Orchard Core Recipes

Recipes are JSON documents that configure a tenant through ordered steps. Use a recipe for repeatable setup, environment provisioning, deployment imports, or migration updates. Steps are processed in order and their names are case-insensitive at handler dispatch, but use the registered casing below and in the schemas.

Recipe location, discovery, and execution

• Place an extension recipe at Recipes/<name>.recipe.json in a module or theme. The extension's manifest makes that extension discoverable; there is no separate recipe manifest file.
• RecipeHarvester iterates enabled extensions and reads each extension's Recipes folder. The application recipe harvester also contributes application-level recipes.
• Set issetuprecipe to true only for recipes intended to appear during tenant setup.
• Run a discovered recipe from Configuration → Recipes, during setup, or from another recipe using the Recipes step. A data migration may execute a recipe in its module/theme Migrations folder through IRecipeMigrator.
• Programmatic execution uses IRecipeExecutor.ExecuteAsync(executionId, recipeDescriptor, environment, cancellationToken). A RecipeDescriptor carries the recipe metadata, base path, file provider, and recipe file.

Use .recipe.json, not arbitrary .json, for discovered extension recipes. Recipes can contain JSON comments, but generated automation should emit strict JSON unless comments are intentionally needed.

Authoring rules

• Enable features before invoking their recipe steps.
• Keep content definition, settings, and workflow records under source control.
• Use variables and helpers such as [js: uuid()], [file:text('...')], [env:NAME], and [appsettings:Section:Key] rather than inventing stable IDs or embedding secrets.
• All examples below are complete recipe fragments. Preserve the { "steps": [ ... ] } root wrapper when composing a recipe.
• For recipe-generated content, use expressions to generate ContentItemId, ContentItemVersionId, and timestamps rather than manually invented IDs.

Required reference workflow

1. Start with references/recipe-schemas/recipe.schema.json for the root document.
2. Open references/recipe-schemas/index.json and locate the schema for every planned step.
3. Validate every step against that exact schema. Do not invent a step name, property, casing, or enum value.
4. For ContentDefinition, combine its schema with orchardcore-content-fields and orchardcore-content-parts guidance, then validate the final JSON again.

Recipe schema references

• references/recipe-schemas/recipe.schema.json — full recipe document schema.
• references/recipe-schemas/index.json — step-name to schema mapping.
• references/recipe-schemas/*.schema.json — per-step contracts.
• references/recipe-schemas/README.md — schema usage guidance.

Recipe structure

{
  "name": "MyModule.Baseline",
  "displayName": "My Module Baseline",
  "description": "Creates the baseline configuration.",
  "author": "My Team",
  "website": "https://example.invalid",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "issetuprecipe": false,
  "categories": [ "Configuration" ],
  "tags": [ "baseline" ],
  "variables": {
    "now": "[js: new Date().toISOString()]"
  },
  "steps": []
}

Common built-in steps

The schema references remain the authority for each payload. These examples show the release/3.0 handler names and common casing.

Enable features, set site settings, and define content

{
  "steps": [
    {
      "name": "Feature",
      "enable": [
        "OrchardCore.ContentTypes",
        "OrchardCore.Title"
      ],
      "disable": []
    },
    {
      "name": "Settings",
      "SiteName": "Example",
      "TimeZoneId": "UTC"
    },
    {
      "name": "ContentDefinition",
      "ContentTypes": [
        {
          "Name": "Article",
          "DisplayName": "Article",
          "Settings": {
            "ContentTypeSettings": {
              "Creatable": true,
              "Listable": true,
              "Draftable": true,
              "Versionable": true
            }
          },
          "ContentTypePartDefinitionRecords": [
            {
              "PartName": "TitlePart",
              "Name": "TitlePart",
              "Settings": {}
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "ContentParts": []
    }
  ]
}

