Sitecore PowerShell Rendering Helper Functions

For a past project, I had to write a lot of PowerShell for Sitecore migration scripts. One of the tasks that had to be done repeatedly was adding new Renderings to pages and changing Rendering data sources. Necessarily, I wrote a couple of functions to do so.

Adding a new rendering with its data source:

function Add-NewRendering {
    param (
        $databaseName, #  master 
        $dataSourceID, # Sitecore ID of the Datasource Item
        $pageItem,	 # Sitecore ID of the Page Item where the Rendering will live
        $placeHolder,  # Placeholder path
        $renderingItemID, # Sitecore ID of the Rendering Item under /sitecore/Layouts
        $renderingIndex  # Index where the rendering will be inserted
    )
    $renderingItem = Get-Item -Path "$($databaseName):$($renderingItemID)"
    if (-Not $renderingItem) {
	 # Custom method to emit error messages to the console
        ErrorMessage -errMsg "Add-NewRendering: Could not fetch rendering item :$($databaseName):$($renderintItemID)"
        return
    }

    $renderingInstance = $renderingItem | New-Rendering -Placeholder $placeHolder
    $renderingInstance.Datasource = $dataSourceID
    if(-not $renderingIndex)
    {
	 # Add-Rendering and Set-Rendering are the SPE-Provided methods
        Add-Rendering -Item $pageItem -Placeholder $placeHolder -Instance $renderingInstance -PassThru |
        Set-Rendering -Item $pageItem | Out-Null
    }
    else
    {
	 # Add-Rendering and Set-Rendering are the SPE-Provided methods
        Add-Rendering -Item $pageItem -Placeholder $placeHolder -Instance $renderingInstance -PassThru |
        Set-Rendering -Item $pageItem -Index $renderingIndex | Out-Null
    }
}

Changing the datasource of an existing rendering:

function Add-NewRenderingDatasource {
    param (
        $databaseName, #  master 
        $dataSourceID, # Sitecore ID of the Datasource Item
        $pageItem, # Sitecore ID of the Page Item where the Rendering lives
        $placeHolder,  # Placeholder path
        $renderingItemID  # Sitecore ID of the Rendering Item under /sitecore/Layouts
    )
    $renderingItem = Get-Item -Path "$($databaseName):$($renderingItemID)"
    if (-Not $renderingItem) {
       # Custom method to emit error messages to the console 
ErrorMessage -errMsg "Add-NewRenderingDatasource: Could not fetch rendering item :$($databaseName):$($renderintItemID)"
        return
    }

    $renderingInstance = Get-Rendering -Item $pageItem -Rendering $renderingItem 
    if (-not $renderingInstance) {
	 # Call the Add-NewRendering function, above
        $renderingInstance = Add-NewRendering -databaseName $databaseName -dataSourceID $dataSourceID -pageItem $pageItem -placeHolder $placeHolder -renderingItemID $renderingItemID -renderingIndex -1
    }

    if ($renderingInstance) {
        $renderingInstance.Datasource = $dataSourceID
        Set-Rendering -Instance $renderingInstance -Item $pageItem
    }
    else {
        ErrorMessage "Add-NewRenderingDatasource: Could not create new renderingInstance for page: $($pageItem.Paths.FullPath)"
    }

    return $renderingInstance
}