Useful PowerShell ISE Snippets

Published October 15, 2014 by FoxDeploy

Hi guys,

One of the best features of the PowerShell ISE is the presence of Snippets, a great engine to fill in code-snippets for common tasks. I pretty much use this every single day!

Hit Control+J to display the snippet menu. You can hover over for more info and detailed syntax.

Making a new Snippet is kind of difficult though. I found this wonderful little snippet that allows you to easily create more snippets. I know. Snippets in Snippets? Not sure if it is more Ludacris or Inception though…

Rob the PowerShell DBA had this awesome snippet on his blog.

$snippet1 = @{
    Title = "New-Snippet";
    Description = "Create a New Snippet";
    Text = @"
`$snippet = @{
    Title = `"Put Title Here`";
    Description = `"Description Here`";
    Text = @`"
    Code in Here 
`"@
}
New-IseSnippet @snippet
"@
}
New-IseSnippet @snippet1 –Force

From <http://sqldbawithabeard.com/2014/09/09/powershell-snippets-a-great-learning-tool/>

What does it do? Well, after running this in the ISE, you can hit Control+J and bam, an easy to fill in form to create a nice new Snippet.

[] Snippets00 You’ll use this on a weekly basis!

Fill in the values and hit F5 to create the snippet.

I love this so much, here are a bunch of snippets I use everywhere.

Custom Objects using Try/Catch

I made a whole blog post about doing this. It’s now my go-to standard when making information gathering tools.

$snippet = @{
    Title = "Try/Catch/Custom Objects";
    Description = "A great way to get good streamlined output while Try/Catching";
    Text = @"
        try {`$a=Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ComputerSystem -ErrorAction Stop -ComputerName $name} 
   catch{`$a= [pscustomobject]@{Name=`$name;Domain="Access Denied"}}
   [pscustomobject]@{RUM_Name=`$name;ReplyName=`$a.Name;Domain=`$a.Domain} 
"@
}
New-IseSnippet @snippet

Quick PS Custom Object

Sometimes you just need to grab a bunch of info about a thing and make it a single object. Here’s how:

$snippet = @{
    Title = "Custom Object";
    Description = "I always forget how to do this!";
    Text = @"
       #Add more columns to the object by adding extra key/values
      [pscustomobject]@{Name=$name;Domain="Access Denied"}
"@
}
 
New-IseSnippet @snippet

Progress Bar within ForEach Loop

This looks easy but I would forget how to do it constantly.

$snippet = @{
    Title = "Write Progress Sample";
    Description = "Progress and how to do it";
    Text = @"
    #sample range of numbers
    `$users = (1..13000)
 
    #setting up base number
    `$i=0
     
    ForEach (`$user in `$users){
        #increment
        `$i++ 
 
        #Round the numbers up for a nice output and then Write-Progress
        Write-Progress -Activity "Processing `$user" -PercentComplete ((`$i/`$users.Count) * 100) -Status ("`$i out of " + `$users.Count +" completed "+[math]::Round(((`$i/`$users.Count) * 100),2) +" %")
        }
"@
}
New-IseSnippet @snippet

PowerShell V1 Custom Object Format

Sometimes you have to work on ancient systems and forget how to make old-school custom objects. Never again! This example is based on capturing the output of Get-MailboxStatistics within $mbx.

$snippet = @{
       Title = "PS 2.0 Custom Objects";
       Description = "Old Fashioned Custom Objects";
       Text = @"
       `$ObjectProperties = @{
Name = `$user
RecipientType=`$mbx.RecipientType
LastLoggedOnUserAccount=`$mbxstat.LastLoggedOnUserAccount
LastLogOffTime=`$mbxstat.LastLogOffTime
LastLogonTime=`$mbxstat.LastLogonTime
}
`$obj = New-Object PSObject -Property `$ObjectProperties
 
"@
   }
  New-IseSnippet @snippet6

Old-School Custom Objects using Try/Catch

A repeat of my first Custom Object loop, this time with Pre-V2 objects

$snippet = @{
    Title = "Old School try/catch custom object ";
    Description = "Using try/catch to create custom objects is a great way to capture information succinctly.  However, the [PSCustomObject] Accelerator/casting only work on PS 3 and up.  This example uses old school Items to get around that";
    Text = @"
    `$users | ForEach-Object { 
    `$name = `$_
    try {`$a=Get-mailbox `$name -erroraction Stop} 
   catch{   `$ObjectProperties = @{
        Name = `$name
        HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled="MBX Not Found"
        }
        `$a = New-Object PSObject -Property `$ObjectProperties}
 
 
       `$ObjectProperties = @{
            Name = `$name
            HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled=`$a.HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled
            }
        New-Object PSObject -Property `$ObjectProperties
   }
"@
}
New-IseSnippet @snippet

This is a shorty, but a useful one!

$snippet = @{
    Title = "Popup Message";
    Description = "Add a simple pop-up message";
    Text = @"
    `$msg = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
    `$msg.Popup("Hi Chris", 5, "DeadMau5", 48)
 
"@
}
New-IseSnippet @snippet

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