2012 PowerShell Scripting Games

Are you playing in the 2012 PowerShell Scripting Games?

There will be two categories: Beginner and Advanced. Just like last year, the beginner’s division is really for beginners. If you have been wanting to learn Windows PowerShell, but you did not know how to go about it, you definitely need to sign up for the 2012 Scripting Games to give yourself a bit of added incentive. If you want to take your skills to the next level, you will want to participate in the advanced category.

In a major departure from previous rules, if you want to compete by using the beta version of Windows PowerShell 3.0, you are welcome to use it. You will be limited to the most recent version that is publically available, and you must specify that when you submit your scripts.

I will be putting together the finishing touches on the Study Guide for the 2012 Scripting Games to help you in your study and preparation for the games. The Study Guide will be available on February 5, 2012.

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The Scripting Games start on April 2nd. Let us know if you play, and be sure to use your favorite PowerShell editor, PowerSE as you join in the fun.

• #PowerShell
• #PowerSE
• #v3

PowerShell v3 and Workflow

The Microsoft PowerShell development team is starting to talk about the addition of Workflow to PowerShell v3.  As Hal points out -

A workflow is a sequence of automated steps or activities that execute tasks on or retrieve data from one or more managed nodes (computers or devices). These activities can include individual commands or scripts. Windows PowerShell Workflow enables, IT pros and developers alike, to author sequences of multi-computer management activities — that are either long-running, repeatable, frequent, parallelizable, interruptible, stoppable, or restartable — as workflows. By design, workflows can be resumed from an intentional or accidental suspension or interruption, such as a network outage, a reboot or power loss.

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PowerWF has been providing a workflow orchestration layer to PowerShell for 3 years now.

• #v3
• #powershell
• #workflow
• #powerwf

PowerShell and Twitter

Doug Finke had a blog post the other day that talked about using PowerShell v3 to find out about your twitter followers …

This script lets you see your Twitter followers name, screen name and location. Using the new Invoke-RestMethod in PowerShell Version 3, it retrieves and converts the JSON to make it easily accessible in PowerShell.

Did You Know:

PowerWF ships with a Twitter PowerShell module that you can use from PowerWF, PowerSE, or from PowerShell?  The PowerShell module lets you collect data on your followers, update your status, retweet statuses, or add and remove people you are following. 

PowerWF also includes Google Translate and Bit.ly PowerShell modules so you can translate foreign language tweets or shorten URLs.

You can download PowerWF to start playing with these modules.

• #v3
• #powershell
• #powerwf
• #PowerSE
• #Twitter

PowerScripting Podcast - Jim and Kirk

The PowerScripting podcast with Jim Hofer (me) and Kirk Munro has been posted.

Tonight on the PowerScripting Podcast, we talk to Jim Hofer and Kirk Munro with Devfarm Software

---

22:01:20] <alexandair> ## how do you see the future of powershell script editors now that powershell ise v3 is becoming very good?

[22:02:19] <ScriptingWife> ##be sure to have them talk about their dialog pop up window on their webpage. IT is so AWESOME

Jim – Superhero: Dark Phoenix

Kirk – Favorite software: Social media

• #powerwf
• #PowerSE
• #powervi
• #v3
• #powershell
• #powercli
• #press

Graphical PowerShell

Don Jones has a article at WindowsITPro about a new feature in PowerShell V3 that lets you fill in PowerShell properties, etc. using a dialog box.  To use this feature you use the show-command cmdlet, followed by -name and the name of the cmdlet.

PowerShell pops up a handy GUI to complete the command.

Essentially, each tab represents one of the parameter sets on the cmdlet, and each tab contains the parameters that belong to that parameter set. Pick a tab, fill in the values, and click either Run to run the command as-is, or Copy to copy the complete syntax to the clipboard - where you can paste it into the shell and review what it’s done. Cool!

