Deployment – Copy Files to SharePoint Web Application Root using PowerShell

Here is a simple PowerShell script I wrote to automate copying certain configuration files to the root directory of SharePoint web application during the deployment. In my case I wanted to automate copying 2 files.

global.asax – with customized content

robots.txt - to instruct search engine robots

Following PowerShell script get the location of above files and website URL as parameters. Then it finds the virtual directory path of the website from IIS settings of the web application (default zone) to use as the destination. copy-item cmdlet copies files to the destination.

[string]$scriptsLocation = "C:\Projects\TestApp\ConfigFiles"

$webSiteUrl = "http://derdev02:40920/"

$robotsFilePath = "$scriptsLocation\robots.txt"

$globalAsaxPath = "$scriptsLocation\global.asax"

function UpdateConfigFiles([string]$siteUrl)

{

  write-host -f Yellow "Updating configuration files for " $siteUrl

  $SPSite = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($siteUrl)

  $WebApp = $SPSite.WebApplication

  #IisSettings in default zone

  $IISSettings = $WebApp.IisSettings[[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUrlZone]::Default]

  $virtualDirectoryPath = $IISSettings.Path.FullName

  write-host "Virtual Directory path: " $virtualDirectoryPath

  $robotFileExists = test-path ($robotsFilePath)

  if ($robotFileExists)

  {   

    write-host "Copying file: " $robotsFilePath " to the destination: " $virtualDirectoryPath"\robots.txt"

    copy-item $robotsFilePath -destination "$virtualDirectoryPath\robots.txt" -Force

  }

  $globalAsaxFileExists = test-path ($globalAsaxPath)

  if ($globalAsaxFileExists)

  {   

    write-host "Copying file: " $globalAsaxPath " to the destination: " $virtualDirectoryPath"\global.asax"

    copy-item $globalAsaxPath -destination "$virtualDirectoryPath\global.asax" -Force

  }

}

UpdateConfigFiles($webSiteUrl)

Note: If the files already exist in the destination, they will be overwritten even if they are in read-only state, since –Force parameter is used with the copy-item cmdlet.