Powershell script check modified date of files & send email if changed - powershell

Question

I need to run a scheduled task that will trigger at 7am daily and search a folder for any files that have a modified date that’s changed in the last day or 24 hours. I’m stuck on whether what I’ve done so far is the best way to do this check and also I’m not sure how to get this to email out a file with the list of file or files that have changed in the last 24 hours. I don’t think the FileSystemChecker is worth the amount of time it seems to get that running as I’ve read it can be troublesome. I’m trying to do something that just looks for files with a modified date that’s changed. I don’t have to look for deleted files or added files email the folder. If nothing has changed then I need to send the email to a different group of folks than I do if there are files that changed. I’m stuck on how to do the email part. The other part I’m stuck on is getting this to accept a unc path so I can run the task from another server.
Get-Item C:\folder1\folder2\*.* | Foreach { $LastUpdateTime=$_.LastWriteTime $TimeNow=get-date if (($TimeNow - $LastUpdateTime).totalhours -le 24) { Write-Host "These files were modified in the last 24 hours "$_.Name } else { Write-Host "There were no files modified in the last 24 hours" } }

Answer 1

First of all, do not try and cram all code in a single line. If you do, the code gets unreadable and mistakes are easily made, but hard to spot.
What I would do is something like this:
$uncPath = '\\Server1\SharedFolder\RestOfPath' # enter the UNC path here
$yesterday = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1).Date # set at midnight for yesterday
# get an array of full filenames for any file that was last updates in the last 24 hours
$files = (Get-ChildItem -Path $uncPath -Filter '*.*' -File |
Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -ge $yesterday }).FullName
if ($files) {
$message = 'These files were modified in the last 24 hours:{0}{1}' -f [Environment]::NewLine, ($files -join [Environment]::NewLine)
$emailTo = 'folskthatwanttoknowaboutmodifications#yourcompany.com'
}
else {
$message = 'There were no files modified in the last 24 hours'
$emailTo = 'folskthatwanttoknowifnothingismodified#yourcompany.com'
}
# output on screen
Write-Host $message
# create a hashtable with parameters for Send-MailMessage
$mailParams = #{
From = 'you#yourcompany.com'
To = $emailTo
Subject = 'Something Wrong'
Body = $message
SmtpServer = 'smtp.yourcompany.com'
# any other parameters you might want to use
}
# send the email
Send-MailMessage #mailParams
Hope that helps