Book Image

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

By : Chris Dent
Book Image

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

By: Chris Dent

Overview of this book

PowerShell scripts offer a handy way to automate various chores, however working effectively with these scripts can be a difficult task. This comprehensive guide starts with the fundamentals before moving on to advanced-level topics to help you become a PowerShell Core 6.0 expert. The first module, PowerShell Core 6.0 Fundamentals, begins with the new features of PowerShell Core 6.0, installing it on Linux, and working with parameters, objects and .NET classes from within PowerShell Core 6.0. As you make your way through the chapters, you'll see how to efficiently manage large amounts of data and interact with other services using PowerShell Core 6.0. You'll be able to make the most of PowerShell Core 6.0's powerful automation feature, where you will have different methods available to parse data and manipulate regular expressions and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). After having explored automation, you will enter the extending PowerShell Core 6.0 module, covering asynchronous processing and desired state configuration. In the last module, you will learn to extend PowerShell Core 6.0 using advanced scripts and filters, and also debug issues along with working on error handling techniques. By the end of this book, you will be an expert in scripting with PowerShell Core 6.0.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Exploring PowerShell Fundamentals
6
Section 2: Working with Data
16
Section 3: Automating with PowerShell
19
Section 4: Extending PowerShell

Dynamic parameters

Dynamic parameters allow a developer to define the behavior of parameters when a function is run, rather than hardcoding that behavior in advance in a param block. Dynamic parameters can be used to overcome some of the limitations inherent in a param block. For example, it is possible to change the parameters presented by a command based on the value of another parameter. It is also possible to dynamically write validation, such as dynamically assigning a value for the ValidateSet attribute.

Dynamic parameters remain unpopular in the PowerShell community. They are relatively complex; that is, they are hard to define, and difficult to troubleshoot as they tend to silently fail rather than raising an error. Dynamic parameters have a named block: dynamicparam. If dynamicparam is used, the default blocks for a script or function cannot be used; all code must be...