I am attempting to add auto-complete features in powershell. In this case I would like to be able to type "test" in my console. After that to be able to type Get-Se[TAB] to auto complete to Get-Search using TAB Expansion.
PS > Get-Se[TAB]
PS > Get-Search
function test
{
[CmdletBinding()]
param()
# label the while loop "outer"
:outer while($true){
$x = Read-Host
# split $x into two parts
$first,$second = $x -split '\s',2
# switch evaluating the first part
switch($first){
Get-Search {
# Searching
}
default {
Write-Host "False"
}
}
}
}
Additional Information:
Goal:
I'd like to be able to use arguments that look like cmdlets to have the Powershell feel.
About the original script:
I have created a script to automate queries from several API's, for many different users. What I have right now for search is "s" and I'd like it to be "Get-Search" So Read-Host waits for an input, the user would type "Get-Search 'value'" and a formatted JSON returns.
PS > Get-Search foobar
#Returns JSON
I had a hard time understanding your intention at first, but I think I get it now.
You want to implement tab completion (tab expansion) inside the Read-Host prompt.
Unfortunately, there is no way to do that.
If you share why you want this, there may be better ways to achieve your ultimate goal.
Based on your additional information, I have a different approach.
Create actual functions for each of your queries, like Get-Search, etc. You can even add aliases for them so that s corresponds directly if you want.
Wrap all of these functions in a proper module, so that you can import them (see next step).
Create a constrained runspace that only allows the user to execute the specific functions and aliases you want (this is easier with a module, but the module is not a requirement).
What this can do is give your end users access (even remotely) to a PowerShell session which can only use the functions you've created and allowed to be executed. Other cmdlets/functions and even language features like using variables will be restricted and unavailable.
That way, you get true PowerShell tab expansion and semantics, and you end up with a real set of functions that be used in an automated way as well.
You don't have to write any prompting or parsing.
Further, the session can be secured, allowing only specific users and groups to connect to it.
Related
I am trying to create an alias (named which) of the Get-Command cmdlet in a way that it doesn't run if I'm not sending any arguments (because if it's run without arguments it outputs all the commands that are available).
I know this can be done using a function but I would like to keep the tab completion functionality without having to write a sizeable function that is to be placed into my $PROFILE.
In short, I only want the alias to work if it is being passed arguments.
You can't do it with an alias, because PowerShell aliases can only refer to another command name or path, and can therefore neither include arguments nor custom logic.
Therefore you do need a function, but it can be a short and simple one:
function which { if ($args.count) { Get-Command #args } else { Throw "Missing command name." } }
Note that while passing -? for showing Get-Command's help does work, tab completion of arguments does not.
In order to get tab completion as well, you'll need to write a wrapper (proxy) function or at least replicate Get-Command's parameter declarations - which then does make the function definition sizable.
If the concern is just the size of the $PROFILE file itself, you can write a proxy script instead - which.ps1 - which you can invoke with just which as well, assuming you place it in one of the directories listed in $env:Path[1]; see next section.
Defining a wrapper (proxy) script or function:
Defining a wrapper (proxy) function or script is a nontrivial undertaking, but allows you to implement a robust wrapper that supports tab completion and even forwarding to the original command's help.
Note:
Bug alert: As zett42 points out, as of PowerShell [Core] 7.1, System.Management.Automation.ProxyCommand.Create neglects to include dynamic parameters if the target command is an (advanced) function or script; however, compiled cmdlets are not affected; see GitHub issue #4792 and this answer for a workaround.
For simplicity, the following creates a wrapper script, which.ps1 , and saves it in the current directory. As stated, if you place it in one of the directories listed in $env:PATH, you'll be able to invoke it as just which.
The code below can easily be adapted to create a wrapper function instead: simply take the contents of the $wrapperCmdSource variable below and enclose it in function which { ... }.
As of PowerShell Core 7.0.0-preview.5, there are some problems with the auto-generated code, which may or may not affect you; they will be fixed at some point; to learn more and to learn how to manually correct them, see GitHub issue #10863.
# Create the wrapper scaffolding as source code (outputs a single [string])
$wrapperCmdSource =
[System.Management.Automation.ProxyCommand]::Create((Get-Command Get-Command))
# Write the auto-generated source code to a script file
$wrapperCmdSource > which.ps1
Note:
Even though System.Management.Automation.ProxyCommand.Create requires a System.Management.Automation.CommandMetadata instance to identify the target command, the System.Management.Automation.CommandInfo instances output by Get-Command can be used as-is.
