Working Locally with Sitecore XM Cloud: Connecting, Managing, and Serializing Items

In the previous blog, we walked through the step-by-step local installation of Sitecore XM Cloud. In this post, we’ll take the next step by exploring how to connect cloud and local environments setup by:

• Configuring item serialization
• Connecting to an XM Cloud environment
• Connecting to your local environment
• Pull serialized items from XM Cloud into your local repository
• Push serialized items into the local environment

This workflow is essential because a local XM Cloud instance is a vanilla instance with no items. To work effectively, you’ll need to bring down items from your cloud environment. With Sitecore Serialization, you can sync items between cloud and local setups, ensuring your local development mirrors what exists in the cloud.

Configure item Serialization

The local installation includes the file at the below path for rendering host serialization

authoring/items/next-starter.module.json

For local development, you need a new serialization configuration, follow below steps to achieve that:

1. Navigate to the authoring/items path

2. Create a subfolder named with your site name like mysite

authoring/items/mysite

3. Create a new serialization module file inside this folder like

mysite.module.json.

4. Copy the content from the existing serialization module file next-starter.module.json into your new file as a starting point.

5. Update the name or namespace value to match with your site name.

6. Modify the items section to include

- Placeholder settings

- Templates created during deployment

- Content items (tenants, sites, pages)

- Media items

7. Save the file.

Later you can this configuration to include renderings, layouts, and other settings as your project evolves.

Connect to an XM Cloud Environment

Before pulling or pushing items, you need to connect your local project with your XM Cloud organization.

1. Authorize your device:

    dotnet sitecore cloud login

It opens a browser popup for device confirmation like below

After confirming, it will ask for sign in with your XM Cloud credentials

Provide the credentials and follow the directions, on success it will show below screen.

Successful authentication stores a token in .sitecore/user.json file

2. List all projects in your organization:

   dotnet sitecore cloud project list

It shows all the projects as below, Copy the Project ID for the project you’re working with

3. List environments for the selected project:

  dotnet sitecore cloud environment list --project-id <project-id>

4. Connect to an environment (e.g., dev).

dotnet sitecore cloud environment connect -id <environment-id> --allow-write true

It will show the message like connections to the environment and updates .sitecore/user.json with the selected environment details 

Connect Your Local Environment

To connect your local instance to XM Cloud, we need to identify the local environment and add that to the user.json file by running below command

dotnet sitecore connect --ref xmcloud --cm https://xmcloudcm.localhost --allow-write true -n local

Your .sitecore/user.json now includes a local endpoint configuration as below.

Pull Serialized Items from XM Cloud

With both environments connected, you can now pull items from the cloud into your local source code repository using below command

    dotnet sitecore ser pull -n "dev"

The command output shows what items have been serialized.

The command serializes items into the src/items folder. Depending on your configuration, you’ll see subfolders like:

• content-root
• media
• templates

Push Serialized Items into Local Environment

As we have pulled the serialized items that were created in your remote XM Cloud environment, now we can push them to the local XM instance using below command

   dotnet sitecore ser push -n "local"

Now visit your local instance (http://xmcloudcm.localhost) and verify that templates, content, and media items appear as expected.

By following these steps, you can now connect a local XM Cloud instance to the cloud, pull serialized items, and push them locally. This ensures your development environment mirrors the cloud environment, making it easier to build, test, and deploy changes with confidence.

Hope this helps!