Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches

by Don Jones, Jeffery Hicks

Summary Packed with hands-on labs to reinforce what you're learning, Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches is the best way to learn PowerShell scripting and toolmaking. Just set aside one hour a day—lunchtime would be perfect—for each self-contained lesson. You'll move quickly through core scripting concepts and start working on four real-world, practical tools. Each chapter adds more functionality, including custom formatting, error handling, parameterized input, input validation, help files and documentation, and more. About this Book You don't have to be a software developer to build PowerShell tools. With this book, a PowerShell user is a step away from becoming a proficient toolmaker. Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches is the best way to learn PowerShell scripting and toolmaking in just one hour a day. It's packed with hands-on labs to reinforce what you're learning. It's an easy-to-follow guide that covers core scripting concepts using four practical examples. Each chapter builds on the previous one as you add custom formatting, error handling, input validation, helpfiles, and more. Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book. What's Inside This book does not assume you are a programmer. Experience using PowerShell as a command-line interface is helpful but not required. About the Authors Don Jones is a PowerShell MVP, speaker, and trainer. Jeffery Hicks is a PowerShell MVP and an independent consultant, trainer, and author. Don and Jeff coauthored Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition (Manning 2012) and PowerShell in Depth (Manning 2013). Table of Contents

Genres: Programming, Technology, Technical, Computers

289 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 2012

About the author

Don Jones has written dozens and dozens of books and ebooks on information technology topics, and is perhaps most well-known in that space for his "Month of Lunches" series, published by Manning. Don's recently branched out into topics like business management, instructional design, and self-improvement/motivational, along with launching books in science fiction and fantasy. Don lives in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, is a huge fan of Disney Parks, and loves Figment best of all.

Reviews

[Peter Moy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devops is very trendy at the moment. One of the take-ways from this approach to system administration is that Microsoft Windows systems administrators should put their traditional GUI tool in the rubbish bin and only use verifiable, reproducible, scalable, auditable scripts to administer their systems. But which scripting language? I have always regarded Power Shell has yet another scripting language so why should I take the trouble to learn its intricacies when I already have scripting languages like python, PERL, Unix shell scrip and JavaScript available. Especially now that Microsoft have integrated bash into their operating systems user interface. But this was a mistake. These are all text based tools while Power Shell is a much more sophisticated, powerful and effective tool built around a rich set of objects. Now that I have spent my lunch times for the last month working my way through this book I have come the view that this tool should be at the centre of any devops process involving Windows hosts.

This book takes an excellent approach to aid you in picking up the knowledge and skills to allow you integrate this outstanding tool into your administrative processes. By spending an hour or so each day you gradually learn the different features of this product. This accords with the latest neural plasticity based research into learning which tells us that short regular sessions over an extended period of time are many times more effective than concentrated binge learning.

The early chapters introduce the Power Shell product and core components such as the Help system, the object pipeline, add in modules, the object model, Input and Output systems. This knowledge forms the base for the chapters that follow which expose the reader to other facilities such as remote execution, windows management instrumentation interface, scripting, error handling, security, debugging leading through to creating reusable “cmdlets”, functions and modules. At the end of the month of lunches, the reader will have very good understanding of the product.

But this book only really scratches the surfaces of Power Shells capabilities. The book only covers the features in Version 3 of the product. Later features such as Workflow and Desired State Configuration are not covered. However, the author provides an extensive set of references to additional resources that reader can use to research any feature they may need in depth.

I particularly liked the authors writing style and his many words of wisdom. For example, he suggests that if you find yourself writing long complex Power Shell scripts then you are probably making a mistake. This indicates that you have not understood the objects involved. You should be using the power of the object model to keep your scripts short and focused.

So, if you want to move to improve the quality and responsiveness of your system administration by using the principles and practices of devops on your Windows systems then you should consider Power Shell as key tool. And, if you want to increase your understanding of this tool, this book provides an excellent way to achieve this end.

[Kārlis Bergmanis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice expansion on scripting skills - when simple function automation is a breeze and your scripts are already being used by others and integrated in production environment, this will be next logical step. There is a lot of material on how to make really well-thought and built functions, then how to combine them into a modules, and, my favourite - how to add GUI in easy way. I had done most of the things listed there at some point or an another, but this helped to consolidate it all in better structured form.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great tutorial on creating PowerShell Functions.

The reason i scored it 3 stars is two fold:
1. I wanted to learn scripting (which I have in a round about way)
2. By chapter 11 the tasks set at then end of the chapters expect you to make use of concepts which haven’t been discussed nor taught (I’ve read the previous book too)

In any case, I practiced and persevered and finished the book. I’m much better with PowerShell as a result so thank you authors.

[Marco Janse · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best self study guides I've ever read. The chapter build-up, the practicalness of the content and the examples are superb.

But most of all, the follow-along examples and the lab exercises at the end of each chapter really made me feel I had learned something.

At the end of the book I felt ready to start building my own tools using PowerShell.

Now to put it all in to practice...

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not the newest book on PowerShell out, but it was still a good refresher as I am now getting back into PowerShell script devolvement. Good book.