Get-Job Format-Table with Runtimes of Jobs - powershell

Question

I am trying to write a PowerShell 5.1 script for monitoring jobs.
I am having a problem writing a proper Get-Job table, the following is what I have.
Get-Job | Format-Table -AutoSize -Property name, state, #{name = 'Runtime'; Expression = {$((get-date)-($_.psbegintime)).ToString('HH:mm')}}
What this code returns is a table of named jobs and states, but does populate the runtime column. It works if I remove the .ToString('HH:mm') from the code but that populates the runtime column with Hour:Minute:Second:Millisecond in this format HH:mm:ss:fffffff. How do I remove the Seconds and Milliseconds part?

Answer 1

The reason why .ToString(HH:mm) doesn't work is because the result of:
Get-Date - $_.PSBeginTime
Is not a datetime object, it's a timespan object. Calling .ToString(HH:mm) on a timespan object throws the following exception:
MethodInvocationException: Exception calling "ToString" with "1" argument(s): "Input string was not in a correct format."
According to TimeSpan.ToString MS Docs formatting is possible however the format is .ToString('hh\:mm\:ss').
Here you have an example of how to achieve what you're looking for:
$testJobs = 5
$jobs = 1..$testJobs | ForEach-Object {
Start-Job {
'Hello from Job {0}' -f $using:_
Start-Sleep ([random]::new().Next(5,10))
}
}
while($jobs.State -contains 'Running')
{
Clear-Host
Get-Job | Format-Table -AutoSize -Property Name, State, #{
Name = 'Runtime'
Expression = {
([datetime]::Now - $_.PSBeginTime).ToString('hh\:mm\:ss')
# .ToString('hh\:mm') for Hours and Minutes only.
}
}
Start-Sleep 1
}
$jobs | Receive-Job -Wait -AutoRemoveJob
This answer shows a similar, more developed alternative, using a function to wait for Jobs with progress and a optional TimeOut parameter.