Testing to see if a scheduled task exist in powershell - powershell

Question

I can't figure out why the below code won't work:
Function createFirefoxTask() {
$schedule = new-object -com Schedule.Service
$schedule.connect()
$tasks = $schedule.getfolder("\").gettasks(0)
foreach ($task in ($tasks | select Name)) {
echo "TASK: $task.name"
if($task.equals("FirefoxMaint")) {
write-output "$task already exists"
break
}
}
}
createFirefoxTask
The output I get is this:
FirefoxMaint
TASK: #{Name=FirefoxMaint}.name
TASK: #{Name=Task1}.name
TASK: #{Name=Task2}.name
TASK: #{Name=Task3}.name
TASK: #{Name=Task4}.name
TASK: #{Name=Task5}.name
If I echo $task.name from the shell without going through the script, it properly displays the name.

Answer 1

In order to prevent errors with Get-ScheduledTask in case the task doesn't exist - you might want to consider doing :
$taskName = "FireFoxMaint"
$taskExists = Get-ScheduledTask | Where-Object {$_.TaskName -like $taskName }
if($taskExists) {
# Do whatever
} else {
# Do whatever
}

Answer 2

Try this one:
Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName "Task Name" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -OutVariable task
if (!$task) {
# task does not exist, otherwise $task contains the task object
}

Answer 3

When used in a double-quoted string, variable evaluation will stop at punctuation. You can use $() to denote a subexpression within a string, like this:
"TASK: $($task.name)"
PowerShell will then evaluate the expression inside the parentheses and expand the string with the outcome

Answer 4

If you are using v3.0, then you can do this using Get-ScheduledTask. Forexample,
$task = Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName "FirefoxMaint" -TaskPath \
Then, just need to check the value of $task.

Answer 5

You can use the following code to test to see if a scheduled task exists in PowerShell:
if(Get-ScheduledTask FirefoxMaint -ErrorAction Ignore) { #found } else { #not found}