/breadcrumbs");
}

private void UpdatePlaceholderName(Item item, string componentName, string placeholderName, string newPlaceholderName)
{
    if (item != null)
    {
        List<RenderingReference> renderings = item.Visualization.GetRenderings(Sitecore.Context.Device, false)
            .Where(r => r.Placeholder == placeholderName && r.RenderingItem.Name == componentName).ToList();

        if (renderings.Any())
        {
            string renderingsXml = item["__Renderings"];
            item.Editing.BeginEdit();
            foreach (RenderingReference rendering in renderings)
            {
                string[] strings = renderingsXml.Split(new [] {"<r"}, StringSplitOptions.None);
                foreach (string renderingXml in strings)
                {
                    if (renderingXml.Contains("s:ph=\"" + placeholderName + "\"") && renderingXml.Contains("uid=\"" + rendering.UniqueId + "\""))
                    {
                        renderingsXml = renderingsXml.Replace(renderingXml, renderingXml.Replace("s:ph=\"" + placeholderName + "\"", "s:ph=\"" + newPlaceholderName + "\""));
                    }
                }
            }
            item["__Renderings"] = renderingsXml;
            item.Editing.EndEdit();
        }

        foreach (Item child in item.GetChildren())
        {
            UpdatePlaceholderName(child, componentName, placeholderName, newPlaceholderName);
        }
    }
}

Sitecore Update Placeholder Key (Programming)

1 Answers