DevInfra-US

PowerWPF: PowerShell WPF project template

2011-07-22T05:54:00.002-07:00

I've just posted PowerWPF at codeplex: http://PowerWPF.codeplex.com

The goal of this project is to ease the creation of WPF application for PowerShell people, that are absolute beginners in WPF development. We took care of all the PowerShell management functions (asynchronous calls, pipeline/runspace creation, etc...), leaving only the easiest way to call PowerShell engine and get its output. you just need to create your UI using Visual studio, either by drag n drop or by XAML code, add a few lines of C# code and you're done.

I'll post a tutorial in the coming days.

PowerWPF: PowerShell WPF project template

2011-07-22T05:54:00.001-07:00

I've just posted PowerWPF at codeplex: http://PowerWPF.codeplex.com

I'll post a tutorial in the coming days.

PoshBoard 4 Open Beta

2011-07-11T07:34:00.001-07:00

PoshBoard 4, our free modular web portal powered by PowerShell is now in Public Beta!

You can download it here: http://www.poshboard.com

Using PowerShell 2.0 from ASP.NET Part 1

2011-02-14T06:18:00.001-08:00

In this post, you’ll find a step-by-step guide on PowerShell 2.0 integration in an ASP.NET project.

I want to show you here the most basic sample possible, we’ll extend this in the following post on this subject.

This sample targets PowerShell 2.0 with IIS 7.0, but it should work on IIS 6.0. also. You can use an Express version of visual studio.

Ok, let’s get started !

Project setup

Open Visual Studio, choose File> New > Project

Choose Web Project > ASP.NET Web Application. Target any framework from 2.0 to 4.0 (this example was build targeting .NET 4.0)

Then we’ll add a reference to the PowerShell assembly called “System.Management.Automation”. Right click on References, choose “Add reference..”

Go to :

C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0

C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0

For a x86 OS.

Now we can start building our GUI.

Create the GUI

our GUI will be straight-forward : a textbox for PowerShell code, an execute button and a result textbox :

Here’s the ASP.NET code for our default.aspx page

          1: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="PowerShellCall._Default" %>        2:          3: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">        4:          5: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">        6: <head runat="server">        7:     <title></title>        8: </head>        9: <body>       10:         11:     <form id="form1" runat="server">       12:     <center>       13:         <div>       14:         <table>       15:             <tr><td><h1>PowerShell Test</h1></td></tr>       16:             <tr><td><h3>PowerShell Code</h3></td></tr>       17:         18:             <tr><td>       19:                 <asp:TextBox ID="PowerShellCodeBox" runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Width=700 Height=100></asp:TextBox>       20:             </td></tr>       21:         22:             <tr><td>       23:                 <asp:Button ID="ExecuteCode" runat="server" Text="Execute" Width=200 onclick="ExecuteCode_Click"        24:                      />       25:             </td></tr>       26:         27:             <tr><td><h3>Result</h3></td></tr>       28:                29:             <tr><td>       30:                 <asp:TextBox ID="ResultBox" TextMode="MultiLine" Width=700 Height=200 runat="server"></asp:TextBox>       31:             </td></tr>       32:         </table>       33:         </div>       34:     </center>       35:     </form>       36:         37: </body>       38: </html>

Our goal: when the user click on “Execute”, we want to launch the PowerShell code in the upper textbox and display script result on the bottom textbox.

Let’s have a look to the code behind of our default.aspx page.

Calling PowerShell 2.0 from Code-behind

As you can see on the aspx page, we have an “onclick” method on our button. You’ll find an onclick method defined in the .cs file that will be called when we click on the button (ExecuteCode_Click)

   1: protected void ExecuteCode_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)   2:         {   3:             // Clean the Result TextBox   4:             ResultBox.Text = string.Empty;   5:     6:             // Initialize PowerShell engine   7:             var shell = PowerShell.Create();   8:     9:             // Add the script to the PowerShell object  10:             shell.Commands.AddScript(PowerShellCodeBox.Text);  11:               12:             // Execute the script  13:             var results = shell.Invoke();  14:    15:             // display results, with BaseObject converted to string  16:             // Note : use |out-string for console-like output  17:             if (results.Count > 0)  18:             {  19:                 // We use a string builder ton create our result text  20:                 var builder = new StringBuilder();  21:                   22:                 foreach (var psObject in results)  23:                 {  24:                     // Convert the Base Object to a string and append it to the string builder.  25:                     // Add \r\n for line breaks  26:                     builder.Append(psObject.BaseObject.ToString() + "\r\n");  27:                 }  28:                   29:                 // Encode the string in HTML (prevent security issue with 'dangerous' caracters like < >  30:                 ResultBox.Text = Server.HtmlEncode(builder.ToString());  31:             }  32:    33:         }

Execution of PowerShell code is really simple in C#, we only need to follow these steps :

update : updated the code, we don't need runspace creation in this scenario, already available. (thanks to Oisin). Added string builder and html encoding to prevent security warning when displaying some characters.

1) Create a PowerShell Object

This object let us create pipeline, collect result /errors and so on.

2) Add the script

Here we add our script to our PowerShell object

3) Execute script

At last, we call the Invoke() Method to execute our command in a pipeline. This method returns a collection of PSObject.

4) Display result

Then, we browse this PSObject collection to display the result. Note that we call the “BaseObject” property of each PSObject, this property hold the original object that was decorated in the PSObject object.

That’s it ! now if you build this project, you should be able to display the result of your script in the result TextBox.

Now we’ll see how to publish this website, and how to specify a specific account for execution.

Website publication

Now that we have a working sample, we’ll publish this website in IIS and specify a custom identity for code execution.

Go to Build > Publish

Choose a target location (Inetpub/wwwroot is the default repository folder for IIS, but you can publish your website in any directory, as long as you set up access rights properly)

After that, open IIS management console, right click on the default web site and select “Add Application”

Note : you can also create a new website on your IIS server or delete the default website to create your own. Creating an application let you access your Website by it’s name like this : http://localhost/MyApplication

Gives a name to your application or website, then click “OK”

Now your application is ready, we’ll now choose a custom identity for our website. This identity will be used to execute your PowerShell scripts. There are many ways to set identity for a website, we’ll cover in this first post the most basic ones.

Anonymous authentication

This method is the easiest. We’ll define an anonymous authentication to our website, and choose a custom identity to run our commands. This is easy, but with severe drawbacks :

Anyone can access our website and will execute commands with the identity provided (we can mitigate this with specific access rights on the website folder, but this is clearly not the most secured method, you’re warned !)

Select your application, then click on the “Authentication” icon

Right click on “anonymous authentication” and select “Activate”, then Edit…

Choose “Specific "User”, click Set

Then fill your service account identity

That’s it : your code will be executed with this identity, regardless of the identity of the user.

Application Pool Identity

In more evolved scenarii, we can disable anonymous authentication and still use a custom identity for our website execution. This identity is set in an “Application Pool”.

Application Pools can be seen as an execution context for a website/web application (I make it short here), we won’t go in the details, but there’s many interesting features behind the application pool concept. One is to be able to set windows integrated authentication to authenticate user and use the application pool identity to run our code.

Note: we can set an Application pool and still use anonymous authentication, in the previous screen you have the option to use the application pool identity for your anonymous connection.

We’ll now setup our dedicated application pool for our test project.

First, double click on “Application Pools” in the IIS console, and select “Add Application Pool”

Name your application pool, choose the appropriate Framework and click “OK” (you can leave the managed pipeline mode as-is)

Select your application pool, click on the “Advanced Settings” menu

Select Identity and click on the “…” button

Choose “Custom Account”, click on “Set…”

Fill the form with your service account infos, then click ok.

Click on your website and choose “Basic Settings”

Click on “Select” and choose your new application pool

If everything went fine, you should be able to display the current service account identity :

source can be downloaded here :

In the next post, we’ll see how to authenticate our website users and use ASP.NET forms data to configure our PowerShell script.

2011-02-01T13:24:00.001-08:00

New PoshBoard website here

PoshBoard 3.0 Video @TechDays 2010

2010-04-06T13:25:00.001-07:00

Here's a video with a demo of PoshBoard 3.0, taken durin the French TechDays 2010 :

http://www.programmez.com/video.php?video=95&titre=Quelques-technologies-presentees-aux-TechDays-2010

Thanks to Programmez!, solutions logiciels ans SupInfo Web TV for this cool presentation !

PoshBoard at the WPC 2010 : help wanted !

2010-04-01T03:26:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

I would like to propose PoshBoard for a nomination at the next Windows Partner Conference in July. I'm looking for customer reference to support this proposal. If you like PoshBoard and uses it in production or test environments and got benefits from it, it would be very kind to send me a quick note on your PoshBoard usage and how it helps you improve your system management.

You can send me a mail at this address : poshboard[at]gmail.com

Thank you !

