Tag Archives: parameters

Get Parameter

As I continue to work on the 2nd edition of Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell: TFM, I find situations where I need a tool to get information out of Windows PowerShell. For example, the cmdlets in the Microsoft Active Directory module have a lot of parameters and I wanted to know some specifics. Now I could simply keep reading the full cmdlet help, but that gets kind of tedious. Instead I remembered I can use the Get-Command cmdlet to dig into the details.

For example, here are the parameters for Get-Service.

The value, System.Management.Automation.ParameterMetadata is intriguing. The output is a dictionary object so I can check just a single parameter.

I can even take it a step further and get attribute information.

Now that I know where to go and how to get what I need, I can write a function to retrieve parameters for a given cmdlet or function.

The function has comment based help and examples so be sure to take a look. Otherwise the function is pretty straight forward. I use it with an alias, gpa.

I’m sure it needs a few tweaks so let me know what works and what doesn’t.  You can download Get-Parameter.ps1 here.

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Bool vs Switch

I have to say I’m generally impressed with the quality of submissions to this year’s Scripting Games. But there is a recurring concept that some people are using and I think there’s a better way. Some contestants are defining function or script parameters as booleans. But I believe they really should be using the [switch] type. Let me show you why.

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More Fun with Get-NumberedContent

As much fun as the original Get-NumberedContent function was after using it for awhile I realized I had imposed some limitations. I also realized it needed to be more flexible. What if someone wanted to specify a different color or use a different comment character such as a ; in an ini file? I also thought of a few more useful features, so I went back to my script editor and came up with a PowerShell v2.0 version of the function.

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Out-MSWord Revised

This summer I wrote about a function I developed called Out-MSWord. The function was discussed in my Practical PowerShell column which was published in the free e-Journal Windows Administration in RealTime put out by RealTime Publishers. The original was published in Issue #17 if you are interested. The function accepted pipelined input and created a Microsoft Word document. Naturally, you need to have Microsoft Word installed in order for this to work.

PS C:\> get-service | out-MSWord

The function accepted a number of parameters so you could control font name, size, color, append, and more. The function was written for PowerShell v1.0 but also worked on PowerShell v2.0. However, I was revisiting the function and realize there were places I could tweak, such as adding additional error handing. I also realized that if rewrote this for PowerShell v2.0, I could create an advanced function and take advantage of cmdletbinding, advanced parameters and help.