I've come across the following powershell syntax:
([ADSI]"")
I realise it is something to do with active directory, but what I want is to understand exactly what the syntax is doing.
Can somebody explain it do me?
I get different results for these two:
[ADSI] | get-member
[ADSI]"" | get-member
What are those quotes doing?
ADSI on it's own is not recognized, so what are those square brackets doing?
Is the same as New-Object ADSI("")
I get different results for these two:
[ADSI] | get-member
[ADSI]"" | get-member
The first one is enumerating the member of the type ADSI. The second one is enumerating the members of an object (and instance) of type ADSI.
Related
Problem
I want to know if there is a easy way to search multiple objects in a WMI object or CIM instance.
I'm aware it's possible with commands like
Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard | Select-Object Manufacturer,Product
But I want a command with a dot notation where you can set multiple objects for a search like (Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard).Manufacturer with more than one object.
Something like (Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard).Object1.Obejct2.Object3
Ben's solution from the comments will work but note that it calls Get-CimInstance once for each property you want, even though that's unnecessary (could take a while depending on the call you're making).
Let's look at it a few other ways. We'll start by storing the wanted property names in an array.
$properties = 'Manufacturer', 'Product'
Now we can do something similar to what Ben did:
$allValues = $properties |
ForEach-Object -Begin {
$bb = Get-CimInstance Win32_Baseboard
} -Process {
$bb.$_
}
That keeps his approach but does the CIM call once.
If you want to do with dot notation purely, you can use the .ForEach() method and the .PSObject hidden property to get at the properties:
(Get-CimInstance Win32Baseboard).ForEach({$_.PSObject.Properties.Where({$_.Name -in $properties}).Value})
As noted, DotNotation (Intellisense) is 1:1 / single node / collection thing. You can validate this, by pushing the result of the call to XML and walking the nodes.
(Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard | ConvertTo-Xml).Objects.Object.Property
(Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard | ConvertTo-Xml).Objects.Object.Property.name
(Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard | ConvertTo-Xml).Objects.Object.Property.'#text'
The only other option off the top of my head is constructing a proxy that uses enums and switches for all possible properties for the namespace you are using.
That's way more unneeded effort and code to just do what BenH has pointed out, specifically because you'd have to do that for every class.
Now, if you just wanted to shorthand this, maybe do this
$Base = Get-CimInstance Win32_BaseBoard
$Base.Manufacturer;$base.Model;$base.Name;$Base.PartNumber
But that is just unwieldy, especially, since all this really doing is single commands set on a single line with the command break separator, the semi-colon. Which is a wrong thing to do. IMHO.
---small rant ---
If you need the separator, then just put the next thing on a new line and avoid the semi-colon. I mean, I can see that semi-colon use as the PoSH console host, but in a real script, function, module, well, just, no. Again, IMHO
--- small rant ---
Lastly, depending on what your target PoSH version is, DotNotation had issues in v2 - v3 days
I`m new to PowerShell and was looking for a way to retrieve the properties of an object. I read up on Get-Member.
However, when I tried to get the properties for an object "created" by the SharePoint Online cmdlet (Remove-SPOSitGroup) I get an error message:
"get-member : you must specify an object for the get-member cmdlet"
Moreover, in order to be even able to pipe the cmdlet to Get-Member I have to specify the required parameters "site" and "identity" for the cmdlet.
This in turn executes the command and deletes a SharePoint group.
I don`t want that. I just want to get the properties of the object that Remove-SPOSitGroup produces.
Here`s my command:
Remove-SPOSiteGroup -Site XXX -Identity XXX | Get-Member -MemberType Property
This works fine with
Get-Command | Get-Member -MemberType Property
As I mentioned this is new to me so any help is appreciated.
Thanks.
The issue what you are having is because you command is not giving any output:
Remove-SPOSiteGroup's output will pass as an Input to the next cmdlet if you are piping it. Thats what Pipe symbolizes in PS.
So, in your case the return type is nothing as a result, the next cmdlet which is Get-Member is not getting any object to give you the details of methods & properties. Hope you are clear now about get-member
I am running some Powershell code which gets the latest TFS branch label, something like this
tf labels /owner:LBLD_V3_R10* | Select-Object -Last 1
Now is there a way I can see which properties are in that returned object?
I know about Get-Member but it seems to be treating the returned PS Object as a string.
No, there is no simple way to treat a string as an object with properties inferred from the contents of the string. You will have to mess about with substring, indexof, etc.
It is very likely that the TFS assemblies are suitable for calling directly from your powershell script. If you can figure out which method in those assemblies give you the same information as tf labels /owner:LBLD_V3_R10* then you can pipe the collection returned from that method to Select-Object -Last 1 and then call Get-Member to figure out what else you can do. But that's worthy of an entirely new question.
