Book Image

Mastering PowerShell Scripting - Fourth Edition

By : Chris Dent

5 (1)

Book Image

Mastering PowerShell Scripting - Fourth Edition

5 (1)

By: Chris Dent

Overview of this book

PowerShell scripts offer a convenient way to automate various tasks, but working with them can be daunting. Mastering PowerShell Scripting takes away the fear and helps you navigate through PowerShell's capabilities.This extensively revised edition includes new chapters on debugging and troubleshooting and creating GUIs (online chapter). Learn the new features of PowerShell 7.1 by working with parameters, objects, and .NET classes from within PowerShell 7.1. This comprehensive guide starts with the basics before moving on to advanced topics, including asynchronous processing, desired state configuration, using more complex scripts and filters, debugging issues, and error-handling techniques. Explore how to efficiently manage substantial amounts of data and interact with other services using PowerShell 7.1. This book will help you to make the most of PowerShell's automation features, using different methods to parse data, manipulate regular expressions, and work with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Introduction to PowerShell

Introduction to PowerShell

What is PowerShell?

PowerShell editors

Command naming and discovery

Parameters, values, and parameter sets

Introduction to providers

Introduction to splatting

Experimental features

Free Chapter

Modules and Snap-Ins

Modules and Snap-Ins

Introducing modules

Finding and installing modules

PowerShellGet 3.0

PowerShell repositories

Working with Objects in PowerShell

Working with Objects in PowerShell

Enumerating and filtering

Selecting and sorting

Grouping and measuring

Importing, exporting, and converting

Operators

Arithmetic operators

Assignment operators

Comparison operators

Regular expression-based operators

Logical operators

Binary operators

Redirection operators

Other operators

Variables, Arrays, and Hashtables

Variables, Arrays, and Hashtables

Naming and creating variables

Objects assigned to variables

Variable commands

Variable provider

Scopes and variables

Types and type conversion

Lists, dictionaries, queues, and stacks

Conditional Statements and Loops

Conditional Statements and Loops

if, else, and elseif

Loops, break, and continue

Implicit Boolean

Working with .NET

Working with .NET

The using keyword

Type accelerators

Reflection in PowerShell

Strings, Numbers, and Dates

Strings, Numbers, and Dates

Manipulating strings

Converting strings

Manipulating numbers

Manipulating dates and times

Regular Expressions

Regular Expressions

Character classes

Look-ahead and look-behind

The .NET Regex type

Examples of regular expressions

Files, Folders, and the Registry

Files, Folders, and the Registry

Working with providers

Windows permissions

File catalog commands

Windows Management Instrumentation

Windows Management Instrumentation

Working with WMI

The WMI Query Language

WMI Type Accelerators

Working with HTML, XML, and JSON

Working with HTML, XML, and JSON

System.Xml.Linq

Web Requests and Web Services

Web Requests and Web Services

Technical requirements

Working with REST

Working with SOAP

Remoting and Remote Management

Remoting and Remote Management

Technical requirements

Remoting on Linux

Remoting over SSH

The double-hop problem

Just Enough Administration

Asynchronous Processing

Asynchronous Processing

Working with jobs

Reacting to events

Using runspaces and runspace pools

Graphical User Interfaces

Graphical User Interfaces

About Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Displaying the UI

Naming and locating elements

Handling events

Responsive interfaces

Scripts, Functions, and Script Blocks

Scripts, Functions, and Script Blocks

Capabilities of scripts, functions, and script blocks

Parameters and the param block

The CmdletBinding attribute

The Alias attribute

begin, process, end, and cleanup

Managing output

Working with long lines

Comment-based help

Parameters, Validation, and Dynamic Parameters

Parameters, Validation, and Dynamic Parameters

The Parameter attribute

Validating input

Defining parameter sets

Argument completers

Dynamic parameters

Classes and Enumerations

Classes and Enumerations

Defining an enumeration

Creating a class

Classes for parameters

Classes and DSC

Building Modules

Building Modules

Technical requirements

Creating a module

Publishing a module

Multi-file module layout

Initializing and removing modules

Testing

Technical requirements

Static analysis

Testing with Pester

Error Handling

Catching errors

Debugging and Troubleshooting

Debugging and Troubleshooting

Common problems

Debugging in the console

Debugging in Visual Studio Code

Other Books You May Enjoy

Other Books You May Enjoy

Index

Customer Reviews

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Testing with Pester

Pester is a framework for executing tests. It includes tools to define and execute test cases against anything that can be written in PowerShell.

This chapter focuses on Pester 5, the latest major release. Pester 5 is not installed by default; Windows ships with Pester 3.4. This pre-installed version can be ignored:

Install-Module Pester -Force -SkipPublisherCheck

The -SkipPublisherCheck parameter is required as Pester has changed maintainer since the version shipped with Windows was released. The certificate issued to the pre-installed version differs from the certificate issued to the current version.

You can use Pester to write tests for code and systems and everything in between. Pester is implemented as what is known as a Domain-Specific Language. It has specific functions that are implemented to behave like language keywords. For example, function is a language-specific keyword. Pester tests are written using PowerShell, but for the...