Republish Umbraco Content in Continuous Integration Server

So you have your Umbraco project nicely hooked up to a continuous integration or build server such as TeamCity. So how do you automate the content publishing so your users see the latest version everytime?

At Tekcent we develop Umbraco projects using a shared database as this makes collaboration and working in teams easier. So the following steps is intended for this setup.  I will cover the different collaboration options for teams in another blog post.

CI setups are a joy since they can automate the build and deployment process for you.  As often during with the development process you will make a bunch of changes to the content database...With a few lines of code you can easily automated publishing from your CI server so you don't have to login to click the "Republish entire website"

1. Using Visual Studio add a Generic Handler to your Umbraco project
2. The generic handler and corresponding code files will be added to your Visual Studio project
   

3. Edit the codefile and add some code to call into Umbraco's RefreshContent() method.  This will trigger the republishing routine on the server

   using System.Web;
   
   namespace UmbracoRepublish
   {
       /// 
       /// Summary description for RefreshContent
       /// 
       public class RefreshContent : IHttpHandler
       {
   
           public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
           {
               umbraco.library.RefreshContent();
               context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain";
               context.Response.Write("Content Refreshed");
           }
   
           public bool IsReusable
           {
               get
               {
                   return false;
               }
           }
       }
   }
   

4. Compile and run your project. Open the link to your newly created handler in the web browser. You should see "Content Refreshed" displayed on the web browser. It's worth noting that you can redirect back to the homepage at this point - I've chosen to display a message. What's important is that the RefreshContent() method is being called, this is where the "magic" happens
   
5. Add a post build step to call your handler. We'll use a Powershelll script to do this
   
   

   (new-object net.webclient).DownloadString("http://localhost:56713/refreshcontent.ashx")

   
6. Make sure your handler is the last step in the build process
7. Run the build...Remember the message that we send in the response?
8. Finally, the all important green light