Can anyone explain to me the differences I'm seeing in either using a | to pipe one command to another or using $ to 'pipe' it a different way (sorry not sure if the use $ is actually considering piping).
So… this works:
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited |
where { $_.RecipientTypeDetails.tostring() -eq "SharedMailbox" } |
Get-MailboxPermission
Which is great, however because I want to place another where command after the Get-MailboxPermission which doesn't work above I then tried to use this:
$Mailbox = Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited |
where { $_.RecipientTypeDetails.tostring() -eq "SharedMailbox" }
Get-MailboxStatistics -Identity $Mailbox |
where { $_.IsInherited.tostring() -eq "False" }
It causes me to get this error:
Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'Identity'. Cannot convert the "System.Collections.ArrayList" value of type "System.Collections.ArrayList" to type "Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.GeneralMailboxOrMailUserIdParameter".
Surely using | or $ is the same in the sense that it pipes through the results to the next command or am I completely wrong?
I don't have an exchange shell here to test but I guess I can still explain the basics and point you in the right direction.
The pipe | is used to redirect output from one command to another command. $ in Powershell is the character which defines that the character sequence right behind it is either a variable (e.g. $Mailbox as an example for a normal variable or $_ as an example for a variable that holds data that has been piped through from a previous command) or an expression. An example for an expression one is $(4+5).
Or in a more frequently used example:
PS C:\Users\Administrator> $file = (get-childitem)[0]
PS C:\Users\Administrator> write-output "The fullname of $file is $($file.fullname)"
The fullname of .ssh is C:\Users\Administrator\.ssh
In that example it is actually necessary to use an expression, because variable detection inside a string doesn't recognize dots as separator between variable and a variable member (fullname is a member of $file).
If it's not clear to you why there is a point and what members are, you should probably look into object oriented programming a bit because Powershell is object oriented through and through.
In your 2nd example you just save everything that's returned by your Get-Mailbox command in the $Mailbox variable. The $Mailbox variable is available as long as you don't delete it or leave its scope (in this case, the powershell session). You can actually use the variable as input for multiple commands without losing its data.
When using the pipe, the data returned by your first command is only accessible for the command behind the pipe and after that it's gone.
That's probably the difference you're interested in.
As for your actual problem: Powershell tells you that it's not expecting to be handed a variable of type System.Collections.ArrayList, which is what Get-Mailbox returns. The technet help is unclear as to what Get-Mailbox specificly returns, but I strongly guess it's an ArrayList of Mailbox-Objects. You can check it like this:
$Mailbox.GetType()
$Mailbox[0].GetType() # gets the type of the first object in $Mailbox
To fix your code, you need to loop over what's been returned by Get-Mailbox. Try this:
$Mailboxes = Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | where { $_.RecipientTypeDetails.tostring() -eq "SharedMailbox" }
$Mailboxes | ForEach-Object { Get-MailboxStatistics -Identity $_ }
The ForEach-Object cmdlet loops over an array or a list and works on each item individually.
Your first example works so far because Powershell has been made smarter about piped data a few versions ago (See paragraph about 'Member Enumeration'). It's actually ForEach-ing over the passed in data.
Follow up links:
The $_ variable in powershell
Powershell is an object oriented language
Sorry to have to say this, but you're completely wrong. Pipelines and variables are two entirely different things.
The pipe (|) connects the output of one cmdlet to the input of another cmdlet. List output is processed one item at a time, i.e. the second cmdlet receives each list item separately.
If you collect a list of items in a variable ($mailbox) and call a cmdlet with that variable you're passing the list object instead of individual list items. That only works if the cmdlet parameter accepts array input.
The pipe operator | i used to flow the output of one command into the input of another command.
The dollar symbolc, $ is used to denote that the name following it is a variable, and has nothing to do with piping data between cmdlets. The where cmdlet create a $_ variable for use within its expression.
In PoweShell 2 we did:
Get-ChildItem | ForEach-Object {$_.LastWriteTime} | Sort-Object
In Powershell 3 we do:
(Get-ChildItem).LastWriteTime | Sort-Object
But how does it work, i read this blog post on MSDN and they say that its faster because the foreach loop isnt running? So how does it enumerate the properties then ?
PowerShell is doing the hard work for us and it loops over the collection internally. I like to call this "implicit foreach". Assuming the member you specified is present on each object, if the member you specified is a property, you get back its value. If it's a method, it invokes the method on the each object.
In v2, to get all process names you had to take care of looping yourself:
Get-Process | Foreach-Object {$_.Name}
In v3, the equivalent would be:
(Get-Process).Name
Same applies to methods. To kill all processes with name starting with note*:
(Get-Process note*).Kill()
The blog says foreach-object cmdlet is not running. Now it is taken care of by the language engine and not a cmdlet, making it faster. How it EXACTLY works is internal implementation detail and I think that is not what you really want to know.