Silverlight 3.0 Multitouch PoshBoard demo !

2010-01-06T02:34:00.000-08:00

PoshBoard 3.0 will support Silverlight 3.0 multiTouch feature, and you'll be able to try it live at the next French MS TechDays in february.

Infos & vidéo here

PoshBoard 2.5 available

2009-12-09T13:46:00.000-08:00

New version of PoshBoard available, read this

PoshBoard in Get-Scripting PodCast

2009-10-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

I've made an interview with Alan and jonathan from Get-Scripting Podcast. Great guys, great meeting !

http://get-scripting.blogspot.com/2009/10/get-scripting-podcast-episode-13.html

Exclusive news about PoshBoard and future evolutions. Grab it now :)

Events management in PoshBoard 2 Part 1 published

2009-10-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

I've published an article on events management in PoshBoard 2.0

you can read it here

PoshBoard Out-PBChart and new PBDataGrid parameter

2009-10-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

A new article on the new PoshBoard 2.0 version is available here.

Out-PBChart, Out-PBChartSerie and new DataGrid parameter !

PoshBoard 2.0.1027 available

2009-10-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

What's new in this version ?

Update 2.0.1027 (9th October 2009)
[ADDED] “Dynamic Update” mode: when writing scripts, if Dynamic mode is set to off, the page isn't refreshed

in real time
[ADDED] KeyBoard shortcut for Dynamic Update mode: CTRL+U to enabled/disable this feature
[MODIFIED] Management layout
[ADDED] LiveUpdate settings for users in ConfigFile, you can manage this in the PoshBoard Configuration page
[MODIFIED] Default impersonation for SuperAdmins set to False
[ADDED] Two new buttons to Move Portals in list (Up/down)
[ADDED] New embedded Samples

Warning :

This new release add an attribute to users/groups in the config file. Older config file won't work with this version.

Simply Copy/paste your old script in the new config file, or add this attribute to every user/group :

LiveUpdate="True"

Example :
LiveUpdate="True" />

You can use CTRL+U ShortCut to Enable or Disable the fact that PoshBoard send your script to the WCF Service when you stop typing (cool when you doesn't type as fast as you want :) )

Enjoy

Now MVP PowerShell :)

2009-10-02T04:35:00.000-07:00

I was awarded MVP PowerShell !

A great news that confort me to continue working on this fabulous language and promote it as much as I can :)

PoshBoard 2.0 available !

2009-09-29T05:03:00.001-07:00

A major upgrade of PoshBoard is available : Informations and video preview here

PoshBoard Cmdlets Part 1

2009-06-18T04:27:00.001-07:00

The first part of the PoshBoard cmdlets tutorial is available here on poshboard.com

Poshboard PowerShell Snapin

2009-06-16T16:02:00.001-07:00

General Snapin and objects Architecture

Poshboard comes with a PowerShell Snapin with several cmdlets that generate PowerShell custom objects. These objects are then converted to Silverlight controls in Poshboard. The properties / methods used for these cmdlets are equivalent of Silverlight controls properties.

The logic of Silverlight objects is respected: you’ll find the corresponding properties of Silverlight controls in the PowerShell objects (It ease the learning process as you’ll find Silverlight sample on internet that you can convert to Poshboard PowerShell objects).

Note: not every Silverlight controls properties are available in Poshboard cmdlets, because they are not useful in the context of Poshboard (or due to a lack of time..). But the main idea was to keep the object model simple to understand. In the future, if some properties prove to be really needed, they will be added to the solution easely in future updates.

.NET developer that got previous experience on Silverlight development will also be able to rapidly develop PowerShell controls, as the logic is the same (but with the benefice of the Dynamic and model of PowerShell! )

Snapin relationship with PoshBoard and Silverlight

Poshboard use WCF to enable communicate between Silverlight clients (your web page) and the Poshboard server. PowerShell objects are created by the user scripts, and these objects are then converted to Silverlight control and dynamically added to the Silverlight GUI, along with the results of other PowerShell cmdlets (you can re use any kind of script that you already designed, or downloaded from internet)

Sample Architecture of Poshboard Silverlight conversion of Visifire charts

Snapin Installation

Installing the snapin is really simple, you don’t even need to have Poshboard installed to use it and to design your future Silverlight objects.

Copy the two Dll from the Snapin zip file in a directory of your server or workstataion (Example : c:\ressources)

Launch the following line in a console (with administrator privilege in Vista / Seven / W2K8) :

For x86 Systems:

c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\installutil.exe c:\ressources\poshboard.dll

For x64 systems:

c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\installutil.exe c:\ressources\poshboard.dll

You’re ready to script :

Open a PowerShell console, and type :

Add-PSSnapin poshboard

List all cmdlets

get-command *PB*

The Cmdlets

Here’s the list of these cmdlets:

Cmdlets	Description
New-PBAgDataGrid	Create a Silverlight DataGrid (based on DevExpress AgDataGrid control)
New-PBButton	Create a Silverlight Button
New-PBChart	Create a Silverlight Chart (based on Visifire Charts control)
New-PBComboBox	Create a Silverlight ComboBox
New-PBContainer	Create a Silverlight Grid (container for other controls)
New-PBDataSerie	Create a DataSerie (used for Charts)
New-PBElement	Create a blank Element
New-PBEvent	Create an event on a control
New-PBFlipBook	Create a FlipBook (based on SLMitsu Flip book control)
New-PBGridData	Create Data object for Datagrid
New-PBTextBlock	Create a Text Block control
New-PBTextBox	Create a TextBox control
Add-PBDataSerie	Add a DataSerie to a Chart object
Add-PBElement	Add an Element to a container
Add-PBEvent	Add an event to a control
Add-PBGridData	Add Grid data to a Datagrid

We will describe all these cmdlets and the corresponding controls in the next post.

Poshboard Beta 1 rev 3 available

2009-06-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

an updated version of the Beta 1 of Poshboard is available on codeplex here

Changelog :

[CHANGED] default widgets height to 400 px

[CHANGED] Widgets icons and order in add stuff menu

[ADDED] 3 new properties to Chart Widgets : AnimationEnabled and scrollerenabled for PBChart, LineTickness for PBDataSerie

AnimationEnabled can be set to true for animation (works only for "shot" update, play update disable this boolean)

ScrollerEnabled enable or disable the scroller in chart (now disable by default): if you disable this property, chart will "fit"

your current control (Datapoint bar/column... size will change dynamically)

LineTickness : change the tickness of line in charts (1 for smallest line)

[ADDED] 1 new property to Datagrid : ShowGroupPanel (Boolean)

Enable or disable the top group panel (for datagrid filtering)

[ADDED] FlipBook Widget

[ADDED] BlackLight Dashboard Widgets

Poshboard V1 Beta 1 Available Today !

2009-06-08T04:43:00.000-07:00

See presentation article here : http://www.poshboard.com/

Download the release here : http://poshboard.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=28457

Enjoy !

Poshboard v1 : Technical preview 1

2009-04-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

Poshboard v1 development is going well and the the first release should be available in june.

Several Beta will be available in the meantime, I will also publish "technical preview" videos before this release.

Here is a first video presenting you different topics (go fullscreen for HD) :

I'll present the following functionnalities :

1) "Live update" with WCF push server mode.

Poshboard now use the polling duplex feature of WCF that let us refresh dynamically script results in widgets (string output, charts, datagrids...).

2) Poshboard Tester widget

This widget use this push server mode et let you test your scripts. You'll see different examples and you'll discover a first preview of statistic mode.

3) Poshboard Powershell Snapin : Chart object

Poshboard will provide several PowerShell snapins to enhance the experience. This first series of cmdlets let you design and debug your charts widgets, and permit widget objet creation directly in a standard PowerShell console. Pipeline, objet visualization will ease the development process.

Feel free to share your feelings and suggestions on the Poshboard Forum ! Your feedback will help me finalize the portal ;)

Poshboard installation guide available for W2K8 - IIS7

2009-03-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

The installation guide of Poshboard on a Windows 2008 - IIS 7 server is available here on poshboard.com

PoshBoard Community website is open !

2009-03-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

After a bit of work and a dive in the CMS Matrix :

PoshBoard Website is now Open !

http://www.poshboard.com/

Forum, News, Videos, Tutorials, development survey... Everything related to PoshBoard will be there !

Have a visit and share with us !

Note : Site is multilingual English/French, Click on the proper icon above the main menu to select your favorite language.

PoshBoard 0.4.2 update (bugfix)

2009-03-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

I've just updated PoshBoard to 0.4.2 (bugfix release)

Bugs Fixed :

* modification of visifire.ps1 to handles long xAxis

* Source code lacked proper dll reference to several silverlight librairies

Source are now properly set up and you can build the project right after download

Project downsized (delete of unused debug in folders)

In order to use the AgDatagrid project, you need to download the source from DevExpress website.

