Windows PowerShell discussion with System Administrators and Developers: Feedback – ISE has no good Add-On’s. Many uses ISE Steroids which is an excellent add-on for PowerShell ISE. We do have script browser and analyzer now.

Comparing ISE with Visual Studio is not fair 🙂 Why do you want to do that? WMF 5.0 and it’s features are far better than earlier versions. So, indeed PowerShell ISE is also grown up 🙂

We don’t have commands to meet all our needs in Windows PowerShell so we create a function , Proxy Functions, Workflow, Class or modules for various needs. Similarly, we can create our own add on for ISE. Let us see a quick demo of it using Visual Studio 2013.

We can easily create this using with the available VSIX if not you can opt for WPF Control Library and create a add-on as required by adding Microsoft.PowerShell.GPowerShell. In this article we will make our job easy by using VSIX – Click to download .

Read the documentation and install the VSIX as required. Now, we will create a simple CustomAddon which will insert a code or some string into the current ISE file.

Open Visual Studio 2013 and choose Visual C# and select PowerShell ISE Add-on for VS2013. Name it as required! In our case I have named it as CustomAddOn as shown below

Now open up the UserControl1.xaml.cs code – Just double click it and the below will be the default code.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using Microsoft.PowerShell.Host.ISE;

namespace CustomAddOn
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interaction logic for UserControl1.xaml
    /// </summary>
    public partial class UserControl1 : IAddOnToolHostObject
    {
        public UserControl1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

     <strong>   public ObjectModelRoot HostObject
        {
            get
            {
                throw new NotImplementedException();
            }
            set
            {
                throw new NotImplementedException();
            }
        }</strong>
    }
}

Okay, we have the pseudo code – let’s do some modification and test the ISE add-on to insert a code or some string in ISE. To do that first we need to comment the below lines and just add get and set like shown below

public ObjectModelRoot HostObject
        {
            //get
            //{
            //    throw new NotImplementedException();
            //}
            //set
            //{
            //    throw new NotImplementedException();
            //}
            get;
            set;
        }

Now, it’s time for us to add the controls and code as required. For, testing let us add a button and trigger an event which inserts code or string in ISE current file.

So, I have added a button in XAML file and the code looks like below

<UserControl x:Class="CustomAddOn.UserControl1"
             xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" 
             xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" 
             mc:Ignorable="d" 
             d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="300">
    <Grid>
        <Button Content="Insert Code" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="32,57,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="215" RenderTransformOrigin="-0.846,-0.893" Name="code" Click="click_insert"/>

    </Grid>
</UserControl>

Just make a note – I have made the name of the button as code and created a click event but haven’t did any code for event firing. so, to do that we will jump back to CS file and code as given below.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using Microsoft.PowerShell.Host.ISE;

namespace CustomAddOn
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interaction logic for UserControl1.xaml
    /// </summary>
    public partial class UserControl1 : IAddOnToolHostObject
    {
        public UserControl1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void click_insert(object sender , RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            HostObject.CurrentFile.Editor.InsertText("Get-Service");
        }

        public ObjectModelRoot HostObject
        {
            //get
            //{
            //    throw new NotImplementedException();
            //}
            //set
            //{
            //    throw new NotImplementedException();
            //}
            get;
            set;
        }
    }
}

Do right click on the CustomAddon in solution explorer and Build your solution then spin up your PowerShell ISE and execute the below piece of code

Import-Module C:\Temp\CustomAddOn\CustomAddOn\bin\Debug\CustomAddOn.dll
$psISE.CurrentPowerShellTab.VerticalAddOnTools.Add("CustomAddOn" , [CustomAddOn.UserControl1] , $true)

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Tada! We have our Custom Add on in ISE

In PowerShell we can do the same using below one liner 🙂

That’s it for now ! We will see more WPF controls and building ISE Add-On’s using Visual Studio 2013!

Cheers! Enjoy PowerShell!