Sitecore Package Designer – Dynamic Items and Dynamic Files

Sitecore package designer allows us to add the following to our Sitecore package:

• Sitecore Items. 
• Files (configuration, dlls, CSS... etc.).
• Security accounts.

Also, the above items can be added in two ways:

• Static
• Dynamic.

So you can use the first way if you know that you have specific items or specific location path Childs, but let's assume that you want to add items or files based on creation date query?!.

Here you can use the dynamic feature provided by Sitecore Package Designer; let see who we can add items or files dynamically:

·         Open Sitecore Package Designer.

·         Create new Sitecore Package Project.

·         From the add buttons section you can see the following options:

·         Security accounts.

·         Items dynamically

·         Files dynamically

·         Items statically

·         File statically

More can be found in the following screenshot:

• Select items dynamically; then you can see a window where you need to select the root item from a Sitecore content tree as you can see from the following screenshot:

• After clicking select you can apply any of the following filters:

Item name filter 

All or part of the item name: Filter items by name or by a part of the name. 

Use: Select a lookup option. The lookup options are: 

• Simple Search Simple substring search, no wildcards, not case sensitive. 
• Regular Expression Common regular expressions and regular .NET expressions are allowed. For more information about regular .NET expressions, read the official Microsoft documentation. 
• Wildcards Common wildcards are allowed. A question mark (?) stands for a single character. An asterisk (*) stands for any number of characters. Any other character is matched as is. Search is not case sensitive. 

Creation date filter

Within the past … days: Filters items by the date they were created. 

Note Within the past XX days function is just a UI convenience; this is not a floating date. When a user enters a number of days, this value is converted to a static date range. 

Specify dates: Filters items by the date they were created. 

Modification date filter 

Within the past … days: Filters items by the date they were modified. 

Note Within the past XX days function is just a UI convenience; this is not a floating date. When a user enters a number of days, this value is converted to a static date range. 

Specify dates: Filters items by the date they were.

Publish date filter 

Publish date: Includes only those items which are publishable on a specific date. You will get only those items from the source, which appears on the web database if you perform republishing on the Publish date.

Take workflow into account: Select the Take workflow into account checkbox if you want to apply workflow restrictions to publishing when filtering. 

Template filter: Filters items by templates that the items are based on. Only the items which are based on at least one of the templates from the list are added. 

Created by filter: Filters items by the users who created them and/or by the roles which the users who created the items belong to. Click Add to display the list of users or roles and add them to the filter.

Updated by filter: This filter works in a similar way as Created by Filter one. It filters by users who updated an item last and/or by roles which those users belong to.

Language filter: Select the checkboxes you want to make only the items in the selected languages added.

As you can see from the following screenshots:

• Add the filters you need and click next
• Enter the source name and now you can generate your package.

The files dynamically work the same as described for the items dynamically.