Get started, get far, get happy!

An experimental tool chain for Sitecore.

Watch the videos on YouTube:

• 01 - Idea and concepts
• 06 - Visual Studio, T4 templates, unit testing with FakeDB

Please notice that some details in these videos are out of date.

• 02 - HelloWorld
• 03 - Unit Testing (Functionality removed)
• 04 - Html Templates
• 05 - Code Generation, Visual Studio and Grunt

Download Pathfinder 0.7.0-Alpha to try it out.

Follow the walk-throughs:

• [Setting up](docs/walkthroughs/1. Setting up/README.md)
• [HelloWorld](docs/walkthroughs/2. Hello world/README.md)

Pathfinder is an experimental toolchain for Sitecore, that allows developers to use their favorite tools in a familiar fashion to develop Sitecore websites.

The toolchain creates a deliverable package from the source files in a project directory and deploys the package to a website where an installer installs the new files and Sitecore items.

The developer process is familiar; edit source files, build and install the package, run tests or review the changes on website, repeat.

Please notice that this document is a brain dump, so concepts and functionality are probably not explained in a friendly manner.

• Familiar developer experience: Edit source files, build project, test, repeat...
• Text editor agnostic (Visual Studio not required - use Notepad, Notepad++, SublimeText, Atom, VS Code etc.)
• Build process agnostic (command-line tool, so it integrates easily with Grunt, Gulp, MSBuild etc.)
• Everything is a file (easy to edit, search and replace across multiple files, source control friendly)
• Project directory has whole and single truth (source is not spread across development projects, databases and websites) (contineous integration friendly)
• Project is packaged into a NuGet package and deployed to the website
  • Dependency tracking through NuGet dependencies
  • NuGet package installer on the Sitecore website
  • Sitecore.Pathfinder.Core NuGet package tweaks Sitecore defaults to be easier to work with (e.g. removes initial workflow)
• Support for Html files as Sitecore Layout definitions
• Support for Html Templates (with Mustache tags) makes getting started with the Sitecore Rendering Engine easier
• Support for React renderings (.jsx)
• Code Generation for generating strongly typed item models, factories and unit tests

For more documentation see Pathfinder Documentation.