How to retrieve the UUID of a WCM object by name using the command line

Applies to

HCL Digital Experience v9.5 and higher

Introduction

You can retrieve the Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) of an object in Web Content Manager (WCM) using a command line when only the name is available. Querying the WCM REST API with curl, grep, and perl is an alternative to using the WCM Support Tools when searching across libraries, content items, presentation templates, and site areas in HCL Digital Experience (DX). For more information on WCM Support Tools, refer to the HCL Web Content Manager Support Tools. This article describes how to retrieve the UUID of a WCM object using the command line.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, your environment should have curl and perl installed. To check if these tools are available, perform the following steps:

Open a terminal window.
Run the following command:
```
command -v curl perl
```
If the command does not return paths for both binaries (for example, /usr/bin/curl and /usr/bin/perl), use your distribution's package manager (yum, dnf, or apt) to install the missing tools:
- For modern RHEL, CentOS, or Fedora (RHEL 8+, Fedora 22+)
```
sudo dnf install curl perl
```
- For Legacy RHEL or CentOS (RHEL 7)
```
sudo yum install curl perl
```
- For Debian or Ubuntu
```
sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl perl
```

Instructions

To retrieve the UUID of a WCM object by name, perform the following steps:

Open a terminal window.
Define the following required environment variables in your terminal session according to your environment settings:
```
OBJECT_NAME="Article"
WPS_ADMIN_USR="wpsadmin"
WPS_ADMIN_PWD="wpsadmin"
WP_PROFILE_HOME="/opt/HCL/wp_profile"
HOSTNAME=$(hostname -f)
PORT=$(grep ^WpsHostPort $WP_PROFILE_HOME/ConfigEngine/properties/wkplc.properties | cut -d= -f2)
```
- OBJECT_NAME: The name of the target WCM object for which you want to retrieve the UUID (for example, "Article").
- WPS_ADMIN_USR: The administrator username.
- WPS_ADMIN_PWD: The administrator password.
- WP_PROFILE_HOME: The file path to your HCL DX profile directory.
- HOSTNAME: The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your DX server.
- PORT: The host port number of the DX server specified in the wkplc.properties file.

Run the curl command to query the WCM REST API and return the UUID, type, and path of the specified object:

curl -L -u $WPS_ADMIN_USR:$WPS_ADMIN_PWD -G "http://$HOSTNAME:$PORT/wps/mycontenthandler/wcmrest/query?options=item-path" --data-urlencode "title=$OBJECT_NAME" 2>/dev/null | grep -v 'query?options' | egrep 'wcm:type|<id>|wcm:title xml' | perl -pe 's| xml:lang="en"||g ; s|        ||g' | sed 's|<id>|\n<id>|g' | perl -pe 's|</wcm:title>\R\z|/|g' | perl -pe 's|^<wcm:title>|Path: |g ; s|<wcm:title>||g ; s|/$|\n|g ; s|</[a-z:]*>||g ; s|<id>wcmrest:|UUID: |g ; s|<wcm:type>|Type: |g'

The command returns output similar to the following:

UUID: 9f0826ff-9601-49c7-9411-7672e6adce33
Type: ContentTemplate
Path: Web Content

UUID: 69be310d-86b3-45dc-8956-a77725b55db9
Type: ContentTemplate
Path: Web Content Templates 3.0

UUID: 6a5ee875-9ab6-449c-8df3-c70b42d6fea8
Type: PresentationTemplate
Path: Web Content Templates 3.0

UUID: d446124e-4f03-485c-899f-d486d6b65dc7
Type: Content
Path: Template Page Content 3.0/Articles

UUID: 9c74e12c-59b3-45a6-a5fa-c521336a6f44
Type: ContentLink
Path: Template Page Content 3.0/Web Content

UUID: f3b16bce-aa66-4a0e-884c-0ed5a90a8b55
Type: ContentTemplate
Path: Test Library 1 08.03.2022

UUID: 965be413-bc63-4ed7-8a38-d13ed3c405f4
Type: ContentTemplate
Path: SearchLibrary08222022

UUID: 73531caa-f8ae-4bc6-9e7a-c1ae67ef9a5b
Type: ContentTemplate
Path: Rafael Test

UUID: c5f2914a-0997-4436-868a-d94d4b360bf8
Type: ContentTemplate
Path: Wes Library

UUID: 88740cea-c541-4a1e-bf74-65b26d1d7acd
Type: Content
Path: Portal Site/Content Root/Home/Wes_Tab/RSS Test