Re comment-based help: By default, the proxy function simply forwards to the original cmdlet's help; however, you can optionally pass a string to serve as the comment-based help as the 2nd argument.
By using [System.Management.Automation.ProxyCommand]::GetHelpComments() in combination with output from Get-Help, you could start with a copy of the original command's help and modify it:
[System.Management.Automation.ProxyCommand]::GetHelpComments((Get-Help Get-Command))
You now have a fully functional which.ps1 wrapper script that behaves like Get-Command itself.
You can invoke it as follows:
./which # Same as: Get-Command; tab completion of parameters supported.
./which -? # Shows Get-Command's help.
You can now edit the script file to perform the desired customization.
Note: The auto-generated source code contains a lot of boilerplate code; however, typically only one or two places need tweaking to implement the custom functionality.
Specifically, place the following command as the first statement inside the begin { ... } block:
if (-not $MyInvocation.ExpectingInput -and -not ($Name -or $CommandType -or $Module -or $FullyQualifiedModule)) {
Throw "Missing command name or filter."
}
This causes the script to throw an error if the caller didn't provide some way of targeting a specific command or group of commands, either by direct argument or via the pipeline.
If you invoke the modified script without arguments now, you should see the desired error:
PS> ./which.ps1
Missing command name or filter.
...
Other common types of customizations are:
Removing parameters from the wrapper, by simply removing the parameter declaration.
Adding additional parameters to the invocation of the wrapped command, by modifying the following line in the begin block:
# Add parameters, as needed.
$scriptCmd = { & $wrappedCmd #PSBoundParameters }
Preprocessing pipeline input before passing it to the wrapped command, by customizing the process block and replacing $_ with your preprocessed input in the following line:
# Replace $_ with a preprocessed version of it, as needed.
$steppablePipeline.Process($_)
For an example of a complete implementation of a proxy function, see this answer.
[1] Caveat for Linux users: since the Linux file-system is case is case-sensitive, invocation of your script won't work case-insensitively, the way commands normally work in PowerShell. E.g., if your script file name is Get-Foo.ps1, only Get-Foo - using the exact same case - will work, not also get-foo, for instance.
Is there a way to find a list of script files that reference a given module (.psm1)? In other words, get all files that, in the script code, use at least 1 of the cmdlets defined in the module.
Obviously because of PowerShell 3.0 and above, most of my script files don't have an explicit Import-Module MODULE_NAME in the code somewhere, so I can't use that text to search on.
I know I can use Get-ChildItem -Path '...' -Recurse | Select-String 'TextToSearchFor' to search for a particular string inside of files, but that's not the same as searching for any reference to any cmdlet of a module. I could do a search for every single cmdlet in my module, but I was wondering if there is a better way.
Clarification: I'm only looking inside of a controlled environment where I have all the scripts in one file location.
Depending on the scenario, the callstack could be interesting to play around with. In that case you need to modify the functions which you want to find out about to gather information about the callstack at runtime and log it somewhere. Over time you might have enough logs to make some good assumptions.
function yourfunction {
$stack = Get-PSCallStack
if ($stack.Count -gt 1) {
$stack[1] # log this to a file or whatever you need
}
}
This might not work at all in your scenario, but I thought I throw it in there as an option.
Let's take the PowerShell statement below as an example:
powershell.exe c:\temp\windowsbroker.ps1 IIS
Is it possible to have it scripted within windowsbroker.ps1 to check for that IIS string, and if it's present to do a specific install script? The broker script would be intended to install different applications depending on what string followed it when it was called.
This may seem like an odd question, but I've been using CloudFormation to spin up application environments and I'm specifying an "ApplicationStack" parameter that will be referenced at the time when the powershell script is run so it knows which script to run to install the correct application during bootup.
What you're trying to do is called argument or parameter handling. In its simplest form PowerShell provides all arguments to a script in the automatic variable $args. That would allow you to check for an argument IIS like this:
if ($args -contains 'iis') {
# do something
}
or like this if you want the check to be case-sensitive (which I wouldn't recommend, since Windows and PowerShell usually aren't):
if ($args -ccontains 'IIS') {
# do something
}
However, since apparently you want to use the argument as a switch to trigger specific behavior of your script, there are better, more sophisticated ways of doing this. You could add a Param() section at the top of your script and check if the parameter was present in the arguments like this (for a list of things to install):
Param(
[Parameter()]
[string[]]$Install
)
$Install | ForEach-Object {
switch ($_) {
'IIS' {
# do something
}
...
