Sitecore Azure module - separating config

Those of you who have used the Sitecore Azure module will know that the final deployed package does not contain your .config / patch files in the same way as you have in your solution.  The module uses the fully-built Sitecore config tree, does a bunch of config transforms (I won't go into the details in this post, it uses files in a separate Azure folder and the fields in your Azure module content) and then splits this fully-built config into separate custom .config files based on their node name under <sitecore></sitecore>.

This split happens in the Sitecore.Azure.Pipelines.CreateAzurePackage.Azure.SaveConfigFiles pipeline, and based on your configuration you then end up with the following config files in your Include directory:

• commands.config


• mediaLibrary.config


• icons.config


• portraits.config


• languageDefinitions.config


• xamlsharp.config


• fieldTypes.config


• events.config


• processors.config


• analyticsExcludeRobots.config


• settings.config


• pipelines.config


• contentSearch.config


• scheduling.config


• ui.confi


• databases.config


• search.config

So, what if we want to split another config section out into its own file? Say, the <sites></sites> section?  Having a look at the decompiled pipeline, we can simply create our pipeline to extend it (making sure to move our config section before the rest).  You could just as easily put a new pipeline before this one, but I wanted to reuse the 'move' method in the original code. Unfortunately the Sitecore devs did not make this method protected, so we have to duplicate the code or use reflection :(

using System.IO;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using Sitecore.Azure.Pipelines.BasePipeline;
using Sitecore.Azure.Pipelines.CreateAzurePackage;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.IO;
using Extensions = System.Xml.XPath.Extensions;

public class SaveConfigFiles : Sitecore.Azure.Pipelines.CreateAzurePackage.Azure.SaveConfigFiles
{
  protected override void Action(RolePipelineArgsBase arguments)
  {
    CreateAzureDeploymentPipelineArgs args = arguments as CreateAzureDeploymentPipelineArgs;
    Assert.IsNotNull(args, "args");
    DirectoryInfo sourceIncludeDir = args.SourceIncludeDir;
    sourceIncludeDir.Create();
    this.MoveSectionToIncludeFile("sites", sourceIncludeDir, args);
    base.Action(arguments);
  }

  private void MoveSectionToIncludeFile(string nodename, DirectoryInfo includeDir, CreateAzureDeploymentPipelineArgs args)
  {
    Assert.ArgumentNotNull(nodename, "nodename");
    Assert.ArgumentNotNull(includeDir, "includeDir");
    Assert.ArgumentNotNull(args, "args");
    XDocument xdocument = XDocument.Parse("<configuration xmlns:patch=\"http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/\"><sitecore></sitecore></configuration>");
    XElement xelement = Extensions.XPathSelectElement(args.WebConfig, "./configuration/sitecore/" + nodename);
    if (xelement == null)
    {
      return;
    }
    xelement.Remove();
    Extensions.XPathSelectElement(xdocument, "./configuration/sitecore").Add(xelement);
    xdocument.Save(FileUtil.MakePath(includeDir.FullName, nodename + ".config", '\\'));
   }
 }
}

And replace the pipeline with ours
App_Config\Include\zCustom\CustomAzure.config

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <processors>
      <CreateAzurePackage>
        <processor patch:instead="processor[@type='Sitecore.Azure.Pipelines.CreateAzurePackage.Azure.SaveConfigFiles, Sitecore.Azure']"
type="Custom.SaveConfigFiles, Custom" />
      </CreateAzurePackage>
    </processors>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>