Then, simply copy the file "C:\Program Files\Developer Express\Free Controls for Silverlight\Sources\DevExpress.Dll\DevExpress.AgDataGrid.v8.2.dll" to the "Components" folder of the solution

Download it here

Some infos on PoshBoard 0.4

2009-03-03T12:59:00.001-08:00

Edit : release has been updated (0.4.1) to add correction of Christopher. Thank you !

After several discussions with early poshboarders, here is some infos.

How to install the PoshBoard website

a Thread is open on this subject with usefull info on installation. The user guide will be updated soon, you can take the previous version here.

Refreshers

The two refreshers (the one on the Header and the widget) don’t have the same behavior.

Header Refresher

The Header refresher adds an URL parameter : /Default.aspx?Refresh=true

This parameter is checked in each widgets at Postback. If Refresh is true, scripts are launched. The “refresh enabled” button activate this parameter, the other button changes it to false.

edit : a bug is identified when you switch pages, this will be corrected soon.

The Refresher widget

Like a pack of beer, this widget is a simple thing, but it do it's job. This will be much improved in the V1. For now, it takes a small strings in CSV format :

SourceArg;TargetArg

This one create a session variable. As for the header, this session variable is checked when the widgets are reloaded on postback.

if the variable contains something, the widget try to change the the first arg with the second (yes, a basic replace). If nothing is found, nothing changes.

Example

Put this script in the PowerShellOutput widget :

gwmi Win32_logicalDisk –Filter “DriveType = 3” -ComputerName @MachineName@

In the Refresher widget, put :

@MachineName@;MYSERVER001

Important point : the original script (saved in the widget) isn’t modified. This permit to keep the original script and update the page with other parameters without changing sourceArg.

After the Page load, the Session variable is discarded brutally.

The final version of the Refresher will let you define more advanced refresher webforms / silverlight forms, more infos in the near future.

This conclude the first post about PoshBoard 0.4, more to come !

(like the fun story behind these strange variables generated for BlackLight/Flip book widget, filled with £,µ, ¤ or even §…)

PoshBoard 0.4 is out !

2009-03-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to tell you that you can now download the last version of PoshBoard 0.4

Here on codeplex.

Another good news : this is the last 0.x version of PoshBoard. Now we target the V1 !

Now that things are clear, there'll be a massive refactoring of the code to meet the objectives. A lot of things will be simplified/optimized in order to gives you an enjoyable experience.

But let's talk about this released version :

In this "0.4", you'll be able to test the new widgets based on Blacklight and Silverlight book control

It reintroduce the refresher widgets, and a new refresh feature in the header, to refresh (or not) all your script with a single click.

This is of course still beta and a lot of things aren't as smart as they could be, but you'll be able to see what V1 will be like and the way things are getting together.

I'll post several tutorial on this version and how to use it. You have sample scripts available on codeplex.

Enjoy !

fell free to comment this new release

PoshBoard 0.4 : webcast on the Techdays 2009 version

2009-02-20T01:25:00.001-08:00

Version française disponible ici

Here is the webcast of the PoshBoard 0.4 edition presented at the french Techdays 2009

PoshBoard 0.4 Techdays 2009 edition from Antoine Habert on Vimeo.

Important : Go FULLSCREEN and choose HD mode for a good experience !

Agenda :

1) a presentation of the basis of PoshBoard (01:23)

2) Demo on the classic controls (08:12)

3) PowerShell web service with WCF (12:59)

4) new widgets : blacklight, mitsu flipbook control (16:03)

5) the features envisionned for PoshBoard V1 (27:24)

Have fun !

Credits :

Dropthings : http://www.codeplex.com/dropthings

Visifire : http://www.visifire.com

BlackLight : http://www.codeplex.com/blacklight

Mitsu Flipbook control : http://www.codeplex.com/wpfbookcontrol

Silverlight 3D flip animation : http://joel.neubeck.net/2008/04/silverlight-3d-flip-animation/

DevExpress AgDatagrid : http://devexpress.com/Products/NET/Controls/Silverlight/Grid/

Poshboard 0.4 video available today

2009-02-19T03:55:00.000-08:00

Just a short notice to tell you that the webcast on the Techdays poshboard version is done !

Some video processing and upload on Vimeo is required, so this video should be available today.

edit : The webcast is available here

Back From Techdays 2009

2009-02-13T02:22:00.000-08:00

It was a real pleasure to present PoshBoard yesterday : Great room, great public, and nearly none "Demo Effect" bugs :)

You missed this event ?

You want to understand what was said without learning French ?

Don't want to wait for the Techdays webcast ?

You're definitevely Lucky !

I'll post next week an English webcast that present the last version of poshboard with the widgets presented at this Techdays Session. You'll see brand new silverlight widgets in action, learn what "PoshBoard V1" will be like, benefits of PowerShell webservices for Poshboard...

Don't miss this webcast and stay tuned to Devinfra-us !

Dashboard in Dashboard : Techdays, Blacklight, new PoshBoard version

2009-02-03T15:58:00.001-08:00

I’ll present next week a session on Powershell adn PoshBoard at the French Techdays 2009. I’ll talk about the last development of PoshBoard and new features.

More info here

What is scheduled ?

Creation from scratch of a dashboard page on Active Directory, Exchange and Windows 2008, in 10 minutes

PowerShell and webservices : how to use powershell directly from within Silverlight control in PoshBoard ?

New widgets based on the great Blacklight controls :

Yes, this is dashboard in dashboard :)

We’ll discover how to build the widget above in only 4 lines of PowerShell code.

This new version of poshboard will be available just after at codeplex, and several videos in english will be published on how to use, build and share widgets/pages with the coming PoshBoard 1.0 !

More news after the Techdays ;)

PoshBoard quick installation

2009-01-05T03:10:00.001-08:00

You'll find below the steps required to build and test Poshboard on a fresh OS (XP/Vista/2003/2008...) :

1) Install PowerShell here

2) Install Silverlight 2 Client here

3) Install Web developper Express 2008 SP1 with SQL EXPRESS 2008 options here

4) Install Silverlight tools here

5) Download and install AgDatagrid here

6) Download poshboard 0.3.5 or above here

7) Download visifire 2.05 or above, copy "SLVisifire.Charts.dll" and "visifire2.js" in the dropthings/xapfiles folder of poshboard here

8) Open the project in web developper express (poshboard/dropthings.sln), build and test !

PoshBoard v0.3.5 Released ! Compatible with Silverlight 2.0 Final

2008-12-30T06:12:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Here is my first good resolution for 2009 :

Releasing a new version of PoshBoard !

PoshBoard v0.3.5 is now available at codeplex just here

What's New ?

-PoshBoard is now fully compatible with silverlight 2.0 Final
-Updated to last version of AgDatagrid (December 2008 release) and visifire (2.0.5 Beta)
-BugFix in datagrid generation
-New edit feature for visifire charts : you can now select the type of charts and define Charts name in the Edit Section.

important : to draw a chart, you now need to pass one or several hashtables to the built-in "out-visifire" function

out-visifire($myHashTable)

out-visifire($myHashTable1,$MyHashTable2)

-The user guide is updated with last information to ease your installation : read it carefully

Another good news : great support for poshboard !

Jeffrey Snover (Creator of PowerShell) has posted two really cool articles about PoshBoard and HashTable generation on the PowerShell Team Blog : you can read them here and here.

Thank you Jeffrey for your support on this project !

Happy new Year to all of you !

New version of PoshBoard coming soon !

2008-11-19T07:45:00.001-08:00

Some news about PoshBaord :

Development is ongoing of course ! :), a bit delayed by professionnal constraints.

With the release of Silverlight 2.0 and upcoming Dropthings 1.8.0, a new version of PoshBoard will be available shortly :

So, what's coming ?

Update with Silverlight 2.0 and Dropthings 1.8.0, with addional features :

You'll be able to create dynamic widgets based on ironPyhon ! on the fly customisation with ironpython code or with a little gadget designer !
You'll be able to import and export custom widgets ! We'll be able to share widgets with the community
New widgets based on Silverlight control toolkits

Your inputs, suggestions are as always very usefull, please give me your feedback !

News coming soon, stay tuned.

PowerShellPlus Profesionnal for free ? listen to PowerScripting Podcast !

2008-09-10T02:24:00.000-07:00

There's always great news and tips in the PowerScripting Podcast, this time there's a great deal : if you follow the link provided in the 40th edition, you'll be able to get a FREE licence of PowerShellPlus !

Just on thing to do : go to PowerScripting Podcast site, listen to this great talk-show on PowerShell, and follow the link to PowerShellPlus Beta : once it's available, you'll get your free licence !

