powershell - Web.Config transforms outside of Microsoft MSBuild?

Question

Is it possible to use Microsoft's XML document transform, for preparing web.configs, outside of MSBuild? I would like to use PowerShell to do these transform without having to run this through the MSBuild engine. If Microsoft had used standard XSLT it would be easy to do in PowerShell. From what I can tell I have to use their C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov10.0WebMicrosoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll which requires a build engine. Thanks

Answer 1

I created a small function to handle Microsoft's XML Document Transform in PowerShell.

I copied the Microsoft.Web.XmlTransform.dll file from Visual Studio build folder to my script's path, but you can reference it from the source folder if you'd like.

function XmlDocTransform($xml, $xdt)
{
    if (!$xml -or !(Test-Path -path $xml -PathType Leaf)) {
        throw "File not found. $xml";
    }
    if (!$xdt -or !(Test-Path -path $xdt -PathType Leaf)) {
        throw "File not found. $xdt";
    }

    $scriptPath = (Get-Variable MyInvocation -Scope 1).Value.InvocationName | split-path -parent
    Add-Type -LiteralPath "$scriptPathMicrosoft.Web.XmlTransform.dll"

    $xmldoc = New-Object Microsoft.Web.XmlTransform.XmlTransformableDocument;
    $xmldoc.PreserveWhitespace = $true
    $xmldoc.Load($xml);

    $transf = New-Object Microsoft.Web.XmlTransform.XmlTransformation($xdt);
    if ($transf.Apply($xmldoc) -eq $false)
    {
        throw "Transformation failed."
    }
    $xmldoc.Save($xml);
}

To transform web.config using web.release.config:

XmlDocTransform -xml "Web.config" -xdt "Web.Release.config"

Alternatively, you can use Sayed's self-bootstraping Xml Transform script, which will take care of getting the Microsoft.Xml.Xdt.dll for you:

https://gist.github.com/sayedihashimi/f1fdc4bfba74d398ec5b