As a long time PowerWF user, I’ll admit I’m biased, but I think our approach is much simpler.  In PowerWF, you drag any cmdlet on to the canvas and all the available properties are available through the property window.  You can easily string multiple cmdlets together in a pipeline and easily visualize your results.  If you want to see the resulting PowerShell, you can view some or all of the workflow in PowerSE.

Check out the tour and video on the PowerWF product page for more information.

• #powershell
• #v3
• #powerwf

PowerShell v3 Preview: Invoke-RestMethod

Doug Finke found another nice Internet related feature in PowerShell v3 - the Invoke-RestMethod.  As Doug points out, this makes working with things like RSS feeds much simpler.

PowerShell V3 introduces Invoke-RestMethod, … [simplifying] working with XML returned from the Web, like RSS feeds.

…

$url = “http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/rss.aspx”
Invoke-RestMethod $url | Select Title, Link

PowerWF has a built in RSS reader that we had been looking to refactor, but now it looks like PowerShell v3 may make the RSS reader obsolete - which is a good thing - anytime we can get the functionality from core PowerShell, it means that we can spend our time working on other features that PowerShell does not provide.

• #powershell
• #v3
• #PowerSE
• #powerwf

PowerShell v3 Preview: PowerShell and the Internet

Doug Finke points out that PowerShell v3 makes it much easier to interact with the web.  Doug created a sample PowerShell v3 script that uses the internet to get the results from specific Super Bowls (teams and results by quarter).  Here is the meat of the web interaction:

$url = “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_$($item)”
$table = Invoke-WebRequest $url | Get-HtmlTable | select -First 1           

$data = $table.getElementsByTagName(“td”) | ForEach outerText

Doug also uses the new method for creating a psCustomObject (discussed previously by Jonathan Medd)

#team 1       
[pscustomobject] @{
   SuperBowl  = $item
   Team  = $data[0]
   Qtr1  = [int]$data[1]
   Qtr2  = [int]$data[2]
   Qtr3  = [int]$data[3]
   Qtr4  = [int]$data[4]
   Total = [int]$data[5]
 }       

For the complete script and a full discussion visit Doug’s site.

• #powershell
• #powerwf
• #PowerSE
• #web
• #v3

PowerShell v3 and v2 Coexistance

Mark Weaver of VMware/PowerCLI fame has a post up on PowerShell v3, because, well, everyone really should do at least on PowerShell v3 post.  The interesting part for me was that PowerShell v3 and PowerShell v2 can coexist on the same machine quite nicely.  As Mark points out it happens my default:

One of the things I was afraid of was losing my Powershell 2.0 installation, yet I had read that they could co-exist. Well, seeing is believing, and I am a believer now.

Launching “powershell.exe” from a command line, by default, will open up version 3.

Launching “powershell.exe -version 2″ from a command line will bring up version 2.

Yes, it really is that simple.

• #powershell
• #v3

PowerShell v3 Preview: Ordered Hash Tables and Custom Objects

Jonathan Medd continues his exploration of PowerShell v3 with two new post:

• Bringing [ordered] to your hashtables
• Creating Objects With [pscustomobject]

The first post discusses using hashtables in PowerShell.  In PowerShell v2, the order is not preserved when you create a hashtable.

PS C:\Users\jhofer> $HashTableOld = @{a=1; b=2; c=3; d=4}
PS C:\Users\jhofer> $HashTableOld

Name                        Value
——                           ——-
a                              1
b                              2
d                              4
c                              3

I know this bit me a few times when I was first playing with PowerShell.  Jonathan discovered that with PowerShell v3, you can now tell PowerShell to maintain the order.

PS C:\Users\jhofer> $HashTableNew = [ordered]@{a=1; b=2; c=3; d=4}
PS C:\Users\jhofer> $HashTableNew

Name                         Value
——                           ——-
a                              1
b                              2
c                              3
d                              4

Jonathan discusses this feature in detail.

His second post discusses the new method for creating custom objects in PowerShell.

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• #powershell
• #PowerSE
• #powerwf
• #v3