Zach Rosenfield

I recently had a reader submit a great concept question for how to possibly use PowerShell to script SharePoint admin tasks. Since I want to dive into his idea in more detail, I first need to setup a new farm to do my testing. Since I want this 'test' farm to be as real as possible, I needed to create endless fake data—especially lots of sites and webs. Then came a bright idea—why not script it! Since everyone needs sample sites, which can take a long to time to manually create, I created this simple PowerShell script. For those interested, the script is available for download here and copied out below (complete with a progress output bar)!

###########################################################
#
# Script to Populate Test Farm Data
#
# Params: -WebApplication <URL> **no trailing '/'
#             -OwnerEmail <Email>
#             -OwnerLogin <User Alias>
#             -SiteCount <Int> #number of sites to create
#             -[SubSites] <Int> #number of webs to create
#             -[RootName] <String> #optional: provide the base name of all custom sites. Default=="Site"
#             -[ManagedPath] <string> #optional: provide the managed path to use. Default=="Sites"
#
# Sample Usage: "Create 1000 sites, each with 2 subsites on "WebApp1":
# .\PopulateTestData.ps1 -WebApplication "http://webapp1" -SiteCount 1000 -OwnerEmail "foo@bar.com" –OwnerLogin "domain\foo" -SubSites 2
###########################################################

#setup STSADM var
$stsadm = "$env:programfiles\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN\STSADM.EXE"

#process input
$vars=@{}
for($i = 0; $i -lt $args.length; $i++){
if($args[$i].subString(0,1) -ne "-"){ "Did not understand $args[$i]"; return;}
$vars[$args[$i].subString(1)] = $args[$i+1];
$i++;
}

#verify
if($vars['WebApplication'] -eq $null){Write-Host -ForegroundColor "Red" "WebApplication Parameter is required "; Return; }
if($vars['SiteCount'] -eq $null){Write-Host -ForegroundColor "Red" "SiteCount Parameter is required "; Return;}
if($vars['OwnerEmail'] -eq $null){Write-Host -ForegroundColor "Red" "OwnerEmail Parameter is required "; Return;}
if($vars['OwnerLogin'] -eq $null){Write-Host -ForegroundColor "Red" "OwnerLogin Parameter is required "; Return;}

if($vars['RootName'] -eq $null){ $vars['RootName'] = "Site" }
if($vars['ManagedPath'] -eq $null){ $vars['ManagedPath'] = "Sites" }
if($vars['SubSites'] -eq $null){ $vars['SubSites'] = 2 }

#Create Site Collections
for($i=0;$i -lt $vars['SiteCount'];$i++){
$progress = [String]($i/$vars['SiteCount']*100);
$url = $vars['webapplication']+"/"+$vars['ManagedPath']+"/"+$vars['RootName']+$i;

Write-Progress -Id 1 -PercentComplete $progress -Activity "Creating Test Content" -Status "Creating Site ($i): $url";

$sTemp = &stsadm -o createsite -url $url -ownerlogin $vars['OwnerLogin'] -owneremail $vars['OwnerEmail'] -sitetemplate "STS#0"
if(!($sTemp -like "*Operation completed successfully*")){ Write-Host -ForegroundColor "red" "Site '$url' Failed!"}
else{ #Create subsites...
for($j=0;$j -lt $vars['SubSites'];$j++){
$suburl = $url +"/subweb"+$j;
     $progress = [String]($j/$vars['SubSites']*100);
Write-Progress -ParentId 1 -PercentComplete $progress -Activity "Creating SubWeb ($j):" -Status "$suburl";

     $sTemp = &stsadm -o createweb -url $suburl -sitetemplate "STS#0"

}
Write-Progress -ParentId 1 -PercentComplete 100 -Activity "Creating SubWebs for $url" -Status "Finished";
}
}