Copying files defined in a list from network location - powershell

Question

I'm trying to teach myself enough powershell or batch programming to figure out to achieve the following (I've had a search and looked through a couple hours of Youtube tutorials but can't quite piece it all together to figure out what I need - I don't get Tokens, for example, but they seem necessary in the For loop). Also, not sure if the below is best achieved by robocopy or xcopy.
Task:
Define a list of files to retrieve in a csv (file name will be listed as a 13 digit number, extension will be UNKNOWN, but will usually be .jpg but might occasionally be .png - could this be achieved with a wildcard?)
list would read something like:
9780761189931
9780761189988
9781579657159
For each line in this text file, do:
Search a network folder and all subfolders
If exact filename is found, copy to an arbitrary target (say a new folder created on desktop)
(Not 100% necessary, but nice to have) Once the For loop has completed, output a list of files copied into a text file in the newly created destination folder
I gather that I'll maybe need to do a couple of things first, like define variables for the source and destination folders? I found the below elsewhere but couldn't quite get my head around it.
set src_folder=O:\2017\By_Month\Covers
set dst_folder=c:\Users\%USERNAME&\Desktop\GetCovers
for /f "tokens=*" %%i in (ISBN.txt) DO (
xcopy /K "%src_folder%\%%i" "%dst_folder%"
)
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This solution is in powershell, by the way.
To get all subfiles of a folder, use Get-ChildItem and the pipeline, and you can then compare the name to the insides of your CSV (which you can get using import-CSV, by the way).
Get-ChildItem -path $src_folder -recurse | foreach{$_.fullname}
I'd personally then use a function to edit the name as a string, but I know this probably isn't the best way to do it. Create a function outside of the pipeline, and have it return a modified path in such a way that you can continue the previous line like this:
Get-ChildItem -path $src_folder -recurse | foreach{$_.CopyTo (edit-path $_.fullname)}
Where "edit-directory" is your function that takes in the path, and modifies it to return your destination path. Also, you can alternatively use robocopy or xcopy instead of CopyTo, but Copy-Item is a powershell native and doesn't require much string manipulation (which in my experience, the less, the better).
Edit: Here's a function that could do the trick:
function edit-path{
Param([string] $path)
$modified_path = $dst_folder + "\"
$modified_path = $path.substring($src_folder.length)
return $modified_path
}
Edit: Here's how to integrate the importing from CSV, so that the copy only happens to files that are written in the CSV (which I had left out, oops):
$csv = import-csv $CSV_path
Get-ChildItem -path $src_folder -recurse | where-object{$csv -contains $_.name} | foreach{$_.CopyTo (edit-path $_.fullname)}
Note that you have to put the whole CSV path in the $CSV_path variable, and depending on how the contents of that file are written, you may have to use $_.fullname, or other parameters.

Answer 2

This seems like an average enough problem:
$Arr = Import-CSV -Path $CSVPath
Get-ChildItem -Path $Folder -Recurse |
Where-Object -FilterScript { $Arr -contains $PSItem.Name.Substring(0,($PSItem.Length - 4)) } |
ForEach-Object -Process {
Copy-Item -Destination $env:UserProfile\Desktop
$PSItem.Name | Out-File -FilePath $env:UserProfile\Desktop\Results.txt -Append
}
I'm not great with string manipulation so the string bit is a bit confusing, but here's everything spelled out.