PoshBoard installation guide available

2008-08-26T15:55:00.001-07:00

A quick note to tell you that the Installation Guide for PoshBoard is now available here.

You'll learn step by step how to use the source with visual studio/web express and how to publish it on your server/workstation.

Update : now the user guide explains how to use every widgets !

PoshBoard 0.3 is out !

2008-08-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

Update : sources are now available at codeplex, user guide to follow...

Coding can be really, really fun ! all is getting nicely and I'm pleased to present you the version 0.3.0 of PoshBoard on Codeplex.

Download it here!

What's New ?

Based on Dropthings 1.7.0 : database is now included in the project, using SQL 2005 Express is now easy !
Added a Silverlight Datagrid widget
Added a DevExpress AgDatagrid widget (great open source silverlight control)
Added PowerShell standard output

What's missing ?

Well, a lot of things are coming ! first the source code.. but others widgets are ready to strike. I'm now working on cleaning up the code, making more error handling in PowerShell, Transform the Visifire PowerShell code...

...there's some nice surprises coming soon, stay tuned to my blog for more info !

How to use it ?

(Updated) now a user guide is available at codeplex ! Read it to learn how tu install/configure the website or Visual studio project (with visual and visual express), and how to use the widgets !

PoshBoard second video : Adding DataGrid to the mix !

2008-07-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

French version here

Here is a second video on PoshBoard, my open source IT web portal project. In this one you'll find some news on the upcoming 0.3 version of Poshboard (available here soon at codeplex) :

Launch and click on the HD icon, then go full screen (or click here where you can download it), I strongly recommend it cause my recording did some strange rescaling this time ! :)

PoshBoard 2nd video : new widgets, new Dropthings GUI... from pilosite on Vimeo.

What's up ?

New widgets

- Silverlight DataGrid : a direct path from Powershell to Silverlight 2 Datagrid
- AgDatagrid from Developper Express : see how good a pro Silverlight Datagrid can be (Oh, it's free and open source... Great !)
- PowerShell standard Output : launch PowerShell script and get console output.

New front-end :

Discover the brand new dropthings version used in PoshBoard : custom columns layouts in action, new GUI... Dropthings is definitely an impressive Ajax/ASP.NET project !

A tutorial is coming explaining everything about PoshBoard (how to install It ? prerequisite for publishing ? Visual Studio configuration ? )

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, and please don't hesitate to use Issue tracker / discussion in Codeplex to help me improve PoshBoard !

Hope you like this new one ;)

AgDatagrid and Silverlight Datagrid : how to build a dynamic datasource ?

2008-07-25T03:45:00.001-07:00

French version available HERE

Sample project is available just here.

Live Sample Below !

I'm working on AgDatagrid, a really cool open source and free silverlight control from DevExpress (see it in action here). Of course, my goal is to implement a Widget version for PowerShell Dashboard ;-)

I came across a little problem, and we got the same with standard silverlight Datagrid :

How to dynamically build the datagrid ?

AgDatagrid and Silverlight Datagrid use IList type to build the control Datasource. When using managed code (C# or VB.NET in silverlight development), you need to build a Class representing your data to build the IList :

        1: public class Person {      2:                 public string Name {      3:                      get;      4:                      set;      5:                 }      6:        7:                 public string City {      8:                      get;      9:                      set;     10:                 }     11:       12:                 public string State {     13:                      get;     14:                      set;     15:                 }     16:            }     17:       18: new Person() {     19: me = "Michael Jordan", City="Chicago", State="IL" },     20: new Person() {     21: me = "Kobe Bryant", City="Los Angeles", State="CA" },     22: new Person() {     23: me = "Shaquille O'Neil", City="Miami", State="FL" },     24: new Person() {     25: me = "Patrick Ewing", City="New York", State="NY" }    

  26:  

That's ok when you know what kind of data will be bound to the grid, but how to do this when you have dynamic content ?

I plan to use this grid to represent data coming from PowerShell... So I don't know how many column and type of Data I'll have to implement.

here is the point : I can't use a static class to define my Data in the Silverlight Control.

Game Over ?

Not Yet!

We could follow two path to achieve this :

Use Dynamic Language programming with Silverlight (ironPython,ironRuby, Managed JScript...) that let us build dynamically the control ?

Dynamically build the class in managed code ?

Using Dynamic language will be an elegant (and for me the best) way to do it. However, we're dealing with Beta version here, and it's not so easy to use external control and SL2B2 controls in this context (yet), so I won't explain it for now (waiting for the MS Silverlight Team to publish some samples on it ;) )

So, could we dynamically build the Class in our managed code ?

my answer is : YES !

How to generate typed objects dynamically

After some search (HEAVY search should I say), I just found this marvelous thread from Vladimir Bodurov on "how to generated dynamically typed objects in .NET :

http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/dynamically-generating--typed-objects-in-.net/

this is it ! Vladimir gives the magic code to build our objects that we could simply implement as a DataSource, without using static Class !

Ok, fine. Let's see now how I used it with AgDataGrid (You can very easily convert this to the standard Silverlight 2 Datagrid, but it's not as cool as DevExpress excellent grid :) )

Ok guys and girls, let's go into the code !

my sample projects is a very basic implementation of this solution in order to let you understand the where abouts.

my Page.Xaml is pretty simple :

I put 2 textbox (1 for Columns name, 1 for Datas), a button to build the grid, and the AgDatagrid. We could get Datas from outside, but it's another subject. let's keep it simple.

here is the code of the page.xaml :

   1: <UserControl x:Class="AgDatagridDynamicData.Page"      2:     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"       3:     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"       4:     xmlns:ag="clr-namespace:DevExpress.Windows.Controls;assembly=DevExpress.AgDataGrid.v8.2"      5:     xmlns:local="clr-namespace:AgDatagridDynamicData"      6:     Width="800" Height="600">      7:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="black">      8:         <Grid>      9:             <Grid.RowDefinitions>     10:                 <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>     11:                 <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>     12:                 <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>     13:                 <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>     14:             </Grid.RowDefinitions>     15:             <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>     16:                 <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>     17:                 <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>     18:             </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>     19:             <TextBlock Width="Auto" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Text="Columns (Parse with ';'):" />                     20:             <TextBox x:Name="ColumnsData" Background="blackSmoke" Width="500" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Text="Column1;Column2;Column3"></TextBox>     21:             <TextBlock Width="Auto" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0" Text="Data (Parse Row with '*', cells with ';' :" />     22:             <TextBox x:Name="CellsData" Background="blackSmoke" Width="500" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Text="DataA1;DataA2;DataA3*DataB1;DataB2;DataB3"></TextBox>       23:             <Button Click="Button_Click" Grid.Row="2" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Content="Generate AgDataGrid"></Button>     24:             <ag:AgDataGrid Width="800" Height="400" Grid.Row="3" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" AutoGenerateColumns="True" x:Name="mygrid">     25:                 </ag:AgDataGrid>     26:         </Grid>                27:     </Grid>     28: </UserControl>

All is in the page.xaml.cs, let's study it.

I only use data from the Textbox in the silverlight Control (you can pass data from another source, but we'll see that later in my PowerShell AGDatagrid widget for example).

I use simple text parsing to build the grid :

column are parsed with ";"
Datas are parsed with "*" for each row, and in each row I parsed the cell with ";"

Of course, using XML definition would be more powerfull, but I keep it simple for this example. For example :

Column :

Column1;Column2;Column3

Data :

DataA1;DataA2;DataA3*DataB1;DataB2;DataB3*DataC1;DataC2;DataC3

First, I put directly the DataSourceCreator Class of Vladimir in the Namespace of my control, without touching anything (this is what a call Magic Code)

After inserting the code to call the library used by Vladimir's class (using System.Reflection;, etc...), let's defined our main code :

Let's have a look at our main class (UserControl ) :

   1: public partial class Page : UserControl      2:     {      3:     string Columns;      4:     string Data;      5:         public Page()      6:         {      7:             InitializeComponent();                  8:         }      9:       10:         private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)     11:         {     12:       13:             mygrid.Columns.Clear();     14:             // Adding Columns to the AgDatagrid     15:             // With Column type added in the Columns string      16:             // we could use a Type checker and setting Column Type     17:             // from code behind :      18:             // mygrid.Columns.Add(new AgDataGridTextColumn() { FieldName = SingleColumn});       19:             Columns = ColumnsData.Text;     20:             Data = CellsData.Text;     21:             foreach (string SingleColumn in Columns.Split(';'))     22:             {                   23:                 mygrid.AddColumn(SingleColumn);     24:             }     25:       26:             // Here we set the DataSource with a direct call to the function of     27:             // Vladimir                 28:             mygrid.DataSource = GenerateData().ToDataSource();             29:         }

What is done here ?

