Once again, my PowerShell class gave me an idea on how to
make life easier. While exploring
objects in PowerShell, we very often need to go to MSDN to explore what the
properties of an object mean or how to use an objects methods. The process often goes like this:
1: Pipe the object to Get-Member.
2: Scroll to the top of the member information and get the
TypeName.
3: Copy the TypeName into memory.
4: Paste it into Bing and press enter.
5: Click the first link that pops up.
Well, I want to make a way to pipe an object to a cmdlet and
have it open my web browser to the MSDN page for that object. In reality, that was not hard unless the
object type was a WMI, CIM or MSFT object. So, it is time to do a little bit
more advanced stuff with PowerShell.
First of all, we need to get a BING account key. I need to thank Svendsen
Tech for their posting on how to get the Azure account and the code to get
the search information from BING. I’ve
incorporated their code into the cmdlet below.
For the $KEY variable, you will need to insert your own key.
Function Show-MSDNResource
{
[CmdletBinding()]
Param (
[parameter(Mandatory=$true,
ValueFromPipeline=$true)]
[PSObject]
$InputObject
)
BEGIN
{
$Object
= @() #
Creates a NULL array to hold potential multiple objects.
# BING
Account Key
$Key
= "<# Insert your BING key here #>"
$Base64KeyBytes
= [byte[]] [Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes("ignored:$Key")
$Base64Key
= [Convert]::ToBase64String($Base64KeyBytes)
function
Get-BingQuery {
param([string[]] $Query)
Add-Type
-Assembly System.Web
$Query
= '%27' + (($Query | %{ [Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode($_)
}) -join '+')
+ '%27'
#
Return the proper string.
$Query
}
} # END:
BEGIN
PROCESS
{
# Add
theTypeName of each object into the array.
$Object
+= ($InputObject
| Get-Member).TypeName
} #END:
PROCESS
END
{
If
($Object[0] -like "*/*")
{
#
Creates the query for CIM and MSFT objects
$Start
= 0
$End
= $Object[0].LastIndexOf('/')
Write-Verbose
"$Start --- $End"
$QueryString
= $Object[0].Remove($Start,$End+1)
}
ElseIf
($Object[0] -like "*\*")
{
#
Creates the query for WMI objects
$Start
= 0
$End
= $Object[0].LastIndexOf('\')
Write-Verbose
"$Start --- $End"
$QueryString
= $Object[0].Remove($Start,$End+1)
}
Else
{
#
Creates the query for .NET objects
$QueryString
= $Object[0]
}
Write-Verbose
"QueryString: $QueryString"
$QueryString
= Get-BingQuery
$QueryString
$Uri
= 'https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/Search/Web?$format=json&$top=3&Query='
+ $QueryString
$Results
= Invoke-RestMethod
-Uri $Uri -Headers @{ Authorization =
"Basic $Base64Key" }
$Path
= $Results.d.results[0].url
Write-Verbose
"Web page: $Path"
# Open
the default web browser to the web page.
Start-Process
-FilePath $Path
} # END: END
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Opens an MSDN page
for the object produced by a PowerShell cmdlet.
.DESCRIPTION
Opens an MSDN page
for the object produced by a PowerShell cmdlet.
If MSDN does not
have information on the object type, then the
default "We're
sorry, the page you requested cannot be found" page
will be displayed.
.PARAMETER InputObject
This is the object
that you want to find information on MSDN on.
You can pass it the
output of a cmdlet.
.EXAMPLE
Get-Service | Show-MSDNResource
This will open your default web browser to :
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController
.EXAMPLE
Show-MSDNResource -InputObject (Get-Service)
This will open your default web browser to :
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController
.EXAMPLE
"" | Show-MSDNResource -Verbose
Opens a web page to System.String
.EXAMPLE
123 | Show-MSDNResource -Verbose
Opens a web page to System.Int32
.NOTES
===============================================================================
== Cmdlet: Show-MSDNResource
==
== Author: Jason A. Yoder
==
== Company: MCTExpert of Arizona ==
== Date: September 12, 2016
==
== Copyright: All rights reserved. ==
== Version: 1.0.0.0
==
== Legal: The user assumes all responsibility and liability
for the usage of ==
== this PowerShell code.
MCTExpert of Arizona, Its officers, shareholders, ==
== owners, and their relatives are not liable for any
damages. As with all ==
== code, review it and understand it prior to usage. It is recommended that ==
== this code be fully tested and validated in a test
environment prior to ==
== usage in a production environment. ==
==
==
== Does this code make changes: NO ==
===============================================================================
#>
}
# END: Function Show-MSDNResource
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