{"id":6989,"date":"2023-02-27T19:31:41","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T19:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/?p=6989"},"modified":"2023-02-27T19:32:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T19:32:51","slug":"powershell-confirm-and-whatif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/powershell\/powershell-confirm-and-whatif\/","title":{"rendered":"PowerShell Confirm and WhatIf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing a PowerShell script and I wanted to add some -WhatIf<\/code> capability to it. That’s basically where you can get the -WhatIf<\/code> option of the PowerShell cmdlets in your own script or function, without making that a parameter.<\/p>\n

That statement probably made no sense, so check out this<\/a> blog post whose problematic implementation patters show what I am talking about. You want to avoid using one of those problematic patterns, and the solution is to ShouldProcess<\/code>. That post is an amazing read (as are other posts by that author) so I won’t repeat. Suffice to say add the following line to the top of your script to get started:<\/p>\n

[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess, ConfirmImpact = 'Medium')]<\/pre>\n
Next, to support -WhatIf<\/code> I have to do something like this:<\/p>\n
if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess(\"The Target\", \"The Action\")) {\r\n  ...\r\n}<\/pre>\n
I enclose whatever I want to do that will either be done or not done depending on the -WhatIf<\/code> switch. And of course I can replace “The Target” and “The Action” with the output from other cmdlets. This will result in output like:<\/p>\n
What if: Performing the operation \"The Action\" on target \"The Target\"<\/pre>\n
The neat thing is this also gives you the -Confirm<\/code> switch for free. If I run the script with that switch I will be prompted:<\/p>\n
Confirm\r\nAre you sure you want to perform this action?\r\nPerforming the operation \"The Action\" on target \"The Target\".\r\n[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is \"Y\"):<\/pre>\n
Nice!<\/p>\n
For only confirmations but no WhatIf one can also use ShouldContinue:<\/p>\n
if ($PSCmdlet.Continue(\"The Target\", \"The Action\")) { \r\n   ... \r\n}<\/pre>\n
For more details also check out this exhaustive blog post<\/a>. Even Microsoft<\/a> docs point to it! Also this<\/a> for another example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Writing a PowerShell script and I wanted to add some -WhatIf capability to it. That’s basically where you can get the -WhatIf option of the PowerShell cmdlets in your own script or function, without making that a parameter. That statement probably made no sense, so check out this blog post whose problematic implementation patters show … Continue reading PowerShell Confirm and WhatIf<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6989"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6991,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions\/6991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rakhesh.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}