Nothing special in the public Page() function : We only Initialize the component.

all is in my "Button_Click" function :

   1: private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)      2: {      3:        4:     mygrid.Columns.Clear();      5:     // Adding Columns to the AgDatagrid      6:     // With Column type added in the Columns string       7:     // we could use a Type checker and setting Column Type      8:     // from code behind :       9:     // mygrid.Columns.Add(new AgDataGridTextColumn() { FieldName = SingleColumn});       10:     Columns = ColumnsData.Text;     11:     Data = CellsData.Text;     12:     foreach (string SingleColumn in Columns.Split(';'))     13:     {                     14:         mygrid.AddColumn(SingleColumn);     15:     }     16:       17:     // Here we set the DataSource with a direct call to the function of     18:     // Vladimir                 19:     mygrid.DataSource = GenerateData().ToDataSource();             20: }

first I clear the grid (without It, my function will be an "Add to the grid", not a "build the grid from scratch")

Then We get the value of Columns and Data from the 2 textbox.

After this, we build the column :

   1: foreach (string SingleColumn in Columns.Split(';'))

   2: {

   3:     mygrid.Columns.Add(new AgDataGridTextColumn() { FieldName = SingleColumn });

   4: }

I generate only TextColumn type. We could define the column Type in the string and generate appropriate column type in the foreach, but I keep it simple here.

Then we set the Datasource:

   1: mygrid.DataSource = GenerateData().ToDataSource();

We call the GenerateData function in the class (I got it from Vladimir Code) :

   1: public IEnumerable<IDictionary> GenerateData()      2: {      3:     string[] dataSplit = Data.Split('*');      4:     int RowNumber = dataSplit.Count();      5:     string[] ColumnSplit = Columns.Split(';');      6:     int ColumnNumber = ColumnSplit.Count();      7:     for (var i = 0; i < RowNumber; i++)      8:     {      9:         string[] cellData = dataSplit[i].Split(';');     10:         var dict = new Dictionary<string, object>();     11:         for (var j = 0; j < ColumnNumber; j++)     12:         {     13:             dict[ColumnSplit[j]] = cellData[j];     14:         }     15:        yield return dict;                     16:     }                  17: }

The main things here is this :

We declare a new Dictionnary and build it with Key and value :

key is the column name, value is the cell value. Here I dynamically set the column : I just parse the Column strings and use each element as Dictionnary key (dict[ColumnSplit[j]].

that's all !

As you see, it's pretty easy to build my AgDatagrid dynamically.

To go further, you can use XML strings instead of CSV-like format, put the column type in the Column Strings... possibilities are Endless !

Thanks to Azret and the support Team from DevExpress for their help, and thanks to Vladimir Bodurov for this really cool Code snippet !

questions ? Feel free to put comments on this post.

HAVE FUN with Silverlight !

PoshBoard and DevInfra in the Last PowerShell Podcast (33)

2008-07-18T01:59:00.001-07:00

I'm pleased to tell you that Jonathan Walz & Hal Rottenberg from PowerScripting speak about PoshBoard and ASP.NET samples of my blog in the last PowerShell Podcast:

Episode 33 – Cage Match: PowerScripting vs. Quest

I'm really glad they like it, and I invite you to listen to this PodCast, It really worth it for many other reasons than poshboard ! :)

Poshboard preview available !

2008-07-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

People asked me a preview of Poshboard to play with it : so be it ! A preview is now available on codeplex here, or follow this link : http://www.codeplex.com/poshboard

PowerShell Dashboard : ASP.NET, Silverlight and PowerShell in a shaker !

2008-07-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

Update : People asked me a preview of Poshboard to play with it : so be it ! A preview is now available on codeplex here, or follow this link : http://www.codeplex.com/poshboard

Here's a little video of my "coming soon" open source project called "PowerShell Dashboard" (PoshBoard for friends). This project will be available soon on the open source forge of my company Octo Technology.

The goal of this project is to deliver modular web portal based on PowerShell. The idea is to use Web GUI like igoogle, PageFlakes or Netvibes, for IT Admin and infrastructure management.

This will let you easely build infrastructure dashboards without the need to code in ASP.NET / AJAX / C# or other compiled language :

All you need to know is scripting
All you need to have is imagination.
;)

This project is based on Dropthings, a great ASP.NET/AJAX open source project by Omar Al Zabir, turned to an intranet project.

For this first teaser, I show you a first widget to generate Silverlight charts directly fom PowerShell scripts. I've used Chart generation (Column, pie...) with the great Silverlight charting library VISIFIRE (free and open source too)

This first demonstation presents the general concept of the web portal. It'll be freely available in the coming weeks. Then I'll propose several componants and innovations that will let you have much fun with PowerShell development ! :)

Here is the vidéo :

PowerShell Dashboard Web Portal Presentation from pilosite on Vimeo.

This video is in the HD Ready Format (1280x720), I strongly recommand you to click on the HD icon after launching the video to see it in full resolution (you can then go to full screen).

You can also click here and select full screen. Last but not least, you can also directly download it from this link !

Oh, by the way, forgive my exotic english, hope you'll understand everything, I try to do my best ! :)

Questions ? Ideas ? you can contact me by mail by clicking here.

PowerShell and ASP.NET Part 3

2008-05-26T04:01:00.000-07:00

This is the third and last part of this little Tutorial on PowerShell and ASP.NET.

We will discuss about managing script from a webform and how to deploy this website on a IIS server.

Manage script

We saw previously how to execute PowerShell code from a Textbox. We will now learn how to manage on-the-fly changes on a prebuild PowerShell script.

This is a good method when you want, for example, create à provisioning or audit web portal. User won't write directly PowerShell code, but will fill a form that will then call a script with arguments.

To illustrate this, here is another example with a WMI request engine that takes a machine name as parameter. I slightly modified our former example : I added a Textbox to put a machine Name :

Let's see what changed in our code. Ny the way, not much things : We will now read a embbeded Script and modify is content before execution.

Here's the script added to the project :

$strComputer = "*ComputerName*"

get-wmiobject -class "Win32_LogicalDisk" -namespace "root\cimv2" -computername $strComputer where{$_.DriveType –eq 3}out-string

A classic PowerShell WMI request. As you can see, I put the Machine name as an argument on the first line. I gives an arbitrary name "*ComputerName*" that will let us replace it with the content of the Textbox.

Below is the modified code :

        // On the fly script modification before execution

        StreamReader objReader = new StreamReader(Server.MapPath("~/scripts/WmiAsset.ps1"));

        string strContent = objReader.ReadToEnd();

        strContent = strContent.Replace("*ComputerName*", TxtComputerName.Text);

        this.executePowerShellCode(strContent);

First thing, we will read the PowerShell script file. I put it in a subfolder called "Scripts". We use the SYSTEM.IO library to do this.

StreamReader objReader = new StreamReader(Server.MapPath("~/scripts/WmiAsset.ps1"));

Then we put this script in a string variable and close the StreamReader object:

string strContent = objReader.ReadToEnd();

Now, we call the replace method on this string. Our goal is to replace "*computername*" with the content of the Textbox.

strContent = strContent.Replace("*ComputerName*", TxtComputerName.Text);

The important thing here is to have unique name in the script when you want to do this change (here *computername* is used only once). This is easy to achieve, because you're the Writer of the POwerShell Code ;)

That's the deal, now we execute the PowerShell code as before :

this.executePowerShellCode(strContent);

Nothing really tricky here. If you need to modifiy your request engine, you only need to edit the .PS1 file, no C#/ASP.NET is required (this can be delegate to every administrator that got skills on PowerShell)

You can of course put several parameters in your web form. The limit is your imagination (and business needs, by the way). There's many little things to implement in order to have a "Profesionnal" powershell website (Error handler, better output support...), but you now have the bases to achieve this. Hope you got a better view of PowerShell/ASP.NET interaction.

To finish this tutorial, let's see how to publish the website on IIS.

WebSite deployment

Our main goal is to use a Service Account to execute tasks (here, our scripts). This simplify the rights management process and delegation, cause it's not necessary to gives administrator rights to every user of the website.

We only need to know the identity of the end user and filter website access.

The deployment strategy on IIS is :

First, Filter the website access. Just put appropriate rights on the website folder (put a user group on the folder with read access only).

On your IIS server, desactivate the anonymous access, and select "Integrated Windows Authentication"

Then create an application pool to delegate the server side code to a service Account. To do this, create a new application pool open it's properties and define "Identity" as shown below :

Finally, open your website properties and select the good application pool for it:

Modify your web.config to use impersonation. Go to the "Authentication mode" line of this file and add the following code :

        <authentication mode="Windows"/>

    <identity impersonate="true"/>

Here you go : your website now use impersonation and access is filtered by NTFS rights.

I hope this little tutorial gives you ideas and inspiration. I well come back soon with another concept with ASP.NET / PowerShell / AJAX and Silverlight !

