I was toying around with PowerShell help this morning and as usually happens one thing leads to another. When you run Get-Help, or use the wrapper function Help, you are actually getting an object: MamlCommandHelpInfo. This object has properties that you are use to seeing like name and synopsis.<\/p>\n
Name syntax relatedLinks As you can see, some of these properties are nested objects.<\/p>\n TypeName: Selected.System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject<\/p>\n Name MemberType Definition I wanted to try something with related links, specifically those links which PowerShell uses for online help.<\/p>\n Online version: http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkID=113332 It is easy to forget, that these are still objects. <\/p>\n TypeName: MamlCommandHelpInfo#relatedLinks<\/p>\n Name MemberType Definition I see that these related link objects have a NavigationLink property so I'll expand it:<\/p>\n linkText uri Now we're getting somewhere. All I want is the link with a URI value.<\/p>\n linkText uri Very cool. Now that I have the basic concept down for a single cmdlet, I can modify my expression to pull this value out of the nested objects and bring it \"up\".<\/p>\n I'm using a hash table to define a custom property called URI that pulls the URI property, if found \"up\". When I run this code and pipe it to Format-List to make it easier to read I get a result like this:<\/p>\n Beautiful. All I need to do now is modify my code to work with more cmdlets. <\/p>\n This one line command will get all cmdlets in my current PowerShell session and display the cmdlet name, synopsis and help URL if found. The PowerCLI cmdlets include online help, but not all of them so when I run this command in a session with them loaded I'll only get those cmdlets with an online help link. <\/p>\n What I really wanted to show here is discovering an object's details, especially if there are nested object properties. PowerShell is all about objects in the pipeline and once you get a hold of that concept you can do some amazing things with very little effort. I'll be back tomorrow to take this one more step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was toying around with PowerShell help this morning and as usually happens one thing leads to another. When you run Get-Help, or use the wrapper function Help, you are actually getting an object: MamlCommandHelpInfo. This object has properties that you are use to seeing like name and synopsis. PS C:\\> get-help get-service | Select…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[367,534,368],"class_list":["post-2148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-powershell","category-scripting","tag-get-help","tag-powershell","tag-url"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nPS C:\\> get-help get-service | Select Name,Syntax,RelatedLinks<\/p>\n
\n---- ------ ------------
\nGet-Service @{syntaxItem=System.Man... @{navigationLink=Syste...
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\nPS C:\\> get-help get-service | Select RelatedLinks | get-member<\/p>\n
\n---- ---------- ----------
\nEquals Method bool Equals(System.Object obj)
\nGetHashCode Method int GetHashCode()
\nGetType Method type GetType()
\nToString Method string ToString()
\nrelatedLinks NoteProperty MamlCommandHelpInfo#relatedLinks relatedLinks=@{na...
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\nPS C:\\> get-help get-service | Select -expandproperty RelatedLinks<\/p>\n
\nStart-Service
\nStop-Service
\nRestart-Service
\nResume-Service
\nSuspend-Service
\nSet-Service
\nNew-Service
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\nPS C:\\> get-help get-service | Select -expandproperty RelatedLinks | get-member<\/p>\n
\n---- ---------- ----------
\nEquals Method bool Equals(System.Object obj)
\nGetHashCode Method int GetHashCode()
\nGetType Method type GetType()
\nToString Method string ToString()
\nnavigationLink NoteProperty System.Management.Automation.PSObject[] navigati...
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\nPS C:\\> get-help get-service | Select -expandproperty RelatedLinks | select -e
\nxpand navigationlink<\/p>\n
\n-------- ---
\nOnline version: http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?Link...
\nStart-Service
\nStop-Service
\nRestart-Service
\nResume-Service
\nSuspend-Service
\nSet-Service
\nNew-Service
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\nPS C:\\> get-help get-service | Select -expandproperty RelatedLinks | select -expandproperty navigationlink | where {$_.uri}<\/p>\n
\n-------- ---
\nOnline version: http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?Link...
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\nGet-Help get-service |
\n Select Name,Synopsis,@{Name=\"URI\";Expression={
\n ($_.RelatedLinks | select -ExpandProperty NavigationLink | where {$_.uri}).uri}} |
\n Where {$_.URI}
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\nName : Get-Service
\nSynopsis : Gets the services on a local or remote computer.
\nURI : http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkID=113332
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\n Get-Command -CommandType cmdlet | Get-Help | Select Name,Synopsis,@{Name=\"URI\";Expression={
\n ($_.RelatedLinks | select -ExpandProperty NavigationLink | where {$_.uri}).uri}} | Where {$_.URI}
\n<\/code><\/p>\n