Dealing with Arrays in Powershell (testing with Pester) - powershell

Question

I have a little trouble understanding the way to implement this process. I want to achieve a total count in the score so that if a test successfully passes or fails it can be added into an array. That array will be counted in the length.
This is my code as an example:
#This stores the array of the number of passed and failed test
$passed = #()
$failed = #()
Describe "Template Syntax" {
It "Has a JSON template" {
$fileLocation = "$here\azuredeploy.json"
$fileCheck = $fileLocation | Test-Path
if ($fileCheck -eq $true) { $passed = $passed + 1
Write-Host "1st file exist " }
if ($fileCheck -eq $false) { $failed = $failed + 1
Write-Host "1st file does exist" }
}
It "Has a parameters file" {
$fileLocation ="$here\azuredeploy.parameters*.json"
$fileCheck = $fileLocation | Test-Path
if ($fileCheck -eq $true) { $passed = $passed + 1;
Write-Host "2nd file exist "}
if ($fileCheck -eq $false) { $failed = $failed + 1
Write-Host "2nd file does exist" }
}
PrintArgs
}
function PrintArgs(){
Write-Host -ForegroundColor yellow "Passed: $($passed.Length) Failed: $($failed.Length)"
}
Is there a different way or another approach that I can do to achieve this? I know that pester does it automatically, however, I want to use a Powershell script to test.

Answer 1

Your Pester tests aren't really Pester tests unless you include a Should assertion. I think you should rewrite your tests as follows:
Describe "Template Syntax" {
$fileLocation = "$here\azuredeploy.json"
$fileCheck = $fileLocation | Test-Path
It "Has a JSON template" {
$fileCheck | Should -Be $true
}
$fileLocation ="$here\azuredeploy.parameters*.json"
$fileCheck = $fileLocation | Test-Path
It "Has a parameters file" {
$fileCheck | Should -Be $true
}
}
If you then run this with Invoke-Pester you get a summary of passed and failed test counts at the end automatically. If you need to access these values, you can use -PassThru to return them to a variable. For example:
$Results = Invoke-Pester .\your.tests.ps1 -PassThru
Then you can get the number of passed and failed tests as follows:
$Results.PassedCount
$Results.FailedCount
If you genuinely want to use your own counters (which would mean maintaining lots of unnecessary logic) you could do as follows:
$Passed = 0
$Failed = 0
Describe "Template Syntax" {
$fileLocation = "$here\azuredeploy.json"
$fileCheck = $fileLocation | Test-Path
It "Has a JSON template" {
$fileCheck | Should -Be $true
}
if ($fileCheck -eq $true) { $Passed++ } else { $Failed++ }
$fileLocation ="$here\azuredeploy.parameters*.json"
$fileCheck = $fileLocation | Test-Path
It "Has a parameters file" {
$fileCheck | Should -Be $true
}
if ($fileCheck -eq $true) { $Passed++ } else { $Failed++ }
Write-Host -ForegroundColor yellow "Passed: $Passed Failed: $Failed"
}
Note that the Describe block acts as a kind of script scope, so you have to print the values of $Passed and $Failed within the Describe to get at the values.

Answer 2

Looking at your code, you do not need arrays to count the scores.
Instead of defining $passed and $failed as arrays, just set them up as integer counters with a starting value of 0
$passed = $failed = 0
Then instead of calling function PrintArgs() you simply do
Write-Host -ForegroundColor yellow "Passed: $passed Failed: $failed"
By the way, to increment a counter you can simply do $passed++ instead of $passed = $passed + 1
If you DO insist on using arrays you can change the $passed = $passed + 1 to something like $passed += $true. By doing that you add a new element to the array with a value of $true (or whatever you feel is more appropriate.