How to get creation date in sitecore with powershell - powershell

Question

I wrote a script in order to replace the "$date" in release date of many Sitecore items with their creation date (created).
I have a problem to get this field from Sitecore.
I tried this:
$rootItem = Get-Item master:/content
$sourceTemplate = Get-Item "/sitecore/content/.../item 1"
foreach($field in $sourceTemplate.Fields) {
if (($field -ne $null) -And ($field -like '$date')) {
$sourceTemplate.Editing.BeginEdit()
$CreatedDate = .......
$field.Value = [sitecore.dateutil]::ToIsoDate($CreatedDate)
$sourceTemplate.Editing.EndEdit()
}
}
I also tried to get this field by ID but it doesn't work.
Does someone have an idea please?
Thank you

Answer 1

If you want to check Sitecore built-in fields, you need to call $sourceTemplate.Fields.ReadAll(); first.
You should compare value of the field with $date string, not the field itself.
Then just get the string which is stored in the __Created field instead of getting date and then formatting it back to ISO date string.
And the last thing - don't call Editing.BeginEdit() and Editing.EndEdit() mutliple times for the same item - Sitecore runs some havily operations when it's called so make sure you only call it once per every item which needs it.
$sourceTemplate = Get-Item "/sitecore/content/home/test"
$sourceTemplate.Fields.ReadAll();
$editing = $false
foreach($field in $sourceTemplate.Fields) {
if ($field.Value -eq '$date') {
if (!$editing) {
$editing = $true
$sourceTemplate.Editing.BeginEdit();
}
$field.Value = $sourceTemplate.Fields["__Created"].Value
}
}
if ($editing) {
$edited = $sourceTemplate.Editing.EndEdit();
}