Programmatically create a site collection in an existing, mounted content database

Question

I'd like to create a site collection from a custom application page in central admin. The administrator needs the option to specify an existing, mounted content database to store the new site collection. I'm running SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Creating a site collection with PowerShell allows an existing mounted content database to be specified, but none of the SPSiteCollection.Add() object model overloads allow the same. I can create a new database, but not specify an existing database.

Browsing the Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell assembly with Reflector shows the New-SPSite cmdlet uses an additional, internally scoped SPSiteCollection.Add() overload that includes a content database parameter. I assume the Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell assembly is listed in an InternalsVisibleToAttribute in the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly, allowing PowerShell access to the internal function while remaining hidden to my code.

I'm aware that I can execute PowerShell scripts from C#, is there any reason not to do this by calling the New-SPSite cmdlet from code? Is there any other method I've missed?

Answer 1

PowerShell is just a wrapper for the object model. You shouldn't need to reference PowerShell in your feature, just create the new site collection with C# inside your feature. There's a blog post here that illustrates some code that may get you started. http://blog.mastykarz.nl/programmatically-creating-sites-site-collections-custom-web-template/

Answer 2

This can be done by adding the new SPSite using the SPContentDatabase object instead of the SPWebApplication object.

 SPContentDatabase myDB = ......
 myDb.Sites.Add("/Sites/Name", "domain\login","[email protected]");

There are also many 6 other overloads of that function