}
}
or like this (for a single option):
Param(
[switch]$IIS
)
if ($IIS.IsPresent) {
# do something
}
You'd run the script like this:
powershell "c:\temp\windowsbroker.ps1" -Install "IIS",...
or like this respectively:
powershell "c:\temp\windowsbroker.ps1" -IIS
Usually I'd prefer switches over parameters with array arguments (unless you have a rather extensive list of options), because with the latter you have to worry about spelling of the array elements, whereas with switches you got a built-in spell check.
Using a Param() section will also automatically add a short usage description to your script:
PS C:\temp> Get-Help windowsbroker.ps1
windowsbroker.ps1 [-IIS]
You can further enhance this online help to your script via comment-based help.
Using parameters has a lot of other advantages on top of that (even though they probably aren't of that much use in your scenario). You can do parameter validation, make parameters mandatory, define default values, read values from the pipeline, make parameters depend on other parameters via parameter sets, and so on. See here and here for more information.
Yes, they are called positional parameters. You provide the parameters at the beginning of your script:
Param(
[string]$appToInstall
)
You could then write your script as follows:
switch ($appToInstall){
"IIS" {"Install IIS here"}
}
I've got a wrapper powershell script that I'm hoping to use to automate a few things. It's pretty basic, and accepts a parameter that I want the script to run as if it were a line in the script. I absolutely cannot get it to work.
example:
param( [string[]] $p)
echo $p
# Adds the base cmdlets
Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
# Add the following if you want to do things with Update Manager
Add-PSSnapin VMware.VumAutomation
# This script adds some helper functions and sets the appearance. You can pick and choose parts of this file for a fully custom appearance.
. "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI\Scripts\Initialize-VIToolkitEnvironment.ps1"
$p
In the example above, I want $p to execute as if it were a line in the script. I know this isn't secure, and that's probably where the problem lies.
Here is how I try running the script and passing in a parameter for $p:
D:\ps\test>powershell -command "D:\ps\test\powershell_wrapper.ps1" 'Suspend-VM servername -Verbose -Confirm:$False'
How can I get my parameter of 'Suspend-VM servername -Verbose -Confirm:$False' to run inside my script? If I just include the value in the script instead of pass it in as a parameter it runs without any issues...
You can basically approach this two ways, depending on what your needs really are and how you want to structure your code.
Approach #1 - Invoke-Expression
Invoke-Expression basically allows you to treat a string like an expression and evaluate it. Consider the following trivial example:
Invoke-Expression '{"Hello World"}'
That will evaluate the string as if it were an expression typed in directly, and place the string "Hello World" on the pipeline. You could use that to take your string parameter and run it on-the-fly in your script.
Approach #2 - Using a ScriptBlock
PowerShell has a special data type called a ScriptBlock, where you can bind a script to a variable, and then invoke that script as part of your code. Again, here is a trivial example:
function Test-SB([ScriptBlock]$sb) {
$sb.Invoke()
}
Test-SB -sb {"Hello World"}
This example creates a function with a single parameter $sb that is of type ScriptBlock. Notice the parameter is bound to the actual chunk of code {"Hello World"}? That code is assigned to the $sb parameter, and then a call to the .Invoke method actually executes the code. You could adapt your code to take in a ScriptBlock and invoke it as part of your script.
Approach #3 - Updating your profile
OK, so I said there were two ways to approach it. There is actually a third... sort of... You could add the VMWare cmdlets to your $profile so they are always present and you don't need your wrapper to load in those libraries. Granted, this is a pretty big hammer - but it might make sense if this is the environment you are constantly working in. You could also just create a shortcut to PowerShell that runs a .ps1 on startup that includes those libraries and hangs around (this is what MS did with the SharePoint admin shell and several others). Take a look at this TechNet page to get more info on the $profile and if it can help you out:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb613488.aspx
I've written a powershell script that I run several times a day. It's getting to be somewhat of a chore to execute the script manually (from within Powergui or the shell), so I'd like to create a frontend which prompts me for the variables. I've found that Primalforms can supply me with pre-populated fields that can be adjusted if needed.
My problem is that I would like to create a gui and pass ALL the variables to my external script (this script is already written and will not be part of the Primalforms project).
How would I do this? Or should I pass the variables manually? How would I do that?
(I do not think this would be specific to Primalforms.. I'm rather executing a script with variables with another script as input.)
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Use splatting. Collect all the values for the parameters in a hashtable (key names match parameter names) and assign each name the value of the parameter from the corresponding text feild in your form. Then pass the hashtable to script B. The following assumes that you have two text fields with names of: filter and path.
## scriptA ##
$params = #{
path=$path.text
filter=$filter.text
}
D:\Scripts\scriptB.ps1 #params