[DEV] Introduction to Windows PowerShell 2.0

So, at my last gig, I had a manager who sang the praises of PowerShell from the rooftops. I didn't get it. I really tried, but I just didn't get it.

Until just this week. I get it now. It's really honking powerful!

You see, I guess I was never in a situation where I could really take advantage of it before, and never really had the time to devote to looking into it with any sort of vigor. Recently however I've had a lot of need for automation and repeatability with some processes I have in place.

That being said, I looked at PowerShell again. I've come to love that which I did not understand.

So in the spirit of sharing and getting people involved, I give you a few links. These have been a boon in getting set up with the latest and greatest version of PowerShell, and getting the understanding needed to really harness it for what it can be used for.

First and foremost, the bits
You'll need to download and install the appropriate version of the Windows Management Framework Core.

The next thing you'll want to get installed is the PowerShell Community Extensions
These are a "useful set of additional cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for Windows PowerShell" So sayeth the website. ;)

These extensions add things like the ability to call into ADO for various things, add items into your MSMQ stacks, get and set environment variables, and many other useful things, not provided in the base set of PowerShell cmdlets.



Okay, great, so now you have the toolset installed. Now what?

Right, Never thought you'd ask. Okay, maybe I did. So here is the skinny. What do you want to do? Chances are, it can be done using PowerShell.


Here are a few things to get you going.

Microsoft's Scripting with PowerShell

Windows PowerShell Blog [MSDN]

PowerShell.com - The community for PowerShell people


Now that you have your feet wet, here are a few more links to keep you going.

Variables in PowerShell

Controlling Variable scope in PowerShell

Variables and the PowerShell Pipeline object

Debugging with PowerShell



For those of you who are playing along at home and are ready for more advanced topics, here is something that you all might find interesting. I know these helped me out a lot!

Fundamental Web Testing with Request/Response Testing using PowerShell

Using PowerShell to Post images to TwitPic
This one has some really great examples of how to deal with posting form data to web applications via PowerShell!

Anyway, I'll be posting more later on how to do some basic scripting with PowerShell soon. In the meantime, read up and later we can discuss. ;)

See ya then.