Here are basic instructions to help you execute a PowerShell command.
You have a choice of three strategies; firstly, the time-honoured method of copying other people's examples, and then pasting their code into your PowerShell session. Secondly, creating cmdlets (my favorite), and thirdly, simply typing the instructions at the PowerShell command line.
Since the
aim is to learn a technique, the practice code does not matter. Most
people use 'Hello World', as their test 'vehicle'; however, I prefer to
choose a real example. For instance, here is a cmdlet which gets the
operating system processes, and then groups them by company name.
Example 1a: To
List Processes Running on Your Machine
# PowerShell cmdlet to list
running processes Get-Process | Format-Table Name, company -auto
Example 1b: To Group Processes by Company
# PowerShell cmdlet to group processes by company
Clear-Host Get-Process | Sort-Object company |ft -groupby company
Result: You should see a list of processes grouped by Company name.
Note: Ft is an alias for Format-Table. Sort-Object has
an alias of plain sort, which we use in the next script.
Example 1c: To Save List of Companies to File
# PowerShell cmdlet to group Processes by company $Path = "C:\PowerShell\ProcessCompany.txt" $ProSvc =
Get-Process |sort company |ft -groupby company $ProSvc # $ProSvc | out-file $Path
Note: To save the results to a text file: a) Check
and amend the value of $Path. b) Remove the # from the beginning
of the last line.
# PowerShell Get-Command
Clear-Host Get-Command -verb get
Note: PowerShell's Get-Command returns so many cmdlets
that I have incorporated a filter so that it just lists cmdlets beginning
with 'get'. You could replace -verb get with the wildcard *.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is one of the hidden
treasures of Microsoft operating systems. Fortunately, Solarwinds
have created a
Free WMI Monitor so that you can discover these gems of performance
information, and thus improve your PowerShell scripts. Take the guess work out of which WMI counters to use when scripting the
operating system, Active Directory or Exchange Server.
Because it saves your instructions permanently into a text file, this cmdlet method is an improvement over copy and paste. Creating cmdlets is
my favorite technique because it is ideal for making amendments,
then re-running the commands. As a bonus, cmdlets keep a record of what I have done.
Copy the code in the 'Vehicle' above into a text file
Save the file with a .ps1 extension, for example: addcontenta.ps1
In PowerShell v 2.0 you can save and open your .ps1 files in the ISE
GUI
In PowerShell v 1.0, navigate to the folder where you saved addcontenta.ps1 (D:\PowerShell\Files in the screen shot below)
Issue this command: .\addcontenta (dot backslash filename)
Tip: For
each of my PowerShell projects, I
launch Windows Explorer and then create a subfolder. Once I have a cmdlet that works, I store it in that subfolder. Thereafter my technique is to call for: File (menu), SaveAs, create a new file.
Then I work with the new file and try
to improve on that original version. At
various points I call for SaveAs again, thus creating a family of cmdlets, for example: addcontenta, addcontentz, addcontenty etc.
My reason for employing this cmdlet technique is twofold,
firstly, to cater for that moment when my code gets into a
tangle, and I think: 'If only I could go back in time to when my script WAS working'. Well, thanks to saving lots of intermediary examples, I can revert to a working backup. Secondly,
producing cmdlets means that I can return to my research months later and pick up from where I left off, instead of starting the project from scratch.
You may like to combine methods 1 and 2 by
copying other people's code then pasting, not to the command line, but into a cmdlet text file. See more on creating cmdlets.
Guy Recommends: Solarwinds' Free Bulk Import Tool
Import users from a spreadsheet. Just provide a list of the
users with their fields in the
top row, and save as .csv file. Then launch this FREE utility and match
your fields with AD's
attributes, click to import the users. Optionally, you can
provide the name of the OU where the new accounts will be born.
There are also two bonus tools in this free download, and all 3 have been approved by Microsoft:
Because PowerShell commands are so efficient, and thus short, I have no qualms about recommending that you simply type them at the command line
(or in PowerShell 2.0, in the ISE GUI). To test method 3, I have different examples or
'Vehicles'. You could start by typing this at the command line: Get-Childitem c:\windows.
Indeed, if
you are new to PowerShell there is nothing like typing to give you a 'feel' for the syntax.
As you type simple commands, so you get into the rhythm of the verb-noun pair.
Another bonus of typing is that you understand when to
use a dash (-) and when to precede a dash with a space. Here are three examples of what I mean: Get-Eventlog -list
(Correct: Space before -list) Get-Help Get-Eventlog (Correct: No
space in the word 'eventlog') Get-Eventlog system | Get-Member
(Correct: No space between each verb-noun)
get -eventlog -list
(Wrong: Space between get and -) Get-help -eventlog
(Wrong: 'Overthink' eventlog is not a parameter or a switch, it is a positional argument and thus does not need a dash.
There are occasions when even experienced PowerShell scriptwriters resort to typing commands.
As for me, I love creating cmdlets, but I do type commands especially when I want a list of an object's properties, for example, abc-xyz |gm. (gm is an alias for Get-Member).
»
Summary of How to Execute a PowerShell Command
Typical Microsoft, there are always at least two ways of
executing PowerShell code. By all means start with the time-honoured method of copying and pasting, but for the long term, my advice is take the time to master the cmdlet method.
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Guy Recommends: WMI Monitor and It's Free!
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is one of the hidden
treasures of Microsoft operating systems.
Fortunately, Solarwinds
have created the
Free WMI Monitor so that you can actually see and understand these gems of
performance information. Take the guess work out of which
WMI counters to use for applications like Microsoft Active Directory,
SQL or Exchange Server.
