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Using TAB Completion with CIM Commands

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One of the items that my PowerShell class this past week has noticed is that there is some TAB completion capability with Get-CIMInstance.  This is true for both the –NameSpace and –ClassName parameters. To use the TAB completion, just press space after the parameter and press TAB.  The list of Class Libraries are not loaded by default.  This means that the Shell/ISE may pause for loading when it comes to big namespaces like the default Root\CIMv2.  This pause will only be for the first usage in the current namespace.
Notice the ISE is loading after I pressed TAB.









To get a list of CIM cmdlets that support some type of TAB completion:
Function Find-TabCompletion
{
PAram ($String)

    # Set up the search string.
    $S = "*"+"$String"+"*"

    Get-Command -noun "$S" |
        Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name |
        ForEach-Object {
            $Obj = New-Object -TypeName psobject -Property @{
            Cmdlet = $Null
            Parameters = $Null
              }
            $String = $Null
            $Data = (Get-Help -Name $_ -Full).Parameters
            ForEach ($D in $Data.parameter)
            {
                If ($D.Description -match "You can use tab completion to browse")
                {
                    $String = $String + ", " + "$($D.Name)"
                }
            }
           
            # Write to the pipeline only if one of the
            # commands parameters has TAB completion in
            # its description.
            If ($String -ne $Null)
            {
                $Obj.Cmdlet = $_
                $Obj.Parameters = $String.Remove(0,1).Trim()
      
                Write-Output $Obj
            }
        }
}

Here is what it the output looks like when you look for TAB completion being listed in the CIM cmdlets’ help files:
Find-TabCompletion -String "CIM"

Cmdlet                    Parameters         
------                    ----------         
Get-CimAssociatedInstance Namespace          
Get-CimClass              ClassName, Namespace
Get-CimInstance           ClassName, Namespace
Invoke-CimMethod          ClassName, Namespace
New-CimInstance           ClassName, Namespace
Register-CimIndication... ClassName, Namespace
Remove-CimInstance        Namespace          
Set-CimInstance           Namespace          




You will get nothing for WMI. This is just another good reason to switch to the CIM cmdlets.





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