Here is the source code : PowerShellASP2

PowerShell and ASP.NET Part 2

2008-05-26T01:47:00.000-07:00

Reminder : Source code of this sample is available here.

You need the following tools to use it :

WebDevelopper Express Edition

Ajax controls toolkit and library

We will now study this web site topology and codes.

WEB.CONFIG

We start with the easiest thing : our web.config

there's very few modifications : our first objective is to add assemblies references in our project, in order to create runspace and pipeline in the code-behind.

<assemblies>

    <add assembly="System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

    <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

    <add assembly="System.Data.DataSetExtensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

    <add assembly="System.Xml.Linq, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

    <add assembly="System.Management, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/>

    <add assembly="System.Management.Automation, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

</assemblies>

That's a cool start, now we will study the user interface !

DEFAULT.ASPX

You can do your design with simple drag and drop of controls (Textbox, Combox, etc...). This is pretty simple. There is a good ASP.NET tutorial here if you want to know more about it.

Let see what are the particularities of this example

UpdatePanel

In the first part of this tutorial, I told you that I used AJAX to :

· Manage a Timer

· Manage refresh of the Output Textbox.

In order to use AJAX extensions in our website project, you need to put a ScriptManager in the .aspx document (this will let you use other AJAX controls)

I put it at the beginning of the form :

<body>

    <form id="form1" runat="server">

    <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server">

    </asp:ScriptManager>

Next, here is the core interface (I bypass the top informations, not really needed):

<asp:TextBox ID="TxtPowerShellScript" runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Width="597px"

            Height="194px" BackColor="#012456" ForeColor="#EEEDF0" Wrap="False"></asp:TextBox>

        <br />

        <asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" runat="server">

            <ContentTemplate>

                <asp:Button ID="BtnExecuteScript" runat="server" Text="Launch Script" OnClick="BtnExecuteScript_Click" />

                <br />

                Output :

                <br />

                <asp:TextBox ID="TxtResult" runat="server" Height="199px" TextMode="MultiLine" Width="600px"

                    Wrap="False" BackColor="#012456" ForeColor="#EEEDF0"></asp:TextBox>

                <br />

                <asp:Timer ID="Timer1" runat="server" Enabled="False" Interval="100" OnTick="Timer1_Tick" />

            </ContentTemplate>

        </asp:UpdatePanel>

First element is our Input Textbox to write scripts :

<asp:TextBox ID="TxtPowerShellScript" runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Width="597px"

          Height="194px" BackColor="#012456" ForeColor="#EEEDF0" Wrap="False"></asp:TextBox>

Nothing special here, I just put some parameters like multiline suspport and colors to match PowerShell console.

Then there is the Execute button and the output Textbox. They are embbeded in a UpdatePanel Control. This control let us refresh only this elements without refreshing the whole page when we'll update content. You can see our Timer too :


<asp:Timer ID="Timer1" runat="server" Enabled="False" Interval="100" OnTick="Timer1_Tick" />

The Interval parameter (Interval="100") define the refresh rate (milliseconds), the OnTick (OnTick="Timer1_Tick") specify the function called in the code-behind when the Timer refresh. The Timer is desactivated by default (Enabled="False") in order to avoid useless charge on the serve. It's activated only when the Button is clicked.

That's all for the user interface. Except the UpdatePanel (which is only another control from the designer point of view), we are really on a classic webForm design. We will no study the Code-Behind part of the website.

DEFAULT.ASPX.CS

This is the C# Code that will manage our PowerShell execution and the update of the output Textbox.

Let's go from the beginning : At the very top of the code, I just add 3 more instances (all the others are generated by default when you create an asp.NET project website) :

using System.Management.Automation;

using System.Management.Automation.Runspaces;

using System.IO;

System.Management.Automation and .Runspaces are required to create the PowerShell runspace and the Pipeline. System.IO will be use to convert the Input Textbox content as you'll see later.

We'll then first create Runspace and Pipeline object at the beginning of the main class to expose them in all functions.

Runspace runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace();

Pipeline pipe;

We will now study the code, beginning from the user interaction : the Click on the Button. The function (line 85) is :

protected void BtnExecuteScript_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

    string strCurrentId = System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name;

    // Enable timer and disable button, clear TxtResult textbox

    this.Timer1.Enabled = true;

    this.BtnExecuteScript.Enabled = false;

    this.TxtResult.Text = "";

    // put the username at the beginning of the output (optional)

    Session["PowerTrace"] = "Initiateur de la demande : " + strCurrentID + "\r\n";

     // Gather script from the TxtPowerShellScript and convert it from html to clean text

    // then call executePowerShellCode function with the result

      string strContent = TxtPowerShellScript.Text;

    StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();

     Server.HtmlDecode(strContent, writer);

    this.executePowerShellCode(writer.ToString());

Let's see what happen. First, I create the strCurrentID string that will hold the current user name. This is not mandatory for our example, but this information is interesting to monitor our website activities.

When we'll deploy our site, it's a Service Account that will handle all the code execution. as we want (if it's not the case, you should!) monitor the Site Activities, it's important to know the name of the user who fired an action, in order to know who to blame if something goes wrong :)

System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name gives us this info.

Then we activate the Timer:

this.Timer1.Enabled = true;

We desactivate the button (to avoid unwanted launch of script while another is running):

this.BtnExecuteScript.Enabled = false;

And we reset the Output Textbox :

this.TxtResult.Text = "";

Then we will create our Session Variable that I called "PowerTrace". We feed it first with the name of the user :

Session["PowerTrace"] = "Initiateur de la demande : " + strCurrentID + "\r\n";

Let's go deeper on this point. All our problem here is to pass data from our code behind to the aspx controls (output textbox) when we refresh the page. As these 2 elements are isolated (each has its context : WebForm on the client side, codebehind on the server side), we need a way to put the output of our script in the Output Textbox.

There is several solutions, more or less smart (Create temporary textfile, add output as an URL element...). The Session VAriable is in our context the best and simple way to do this. This let you present datas to the user-side of the website that lives until the user session ends. Without this, when we refresh the page, every informations that are on the server side (variables from the codebehind) will be reset.

As the script output won't takes a lot of Memory and our website is targeted to be an intranet solution for administrators, this is a good choice, easy to setup.

The content of this variable will be exposed until the end of the user session. Now we'll gather the content of the Input Textbox :

string strContent = TxtPowerShellScript.Text;

Problem here : We are in an HTML Context, the content of the Textbox is in HTML format. This won't let us execute the code as is, cause unwanted informations are added ("\r\n" for carraige return...). We can't use this code with PowerShell like this.

We are lucky : there is a method that let us do just that : convert HTML string to standard text string. It's name is HTMLDECODE

This is this method that I use here : I create a StringWriter object (to build string), and use the HTMLDECODE method :

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()

Server.HtmlDecode(strContent, writer);

Then I call the ExecutePowerShellCode function to execute this code.

this.executePowerShellCode(writer.ToString());

Let's see what's inside this ExecutePowerShellCode function:

private void executePowerShellCode(string code)

    runspace.Open();

    pipe = runspace.CreatePipeline(code);

    pipe.Input.Close();

    // Call output_DataReady when data arrived in the pipe

    pipe.Output.DataReady += new EventHandler(Output_DataReady);

    // Call pipe_StateChanged

    pipe.StateChanged += new EventHandler<PipelineStateEventArgs>(pipe_StateChanged);

    pipe.InvokeAsync();

Nothing special, I use a really classic way to execute Powershell code async. You'll find many sample on internet that do just that.

We open a new runspace

runspace.Open();

Then we create a piepline in this runspace, with the code from the Input Textbox

pipe = runspace.CreatePipeline(code);

We close the Pipeline Input

pipe.Input.Close();

We then create a Event manager. It calls the "Output_Dataready" function when something appears in the pipeline output.

pipe.Output.DataReady += new EventHandler(Output_DataReady);

We create another Event manager. It calls the "pipe_StateChanged" function when the state of the pipeline Changed. Here, we test if the pipeline state is "Terminated", wich told us that the script ends. Then we will do some things, like activate the button again (we'll speak of that later)

Finally, we call the "InvokeAsync" method that will execute the pipeline asynchronously.

pipe.InvokeAsync();

Ok, now our code is waiting for activities from the pipeline. We'll now look at the functions "Output_Dataready" when data arrived at the pipeline output .

void Output_DataReady(object sender, EventArgs e)

    PipelineReader<PSObject> reader = (PipelineReader<PSObject>)sender;

    String strPowershellTrace = reader.Read().ToString();

    Session["PowerTrace"] += strPowershellTrace + "\r\n";

We first read the objects in the pipeline output and put it in a reader object :

PipelineReader<PSObject> reader = (PipelineReader<PSObject>)sender;

Then, we create a string variable wich get the output from the pipeline (script output)

String strPowershellTrace = reader.Read().ToString();

Finally, we add this variable in our Session Variable

Session["PowerTrace"] += strPowershellTrace + "\r\n";

As you can see, I add "\r\n" at the end to handle carriage return in HTML (this output will be in a HTML Textbox). To conclude this part on PowerShell code exectution, let's have a look on the last function when the pipeline state changes.