Import content and compose recipes

{
  "variables": {
    "now": "[js: new Date().toISOString()]"
  },
  "steps": [
    {
      "name": "Content",
      "data": [
        {
          "ContentItemId": "[js: uuid()]",
          "ContentItemVersionId": "[js: uuid()]",
          "ContentType": "Article",
          "DisplayText": "Welcome",
          "Latest": true,
          "Published": true,
          "CreatedUtc": "[js: variables('now')]",
          "ModifiedUtc": "[js: variables('now')]",
          "PublishedUtc": "[js: variables('now')]",
          "TitlePart": {
            "Title": "Welcome"
          }
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Recipes",
      "Values": [
        {
          "executionid": "MyModule.Extras",
          "name": "MyModule.Extras"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Recipes runs a harvested recipe by its root name; executionid distinguishes that execution from other runs.

Other common registered steps

Use the matching schema before emitting any of these: Themes, Layers, Queries, Media, MediaProfile, Roles, Users, Templates, AdminTemplates, AdminMenu, Placement, WorkflowType, deployment, LuceneIndex, LuceneIndexRebuild, LuceneIndexReset, ElasticsearchIndex, ElasticsearchIndexRebuild, ElasticsearchIndexReset, CreateOrUpdateIndexProfile, RebuildIndex, ResetIndex, Translations, Sitemaps, FeatureProfiles, CustomSettings, CustomUserSettings, and provider-specific authentication settings.

Define workflow types and deployment plans

WorkflowType imports serialized workflow definitions. Create workflows in the admin editor, export them through the workflow deployment step, and use that exported data payload instead of hand-authoring activity IDs and transitions.

{
  "steps": [
    {
      "name": "WorkflowType",
      "data": [
        {
          "WorkflowTypeId": "[js: uuid()]",
          "Name": "Example workflow",
          "IsEnabled": true,
          "Activities": [],
          "Transitions": []
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

The lowercase deployment step creates deployment plans. Its Type values must match enabled deployment step factories.

{
  "steps": [
    {
      "name": "deployment",
      "Plans": [
        {
          "Name": "Configuration",
          "Steps": [
            {
              "Type": "AllFeaturesDeploymentStep",
              "Step": {
                "Id": "[js: uuid()]",
                "Name": "AllFeatures"
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Write a custom recipe step

Implement IRecipeStepHandler when a handler must inspect several names. For one named step, derive from NamedRecipeStepHandler; it compares context.Name case-insensitively and invokes HandleAsync only when the name matches. Release/3.0 does not use a [RecipeStep] attribute for handler discovery: registration is explicit.

RecipeExecutionContext provides ExecutionId, Name, Step as a JsonObject, RecipeDescriptor, nested recipes, and an Errors collection. Add a user-actionable error to context.Errors when input cannot be applied; do not silently ignore malformed required data.

using System.Text.Json.Nodes;
using OrchardCore.Recipes.Models;
using OrchardCore.Recipes.Services;
using OrchardCore.Settings;

namespace MyModule.Recipes;

public sealed class MySettingsStep : NamedRecipeStepHandler
{
    private readonly ISiteService _siteService;

    public MySettingsStep(ISiteService siteService)
        : base("MySettings")
    {
        _siteService = siteService;
    }

    protected override async Task HandleAsync(RecipeExecutionContext context)
    {
        var enabled = context.Step["Enabled"]?.GetValue<bool>();

        if (enabled is null)
        {
            context.Errors.Add("MySettings requires an Enabled value.");
            return;
        }

        var site = await _siteService.LoadSiteSettingsAsync();
        site ??= new SiteSettings();
        site.Properties["MyModuleSettings"] = new JsonObject
        {
            ["Enabled"] = enabled.Value,
        };

        await _siteService.UpdateSiteSettingsAsync(site);
    }
}

using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using OrchardCore.Modules;
using OrchardCore.Recipes;

namespace MyModule;

public sealed class Startup : StartupBase
{
    public override void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddRecipeExecutionStep<MySettingsStep>();
    }
}

The exact API is AddRecipeExecutionStep<TImplementation>(); it registers the handler as a scoped IRecipeStepHandler. Add the feature that contains this startup before the custom step in a consuming recipe.