In this blog post I will walk you through the simple steps to create a self request form using PowerShell and NODE.JS. As you guessed, I used the below packages to make my job easy.

1. Express
2. node-powershell
3. pug

Our goal is to deliver a form as illustrated below!

---

First Name:
Last Name:
Email:
Department:

---

Looks simple and clean which is more than enough for our demo. Let’s focus the steps to back fill information from Active Directory. The field values like First Name , Last Name, Email and Department will be back filled from Active Directory!

Get Started

Navigate to your desired location create a project root folder and in our case we created as xSelfServiceRequestForm and below that create views and scripts folder where views holds index and RequestForm landing pages named index.pug and RequestForm.pug respectively.  Place the PowerShell script file GetUserInformation.ps1 under scripts folder. The structure appears as illustrated below

xSelfServiceRequestForm

views

index.pug

RequestForm.pug

scripts

GetUserInformation.ps1

server.js

Install required packages

Now we are in the root folder i.e xSelfServiceRequestForm which is the correct location to start the project work.

PS C:\xSelfServiceRequestForm>npm init

Just follow the instructions and key in the required information which yields the package.json file in the root folder. Now, install all required packages in one using the below snippet

PS C:\xSelfServiceRequestForm>npm install express node-powershell pug -s

Which yields the package.json file as illustrated below.

{
  "name": "xSelfServiceRequestForm",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "Demo Node Application",
  "main": "server.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "start": "node server.js"
  },
  "author": "Chendrayan Venkatesan",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "body-parser": "^1.18.2",
    "express": "^4.16.3",
    "node-powershell": "^3.3.1",
    "pug": "^2.0.3"
  }
}

Let’s code

Open server.js and use the below code

var express = require('express'),
    bodyparser = require('body-parser'),
    app = express(),
    shell = require('node-powershell'),
    ps = new shell({
        executionPolicy: 'bypass',
        noProfile: true
    }),
    path = require('path');

app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'))
app.set('view engine', 'pug');
app.use(bodyparser.urlencoded({
    extended: false
}));
app.use(bodyparser.json())
app.get('/', function (request, response) {
    response.render('index', {
        title: "Node PowerShell"
    })
});

app.get('/SelfServiceRequestForm', function (request, response) {
    ps.addCommand('./scripts/GetUserInformation.ps1')
    ps.invoke().then(output => {
        var result = JSON.parse(output)
        response.render('RequestForm', {
            title: "Welcome",
            firstname: result['GivenName'],
            surname: result['SurName'],
            displayname: result['DisplayName'],
            mail: "ChenV@contoso.com",
        })
    })
})
app.listen(3000)
console.log("Your application is running on http://localhost:3000")

PUG File

The RequestForm.pug code appears as shown below

doctype html
head
    meta(charset='UTF-8')
    meta(name='viewport', content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0')
    meta(http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible', content='ie=edge')
    title Request Form 
p(align='right' style='color: blue') Welcome 
    b(style='color: blue') #{displayname}
h1(align='center') Employee Onboarding Form 
hr
form
    table
        tr
            td(align='right') First Name:
            td(align='left')
                input(type='text', name='first', value=firstname , readonly='true') 
        tr
            td(align='right') Last Name:
            td(align='left')
                input(type='text', name='last', value=surname, readonly='true') 
        tr
            td(align='right') Email:
            td(align='left')
                input(type='text', name='email' , value=mail, readonly='true')
        tr
            td(align='right') Department:
            td(align='left')
                input(type='text', name='department' , value=Department) 
        tr
            td(align='left')
                input(type='submit', name='Submit')
            td(align='right')
                input(type='reset', name='Clear')
hr
footer(align='center') Copyright © 2018 Chendrayan Venkatesan

PowerShell Code

It’s your choice to use AD module or ADSI module. But, I used a snippet as shown below

$adsi = [adsisearcher]::new()
$adsi.Filter = "(&(ObjectCategory=User)(samaccountname=$env:username))"
$results = $adsi.FindOne().Properties
$adsi.dispose()
[pscustomobject]@{
    GivenName   = $results['givenname'] -as [string]
    SurName     = $results['sn'] -as [string]
    DisplayName = $results['displayname'] -as [string]
} | ConvertTo-Json -Compress

Output

 

Welcome Chendrayan Venkatesan

Employee Onboarding Form

---

First Name:
Last Name:
Email:
Department:

---

Cool! It’s just a beginning and in my next blog I will explain the POST method in detail until then enjoy PowerShell. Follow me on twitter @ChendrayanV!