Category: Powershell

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz has a script for us:

We often encounter support cases where our customers leave the query execution timeout value at its default. In certain situations, we may find that when this value is reached, the application reports an error and does not continue. In this case, I would like to share an example implemented in PowerShell that allows incrementing the command timeout value up to 5 attempts, with a 5-second margin in each operation.

My recommendation here would be to use Polly instead, as it built in support for exponential backoff and more complex retry logic. Adam Driscoll has a Powershell wrapper called pspolly, which may also prove helpful.

Gianluca Sartori takes us through the process of signing our own executables:

Why does happen with some files and doesn’t happen with the Chrome installer or Acrobat reader? Because those setup kits are signed with a certificate from Google and Adobe, released by a certification authority that checks that Google is actually Google and not a disgruntled random guy pretending to be Google.

This means you can sign your code too, you just need to get a code signing certificate from a certification authority and they will be happy to give you one in exchange for money.

Click through for the step-by-step demonstration and a Powershell script to perform the signing.

Jeffery Hicks looks at an enumeration:

Earlier this Spring, I released a new function called Get-TypeMember. The function is in the PSScriptTools module. I wrote about that release here. This command is an alternative to Get-Member that includes more details. The other day I pushed a new version that makes it easier to identify properties that are enumerations.

Click through to see how it works.

Robert Cain starts a process:

As part of my ArcaneBooks Project I described how to use the OpenLibrary Simple API to get book data.

In that post I also showed a way to bring up the webpage for an ISBN. I had a thought, why not build a function to add to the module to do that? This way a user would have an easy way to compare the output of the web API call to what the site holds.

In this post I’ll describe how to use the Start-Process cmdlet to open a target webpage.

Read on for the code to do this.

Patrick Gruenauer sees which of these is not like the others:

In this short blog post, I will show you how to compare two PowerShell objects to find differences between them. I will also give you an example on how to create objects for testing purposes. Let’s dive in.

If you’re familiar with the diff command, you’ll have some idea here. One advantage to Compare-Object, however, is that Powershell is dealing with objects rather than strings, allowing for more complex comparison scenarios assuming your objects are set up for it.

Robert Cain teaches us about teaching others about something:

In my previous post, Fun With PowerShell – Authoring Help, I covered how to author comment based help for your functions.

In addition to help for your functions, it’s also possible to write about_ help. PowerShell itself contains many about topics for PowerShell itself.

These about topics are designed to provide further information for your users, information that may not fit into the confines of a functions help. These texts can be as long as you need.

I will say that the Powershell team nailed it with the way they implemented help.