PowerShell Tutorial

If you know a little bit about Linux which provides a very rich command interface. Because of Linux rich command, Linux was a preferred platform for software developments. Windows was mostly used for UI based uses for non-development purposes. So finally to control all these issues Microsoft released PowerShell version 1 for the first time in 2006, the main goal of PowerShell was to provide command rich interface to developers where developers will be able to write scripts and automate various jobs. So initially they developed PowerShell for Windows only, but after version 6 it starts supporting macOS, Linux as well.

Why do we need to learn PowerShell?

In Windows, it has DOS cmd But if we need to do complex scripting and if we need to write any heavy scripts jobs than the existing cmd is not good enough. PowerShell allows developers on Windows to write a script with controlling one computer to multiple remote computers at once. DOS is just a shell where PowerShell is a powerful scripting language which is completely based on .NET and mostly used my administrator to handle Network and servers. On Windows, if you will use DOS as cmd than you will be only checking ipconfig and some basic things, whereas by learning PowerShell you will be a complete programmer. Because of its rich commands and object-based approach it is a powerful tool for scripting.

Below are some points why we should learn PowerShell.

Consistency:

The biggest benefit of PowerShell of the current version is that it is available for all Operating systems. For example, if you are developing on script on a computer X and after successfully tested your script on your computer X you can share your script with another person, who is going to run your script on his computer Y which will work perfectly from the version 6 because PowerShell is available for all OS ie. Windows, Linux, and macOS. So a script will work on different architecture as well. Other than Architecture, PowerShell also provides automation to administration tasks with better performance .

Interactive and scripting environments:

The Powershell of Windows Prompt gives us a very interactive tool to access the command-line interface for scripting.

Object orientation:

As it is totally written over the .NET it will give us a complete Object-based approach to implementation of it. So we are not just writing a command, it allows us to explore more.

Applications of PowerShell

For administrative management, it will be very useful with PowerShell admin can delete, add and update users. We transfer very heavy files from one computer to another computer to multiple network computers at once. If Admin has some task which he is going to run on a repetitive basis than admin can use PowerShell and create a script and put it into job cycles where it will run on given intervals.

Example

Suppose In PowerShell we want to see the process with name “nginx” and “node”.

Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Name –eq “nginx”}

Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Name –match “node”}

Prerequisites

You can install Powershell by MSI, and you should only need to learn the basics of programming like, if, for loops and variables and it’s available rich set of commands. Even if you do not know much programming you can directly start with PowerShell.

Target Audience

Developers: A developer can have requirements to develop a tool where he may change his data for a running application on a regular basis. For example, on any e-commerce website we wanted to show the best selling products. So the developer will write a script that will fetch data on a daily basis and update top-selling product details and that top selling products will be visible to end customers.

Administrator: Administrator can write a script for automation of updating, deleting and performing certain tasks on all the users on a regular basis to avoid repetition of the same tasks.