Here, we put a condition on the pipeline state : if the status is completed, we do some actions, else we do nothing (we only need for the example to test if our script execution is completed)

if (pipe.PipelineStateInfo.State == PipelineState.Completed)

…

So, what we do here ? First we close the runspace

Runspace.close();

Thens, while our Session Variable isn't null AND there's something in it (Number of caracters greater than zero), we don't do anything. We do this to let time for our Timer to write the Session Variable data in the Output Textbox. We'll see after how and why

while ((Session["PowerTrace"] != null) && (Session["PowerTrace"].ToString().Length > 0))

runspace.Close();

Our last task is to remove our Session variable and wait for another script :

Session.Remove("PowerTrace");

Let's study the Timer Function :

protected void Timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)

        if (Session["PowerTrace"] == null)

            this.BtnExecuteScript.Enabled = true;

            Timer1.Enabled = false;

            this.TxtResult.Text += "Fin du script";

        else

            String strPoshTrace = Session["PowerTrace"].ToString();

              this.TxtResult.Text += strPoshTrace;

            Session["PowerTrace"] = "";

This function is called every 100 ms in our case, regardless of the pipeline Events. Here is what we do :

If our Session Variable is null (this happens only after the "remove" in the "Pipe_StateChanged" function), we :

· Activate the button

· Deactivate the Timer

· Write "End of script" in the Output Textbox

this.BtnExecuteScript.Enabled = true;

Timer1.Enabled = false;
this.TxtResult.Text += "Fin du script";

Else we gather the Session variable content in a string

String strPoshTrace = Session["PowerTrace"].ToString();

We add it to the Output Textbox

this.TxtResult.Text += strPoshTrace;

And we empty the Session Variable

Session["PowerTrace"] = "";

Note that we don't remove the Session variable, this will valid the condition in our Pipe_StateChange :

while ((Session["PowerTrace"] != null) && (Session["PowerTrace"].ToString().Length > 0))

This is it, we've finished reviewing the sample code. We will talk in the third and last part of this tutorial about :

· How to manage PowerShell script from a Web Form

· How to deploy this site on a IIS server with appropriate security

PowerShell and ASP.NET Part 1

2008-05-20T02:54:00.000-07:00

Original French version available here

As you know, PowerShell let us create graphical interfaces with the .NET winforms. With it, we can build front end to manage our scripts. It's a really nice feature, and tools like AdminScriptEditor make it pretty easy.

I've been oftenly asked this question :

How could we integrate easely PowerShell scripting to a web site ?

This is really a good point, cause using a web portal instead of winforms brings many benefits :

No needs to install PowerShell and Snapins on every admin workstations in order to use scripts (I think about Active Directory provisioning, Support dashboard, virtual machines manager and so on...)

... in order to centralize and delegate administration easely

Filter acces and use of powershell in the company (everything is launched from the server and not from the workstation)

Tracability : from a single point, we know who did what (with appropriate logging), and could do a life-saving CTRL+Z on a innapropriate action

Can be embbeded in any entreprise web portal (Sharepoint/WSS for example)

This is a great story, however there's some drawbacks at first look for people who didn't put an hand on ASP.NET :

Developping with ASP.NET and C# is radically different from scripting

Samples of invocation method of PowerShell from C# seems difficult for Infrastructure people

We can do C# developpement to achieve result but ...

... we need to be lucky enough to have a "real" .NET developper at hand.

That's why I suggest you this first example of PowerShell/ASP.NET interaction that takes things from a different point of view, more "Infra-People compliant". To make it easier to understand, we will separate things :

ASP.NET and C# to manage only the user interface

Call PowerShell scripts directly (no C# block)
Establish a communication between PowerShell output and the web site to follow the progress

This let us use PowerShell as our process engine as usual (regular scripting)

As we'll see in this tutorial, the code is rather simple and the web site really light, but we will do pretty complex tasks by calling PowerShell. I won't make a ASP.NET tutorial, cause I'm not the best guy around to do this, and we'll only use basics to achieve our result.

However there's some unavoidable things to understand before going deeper in the code

Some bases on ASP.NET (for Infrastructure people)

To summarize intensely, you can look at a ASP.NET site as a HTML page that can call .NET code from a server, and not just the Browser/workstation.

Here's a example that will be our first project from this tutorial. Note that we can (and will do!) use the free version of Visual Studio for Web development: Visual Studio Web developper Express Edition, please download it. This version is really good for our needs and will let us do everything required for the entire development, so we won't hesitate.

The smallest possible ASP.NET site is composed of the following elements :

An ASP.NET page (Here : default.aspx) : Here we will find all the user interface definition of our project (Buttons, Dropdown list, Textboxes...). This is merely HTML / ASP.NET code. You can find javascript in other projects, but we won't use it for now.

A .CS file bind to the ASPX document (here : default.aspx.cs) : This file contains what is called the "Code-Behind". This is the server side code invoked by the asp.net site. This code is in a .NET language (C# or VB.NET). I'll use C# here cause it's easier to read and pretty close to PowerShell syntax.

web.config : This is the website configuration file. To makes things simple, we find in it the website config : Authentication Method, DLL invokation (like the ones used to call PowerShell), and so on...

Of course, Web developper express ease the process, everything is pre-build when you create a project. Before going deeper in the creation of the project, let me brief you with the strategy used to call scripts from our webform :

PowerShell interaction strategy

The following diagram presents the strategy used in this first example of PowerShell calling from ASP.NET. This is what we'll discuss in the second part of this tutorial :

Our first website is composed of 2 Textbox (one for script input, one for script output) and an "Execute" Button. That's all, as you can see, my first user interface is pretty basic.

The mecanism isn't too diffifcult to understand. We will go in the details in the Part 2 of this tutorial, but here's the resume :

When we fire "Launch Script", let's talk about what happen :

We activate the Timer (1), we'll come back on this after, but let say for the moment that this control execute some code at a certain rate (for example every second).

In the meantime, the code-Behind launch a PowerShell runspace and initialize a pipeline asyncrhonously. It read the first textbox, and execute it in the pipeline (2).

Every seconds, our Timer check the pipeline output (3), and write what it found in a special variable called "Session variable" (4) (we'll see why in the second part of the tutorial)

We refresh the output Textbox with the content of the Session Variable (5). The timer is activated until the end of the script in the pipeline (6).

Using a Timer let us have a near-realtime view of the script output (every seconds). Please note that a script used in this context isn't forced to have output : As every PowerShell script, many things can happen without any console output, so please be carefull with what you code here ;)

I keep all the code really simple to let you identify every functions more easely. We will improve it later.

We use some AJAX functionnality in this example. The Timer is a ASP.NET ajax control, we use an UpdatePanel too that let us refresh the output textbox without refreshing the entire document. Using this kind of Ajax control in ASP.NET with web developper Express is really easy (as simple as using every classic control like Textbox). We don't need to do any Javascript and XML here, you'll see that in the 2nd part of this tutorial.

For the moment, you can test this site. Open the attached project in Web developper Express. Launch it and you'll have this page :

Enter your script in the upper Textbox, launch it with the button, you'll see the result in the bottom Textbox.

Note : The script is run from the server side (if you test locally, your workstation will do the job). Note that we retrieve the "object" output of PowerShell : that's why I use in this example the "out-string" cmdlet to grab an output similar to what you see in the standard PowerShell console. Do some test, you'll see that you get objects in the output Textbox.

You can of course launche every kind of PowerShell commands and scripts, so be carefull ! :). This site is really lite to let you understand the code : I didn't put any error control or script management, nor advanced user interface.

We'll see in the second part the details of every element and code of this website, we'll see how to manage a script from Form controls, and advice regarding security.

Here is the source : PowerShellASP.zip , feel free to ask questions in the comments below !

PowerShell mindmap with Silverlight

2008-04-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

Michael S. Scherotter gives us on his synergist blog an application that convert MindManager mindmap to Silverlight.

This is really fun to play with, and it gives inspiration on how to bind Silverlight to our day to day work with Infrastructure developpement ! :)

To illustrate this, I've inserted below a Silverlight Control with my personnal bookmarks about PowerShell. Blogger main frame isn't really wide, so please use the "Full screen" button to have a better look at this control. Notes are in French, I'll translate them soon. Links are all operational.

Have fun with Silverlight !

