Template provisioning - Extract site or page-for-page for efficiency?

[Magnus-K-work]

Hello!

I'm building a SP provisioning engine, or basically a SharePoint page copy function using the PnP.Framework provisioning templates.

It works OK, but as I might have 1 or many SitePages to copy, would it be more or less effective to extract the whole site template and remove unused pages or just make template for each page as I go?

Best regards
Magnus

[Adam-it]

Not sure if I understood correctly but wouldn't it be better to export a basic tempalte of the site and then just export each page you plan ot move which will be attached then to the same template. You will end up with a single template having all the pages you wanted to move.
you may use Export-PnPPage for that if you use PnP PS, or if you go with C# directly you may use

var helper = new ClientSidePageContentsHelper();
 helper.ExtractClientSidePage(web, template, ci, new PnPMonitoredScope(), null, pageName, false);

or something close to that 🙂

[Magnus-K-work]

C# is my poison of choice...

Well yes, that is how I use it now, but when copying more than x pages I tend to see the message "Starting template engine" (or something) and i start to wonder...

Current way of using it

using var sourceContext = await pnpContextFactory.CreateAsync(new Uri(sourceSiteUrl));
var template = new PnP.Framework.Provisioning.Model.ProvisioningTemplate();
var creationInfo = new PnP.Framework.Provisioning.ObjectHandlers.ProvisioningTemplateCreationInformation(sourceContext.Web)
{
    ExtractPageAsPublished = false,
    HandlersToProcess = PnP.Framework.Provisioning.Model.Handlers.Pages
};

var helper = new PnP.Framework.Provisioning.ObjectHandlers.Utilities.ClientSidePageContentsHelper();
helper.ExtractClientSidePage(
    sourceContext.Web,
    template,
    creationInfo,
    scope,
    pageUrl: null,
    pageName,
    isHomePage: false,
    isTemplate: false);

Ant the "extract whole site and remove unwanted pages" is something like:

using var sourceContext = await pnpContextFactory.CreateAsync(new Uri(sourceSiteUrl));
var template = await sourceContext.GetProvisioningManager().GetTemplateAsync(new ExtractConfiguration
{
    Handlers = { ConfigurationHandler.Pages },
    Pages = { IncludeAllClientSidePages = true }
});

// remove all unused page templates before applying the template to a site
foreach (string pageName in listOfWantedPages)
{
    template.ClientSidePages.RemoveAll(page =>
        !string.Equals(page.PageName, pageName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
};

Best regards
Magnus

[yudin-s]

I would keep the shape Adam suggested: build one ProvisioningTemplate, extract only the pages you need into that same template, then apply the template once.

The reason is that ClientSidePageContentsHelper.ExtractClientSidePage(...) takes the existing ProvisioningTemplate as an argument and appends the extracted page into template.ClientSidePages. So page-by-page extraction does not have to mean “one template engine run per page” or “one template per page”; it can be:

var template = new ProvisioningTemplate();
var helper = new ClientSidePageContentsHelper();

foreach (var pageName in listOfWantedPages)
{
    helper.ExtractClientSidePage(
        sourceContext.Web,
        template,
        creationInfo,
        scope,
        pageUrl: null,
        pageName,
        isHomePage: false,
        isTemplate: false);
}

// apply/provision this one template once

I would only use GetTemplateAsync(... IncludeAllClientSidePages = true ...) and prune afterwards when “wanted pages” is close to “all pages”, or when you intentionally want the broader page extraction behavior/dependencies that the full handler gives you. If the site may have many pages and your copy set is small or explicit, extracting everything first has already paid the expensive part before RemoveAll() runs.

So the decision rule I would use:

• Few/known pages: extract each requested page into one shared template.
• Most/all pages: full GetTemplateAsync with all client-side pages is simpler.
• Avoid applying/provisioning inside the per-page loop; that is where repeated “Starting template engine” cost usually hurts.

If that answers the efficiency trade-off, please mark the discussion as answered.

[Magnus-K-work]

Ah, great answer! Thanks!

I realize that I should create the template outside my loop of pages to copy. I'll try that next. 👍

Best regards
Magnus