Pnp-powershell: Creating an in-memory provisioning template from an xml string

[rjn71]

All the examples I've come across for applying a provisioning template involve reading the template from a physical file path. I would like to create an in memory template reading from an xml string and then call Apply-PnPProvisioningTemplate. Reason being I'm executing the powershell script in Azure function and I'm passing the template as a string parameter to the azure function. I've tried creating a template object using New-PnPProvisioningTemplate, but after that I couldn't figure out how to set the template with the xml supplied. I looked at Read-PnPProvisioningTemplate, but that also expects a file path as input.

[heinrich-ulbricht]

There is and XMLAzureStorageTemplateProvider for connecting to Azure storage. Its usage can be seen here in the units tests:

https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-Sites-Core/blob/a794db71c8ea954250c5ec3a506ee04dad3b9186/Core/OfficeDevPnP.Core.Tests/Framework/Providers/XMLProvidersTests.cs#L277

But indeed it seems like there currently is no easy way to get the template directly from string. But it is definitely doable from a technical standpoint (although using PnP-Sites-Core classes).

Here are samples on how this could be implemented:

https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-Sites-Core/blob/1397704a5cd45ee04dcdf6940a84a9f36cce6acf/Core/OfficeDevPnP.Core/Framework/Provisioning/Providers/Xml/XMLTemplateProvider.cs#L136

https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-Sites-Core/blob/a794db71c8ea954250c5ec3a506ee04dad3b9186/Core/OfficeDevPnP.Core/Framework/Provisioning/BaseTemplates/BaseTemplateManager.cs#L54

@jansenbe is there a reason why applying a template from string (instead of file) should not be exposed?

[erwinvanhunen]

I'm working on a update to the engine which will allow you to initialize a provisioning template from a stream using a new provider. Together with this change I will update the Read-PnPProvisioningTemplate cmdlet to support an -Xml parameter:

$template = Read-PnPProvisioningTemplate -Xml $yourtemplatestring
Apply-PnPProvisioningTemplate -InputInstance $template

[erwinvanhunen]

The functionality will be available in the next release of PnP PowerShell.

[heinrich-ulbricht]

Terrific!

[rjn71]

Thanks Erwin and Heinrich. You guys are awesome. When is the next release expected?
On Friday, April 26, 2019, 7:25:06 PM GMT+1, Heinrich Ulbricht [e-mail] wrote:

Terrific!

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