Will it work without items?

[AlenPelin]

I can see that Unicorn is used in the project which means it uses items, probably, for some buttons in the UI. Will it work if items are not installed?

[deeja]

It will, although you will need to call the commands manually (at the moment)

• pigeon:sendtoday
• pigeon:sendyesterday

What is the scenario you have?

[AlenPelin]

Scenario:

1. Drop assemblies and config files (pre-configured to send daily to given email) to all instances in solution
2. Forget about it

[AlenPelin]

BTW results of my research show that it is much better when module is developed and distributed without usage of serialization. It means if you need to create or modify item you should create installation hook that ensures presence of required items (checks if item exists, creates using Item API if not).

[deeja]

I will have a think about the drop and forget option. Should be fairly easy (agent probably).
Do you have an example of your installation hook?

[AlenPelin]

public class EnsureItems : IHook
{
  public void Run()
  {
    var db = Factory.GetDatabase("master");
    using(new SecurityDisabler()) 
    {
      if (db.GetItem("/sitecore/system/customitem") == null)
      {
        var customItem = db.GetItem("/sitecore/system")
          .Add("customitem", new TemplateID(ID.Parse("{123456-1231223}")));      
        customItem.Editing.BeginEdit();
        customItem["Title"] = "Hello!";
        customItem.Editing.EndEdit();
      }
    }
  }
}