Introducing PoshWPF!

Introducing PoshWPF!

I’ve been working on PowerShell UIs for awhile now and have always copied and pasted code to show the UI and thread it. I decided to take my knowledge and publish a PowerShell module to make this process easier!

To install this module, simply run the code:

Install-Module PoshWPF

If you want to display a WPF window, design it in Visual Studio (use Community Edition if you don’t want to pay) and run the command:

New-WPFWindow -xaml $xaml

This will open the UI in a separate thread which will allow you to interact with it at the PowerShell prompt. Here’s a complete working example:

Import-Module PoshWPF
$xaml = @'
<Window x:Class="WpfApp1.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
        xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
        xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WpfApp1"
        mc:Ignorable="d"
        Title="My Window Title" Height="350" Width="525">
    <StackPanel>
        <Button Name="Button" Width="75" Height="30" Content="Button"/>
        <TextBox Name="TextBox"/>
    </StackPanel>
</Window>

'@

New-WPFWindow -xaml $xaml

If you notice, I didn’t even modify the Visual Studio XAML code to remove x:Class. The module will do that for you!

You’ll be able to interact with any named objects through the PowerShell prompt. If you want to view the properties of an object, simply run the command:

Get-WPFControl -ControlName 'Button'

And you’ll be given a hash of the properties. You are not returned the object, because if you try to edit it from another thread everything will crash.

If you would like to edit one of the controls, simply run the command:

Set-WPFControl -ControlName 'Button' -PropertyName 'Content' -Value 'NewValue'

If you want to subscribe to an event in the window, use the command:

New-WPFEvent -ControlName 'Button' -EventName 'Click' -Action { Write-Host 'Clicked!' }

When you click the button you’ll now see ‘Clicked’ in your host!

Lastly, if you’d like to do something more advanced in your UI window, you can use the command:

Invoke-WPFAction -Action { $Global:PoshWPFHashTable.WindowControls.Window_TextBox.Text = 'My New Text!!!' }

This command will add new text to the textbox! I could have done that with Set-WPFControl, but I wanted to show how you could interact with the UI in the other thread:

Please play around with the module and let me know what you think!