Get-PowerShell

I have been writing a script where, for all intents and purposes, I basically needed to be able to create a class. I wanted to be able to repeatedly create a new-object of a certain type that had a certain set of properties and methods. Even in PowerShell V2, there is still no "New-Class" cmdlet, but we can fake it well enough for practical purposes. That is at least for my practical purposes. There is a lot of information on the web about using Add-Member and essentially creating property bags as shown in the code below.

From here we get a PSObject with two properties, FirstColor and SecondColor. So what can we do for methods? The Add-Member cmdlet has a parameter called MemberType. In the example above, I used two NoteProperties. There are several other possibilities that can be used here as well. I would argue, the second most useful MemberType would be ScriptMethod. ScriptMethods have a name, just like a NoteProperty, and a value, but the value is of type [ScriptBlock].

One thing to be aware of when using ScriptMethods is the automatic variable $this. The $this variable refers to the current object. It is similar to the "this" keyword in C#. Probably the best way to explain is with an example. First I will build a ScriptBlock using a here string and call the [ScriptBlock]::Create() Method. Finally, the ScriptBlock can be added as a value for the new member that is called "ChangeFirstColor"

So now we have a method called ChangeFirstColor. Yes, we could just set the property to a new color, but suppose you wanted to put some logic and verification steps into it first. This is merely an example of what you could do. The other thing that is pretty cool is that ScriptMethods can take parameters. Notice I use the param statement in the ScriptBlock. You could also use $args but that drives me nuts and leads to confusion for the person that has to read code 6 months from now.

I have been writing a script where, for all intents and purposes, I basically needed to be able to create a class. I wanted to be able to repeatedly create a new-object of a certain type that had a certain set of properties and methods. Even in PowerShell V2, there is still no "New-Class" cmdlet, but we can fake it well enough for practical purposes. That is at least for my practical purposes. There is a lot of information on the web about using Add-Member and essentially creating property bags as shown in the code below.

From here we get a PSObject with two properties, FirstColor and SecondColor. So what can we do for methods? The Add-Member cmdlet has a parameter called MemberType. In the example above, I used two NoteProperties. There are several other possibilities that can be used here as well. I would argue, the second most useful MemberType would be ScriptMethod. ScriptMethods have a name, just like a NoteProperty, and a value, but the value is of type [ScriptBlock].

One thing to be aware of when using ScriptMethods is the automatic variable $this. The $this variable refers to the current object. It is similar to the "this" keyword in C#. Probably the best way to explain is with an example. First I will build a ScriptBlock using a here string and call the [ScriptBlock]::Create() Method. Finally, the ScriptBlock can be added as a value for the new member that is called "ChangeFirstColor"

So now we have a method called ChangeFirstColor. Yes, we could just set the property to a new color, but suppose you wanted to put some logic and verification steps into it first. This is merely an example of what you could do. The other thing that is pretty cool is that ScriptMethods can take parameters. Notice I use the param statement in the ScriptBlock. You could also use $args but that drives me nuts and leads to confusion for the person that has to read code 6 months from now.

Lee Holmes recently wrote a post on PowerShell Syntax Highlighting. I have been using Windows Live Writer for a while now and have used a variety of ways to post code snippets, functions, and scripts.

I really like the look and feel of Lee's output. Nice and clean, easy to copy and paste, line numbers and color coding. 

So of course I went and tried it using his script. I was able to copy and paste into word without a problem and get all the cool nice highlighting, but as soon as I tried to paste in Live Writer, it just pasted in what seemed to be raw text.

I went digging around and found an option in Live Writer called "Paste Special."

The default was "Thinned HTML."

Using "Keep Formatting" allowed me to paste in the code just as expected.

I guess the next task is to write a plug-in for Jame's Write-CommandBlogPost