Sitecore find Unused Sublayouts

Long lived Sitecore solutions tend to build up unused renderings and sublayouts as design, features and functions evolve. Finding those unused sublayouts it not just a matter of checking the Sitecore Link Database for sublayouts with no references because:

• You will get false positives because __Standard Values of unused templates link to your sublayout.
• Compatible renderings from other unused sublayouts leaves a web of references that is hard to decipher.
• The link database could be broken.

The problem seems easy at first: 1) Find all sublayots. 2) Find all pages using sublayots. 3) Those sublayouts not used on any pages are unused. And that’s what this code will check.

STEP 1: FIND ALL SUBLAYOUTS:

This repository returns every sublayout in your solution from a specified path:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;

namespace MyCode
{
  public class SublayoutRepository
  {
    private readonly Database _database;
    private readonly List<SublayoutItem> _sublayouts = new List<SublayoutItem>();

    public SublayoutRepository(Database database)
    {
      _database = database;
    }

    public IEnumerable<SublayoutItem> Get(string rootPath)
    {
      _sublayouts.Clear();
      Item rootItem = _database.GetItem(rootPath);
      if (rootItem == null)
        return _sublayouts;
      Iterate(rootItem);
      return _sublayouts;
    }

    private void Iterate(Item item)
    {
      if (item.TemplateID == Sitecore.TemplateIDs.Sublayout)
        _sublayouts.Add(item);
      if (!item.HasChildren)
        return;
      foreach (Item child in item.Children)
      {
        Iterate(child);
      }
    }
  }
}

STEP 2: ITERATE ALL PAGES IN THE SOLUTION:

Finding used sublayouts are a little more tricky. Each item have a Visualization property and you need to iterate this to get the sublayouts from a specific device. In this example I have hard coded the device to “default“.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using PT.Project.Maintenance.Model.Repositories;
using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;

namespace MyCode
{
  public class FindUnusedSublayouts
  {
    private IEnumerable<SublayoutItem> _sublayouts;
    private List<SublayoutItem> _usedSublayouts = new List<SublayoutItem>();

    protected void Find()
    {
      _sublayouts = new SublayoutRepository(WebDatabase).Get("/sitecore/layout");
      _usedSublayouts.Clear();
      Item root = WebDatabase.GetItem("/sitecore/content");
      Iterate(root);
      var unusedSublayouts = _sublayouts.Where(s => !_usedSublayouts.Any(s2 => s2.ID == s.ID));
      foreach (var unusedSublayout in unusedSublayouts)
      {
        // Write the unused sublayout:
        // unusedSublayout.ID => The GUID
        // unusedSublayout.InnerItem.Paths.FullPath => The sublayout path
        // unusedSublayout.FilePath => The path to the .ascx file
      }
    }

    private void Iterate(Item root)
    {
      if (root.Visualization.Layout != null)
      { 
        foreach (var reference in root.Visualization.GetRenderings(DefaultDevice, false))
        {
          if (reference.RenderingItem != null)
          {
            try
            {
              SublayoutItem item = reference.RenderingItem.InnerItem;
              if (_usedSublayouts.All(s => s.ID != item.ID))
                _usedSublayouts.Add(reference.RenderingItem.InnerItem);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
              // Handle the exception, but do not 
              // stop the execution
            }
          }  
        }
      }
      if (!root.HasChildren)
        return;
      foreach (Item child in root.Children)
        Iterate(child);
    }

    private Database WebDatabase
    {
      get
      {
        return Factory.GetDatabase("web");
      }
    }

    private DeviceItem _device;

    private DeviceItem DefaultDevice
    {
      get
      {
        return _device ?? (_device = WebDatabase.Resources.Devices.GetAll().First(d => d.Name.ToLower() == "default"));
      }
    }

  }
}

MORE TO READ:

• Sitecore find unused templates by briancaos
• Get the Sitecore Sublayout from your .aspx page (Usercontrol) by briancaos
• All About Sitecore Renderings by Mark Ursino

END NOTE:

I know that WebForms, .aspx and .ascx are dying technologies, and I encourage everyone to switch to Sitecore MVC. But a lot of older Sitecore solutions cannot switch to MVC for many reasons. Therefore it is important to help those who are maintaining large, long running Sitecore solutions.