SCCM and PowerShell Part 2

2008-04-08T01:46:00.001-07:00

SCCM and PowerShell Part 2

Add Computer to a specific collection

Ok, our computer is in SCCM, let see how to add it in a specific collection. What told the SDK ? the VBScript sample is :

' Add the computer to the all systems collection.
set collection = connection.Get("SMS_Collection.CollectionID='SMS00001'")
set collectionRule=connection.Get("SMS_CollectionRuleDirect").SpawnInstance_
collectionRule.ResourceClassName="SMS_R_System"
collectionRule.ResourceID= outParams.ResourceID
collection.AddMembershipRule collectionRule

We can reorganize the code as shown below to ease our understanding of the process :

set collectionRule=connection.Get("SMS_CollectionRuleDirect").SpawnInstance_ collectionRule.ResourceClassName="SMS_R_System" collectionRule.ResourceID= outParams.ResourceID

set collection = connection.Get("SMS_Collection.CollectionID='SMS00001'")
collection.AddMembershipRule collectionRule

This sample is about "All Systems" Collection, however this collection isn't really usefull because, as we saw in the previous part of this tutorial, when you add a computer in SCCM, it is added by default in this collection. But this example shows us usefull elements: we know that we need to create an "SMS_CollectionRuleDirect", fills some parameters, then invoke the Method "AddMemberShipRule" with this object as a parameter.

Let's go slowy, step by step...

Create an object from the SMS_CollectionRuleDirect class

With PowerShell, we can initialise an instance of a WMI like this :

$objColRuledirect = [WmiClass]"\\$Computer\ROOT\SMS\site_001:SMS_CollectionRuleDirect"

You can see the properties of this object with the psbase.properties :

In the SDK, we learned that 2 properties has to be filled :

ResourceClassName with value "SMS_R_System"
ResourceID with the ResourceID property of the computer object that we build in Part 1

So with PowerShell :

$objColRuleDirect.psbase.properties["ResourceClassName"].value = "SMS_R_System"
$objColRuleDirect.psbase.properties["ResourceID"].value = $objCMComputer.resourceID

As you can see below, the CollectionRuleDirect is now properly set with the ResourceID of the $objCMComputer (same as sample of Part 1) :

We need now to use this object with the AddMemberShipRule method

How to use the AddMemberShipRule Method of the SMS_Collection class

When we say "WMI Method", we call WmiExplorer in order to have à "pre-build" script sample :

What we see here is that we need the ID of the target collection. We have 2 options :

Using Hard-Coded Collection ID found in the SCCM console (smart)
Determine this ID with, for example, a collection Name (Smarter)

We are smart people, we will determine this ID with PowerShell!

It's really easy, just create a "classic" connexion to the SMS_Collection class, and filter it with our target collection name (in my example : "PowerShell Collection")

$Collection = gwmi -computer $computer -namespace "root\sms\site_001" -class "SMS_Collection" $PoshCollec = $collectionwhere{$_.Name -eq "PowerShell Collection"}

No difficult at all ! the last thing to do is adapt the WmiExplorer sample with the collectionID of this object, and use our previously build CollectionRuleDirect object :

$Class = "SMS_Collection"
$Method = "AddMembershipRule"
$CollectionID = $PoshCollec.CollectionID
$filter="CollectionID = '$CollectionID'"
$MC = Get-WmiObject $class -computer $Computer -Namespace "ROOT\SMS\site_001" -filter $filter
$InParams = $mc.psbase.GetMethodParameters($Method)
$InParams.collectionRule = $MCCollectionRuledirect
$inparams.PSBase.properties select name,Value Format-Table
$R = $mc.PSBase.InvokeMethod($Method, $inParams, $Null)

Work done : our computer is now in the "PowerShell Collection" collection.

With some R&D, and with a good understanding of these different examples, you are now able to create many kinds of PowerShell scripts with SCCM. Note that nearly all this samples can be used with SMS too !

Hope this helps you SCCM people, have a Ctrl+C below for a complete PowerShell sample script :

**************************************************************************

## Name : Add Computer to Collection SCCM PowerShell script
## Author : Antoine Habert devinfra@gmail.com

### Variables
$strTargetMac = "0A:0B:0C:0D:0E:0F"
$strTargetComputerAccount = "NomDeMachine"
$computer = "."
$strTargetCollection = "La collection cible"

# Create computer in SCCM
$Class = "SMS_Site"
$Method = "ImportMachineEntry"
$MC = [WmiClass]"\\$Computer\ROOT\SMS\site_001:$Class"
$InParams = $mc.psbase.GetMethodParameters($Method)
$InParams.MACAddress = $strTargetMac
$InParams.NetbiosName = $strTargetComputerAccount
$InParams.OverwriteExistingRecord = $true
$inparams.PSBase.properties select name,Value Format-Table
$objCMComputer = $mc.PSBase.InvokeMethod($Method, $inParams, $Null)

# Create Collection Rule Direct
$objColRuledirect = [WmiClass]"\\$Computer\ROOT\SMS\site_001:SMS_CollectionRuleDirect"
$objColRuleDirect.psbase.properties["ResourceClassName"].value = "SMS_R_System"
$objColRuleDirect.psbase.properties["ResourceID"].value = $objCMComputer.resourceID

# Target Collection connection
$Collection = gwmi -computer $computer -namespace "root\sms\site_001" -class "SMS_Collection"
$PoshCollec = $collectionwhere{$_.Name -eq $strTargetCollection}

# Add Computer to Target Collection
$Class = "SMS_Collection"
$Method = "AddMembershipRule"
$CollectionID = $PoshCollec.CollectionID
$filter="CollectionID = '$CollectionID'"
$MC = Get-WmiObject $class -computer $Computer -Namespace "ROOT\SMS\site_001" -filter $filter
$InParams = $mc.psbase.GetMethodParameters($Method)
$InParams.collectionRule = $MCCollectionRuledirect
$inparams.PSBase.properties select name,Value Format-Table
$R = $mc.PSBase.InvokeMethod($Method, $inParams, $Null)

**************************************************************************

SCCM and PowerShell Part 1

2008-04-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

SCCM and PowerShell (Part 1)

Introduction

SCVMM and Exchange 2007 provide native cmdlets. SCCM doesn't, but does provide (nearly) everything with WMI. Let see how to use classes, methods and properties of SCCM with PowerShell.

Before we begin

To ease your life, 2 downloads are required :

First, Download SCCM SDK here

Download MoW WMi Explorer that will help you buil SCCM Powershell code

Our First Script

There's some subtleties to know in order to use WMI methods exposed by SCCM with PowerShell.

Let first discover SCCM namespaces. Launch wmiexplorer.ps1 on your SCCM server :

The "ROOT\SMS" namespace is available, under it you'll see "ROOT\SMS\inv_schema" that we bypass for now, and another namespace called "ROOT\SMS\Site_NameOfSite"

DoubleClick on a Site namespace to list the classes

570 (!) classes will appear in the bottom left listbox. Yes, that's quite a lot, but take it cool because we will filter our search pretty easely as our needs arise.

For our first example, we will build a script that add a computer in a collection. Our first step is to look at the SDK chm file to find the proper class to do this task.

Here we see on the right side that, in order to add a computer, we should use the ImportMachineEntry classe of "SMS_Site" namespace. The SDK usually shows VB/C#/VBScript samples. The PowerShell syntax differs from this langage, but this doesn't really matters for our PowerShelled mind : we use the SDK only to know wich Methods/properties we need yo use.

In the VBscript sample of this SDK tip, we see that we need to use a "Connection.get" function to instance the class, then a SpawnInstance of the method, to finally add the required parameters (Mac Address, NetBiosName...). At last, we use ExecMethod to launch the process.

' Connect
Set siteClass = connection.Get("SMS_Site")
Set inParams = siteClass.Methods_("ImportMachineEntry"). _
inParameters.SpawnInstance_()

' Add the input parameters.
inParams.Properties_.Item("MACAddress") = macAddress
inParams.Properties_.Item("NetbiosName") = netBiosName
inParams.Properties_.Item("OverwriteExistingRecord") = False
inParams.Properties_.Item("SMBIOSGUID") = smBiosGuid

' Add the computer
Set outParams = connection.ExecMethod("SMS_Site", "ImportMachineEntry", inParams)

Here comes the real deal

How to do the same with PowerShell ?

Let use MoW's WmiExplorer to get our answer :

Double Click on the SMS_Site Class to list all properties and methods of the class. You'll see on the right panel that there's a Method called "ImportMachineEntry"

Now Double Click on this Method. Mow's WmiExplorer is a smart tool : it buil dynamically PowerShell sample to use the method as shown below :

Last but not least, it enumerate the different parameters of the script and the variable type (String, Boolean...)... Our remaining job is to populate these variables with appropriate values :

MacAddress (MAC Address of the target computer)

NetbiosName
...

Let's get more in details in this script to understand the invocation process in PowerShell :

When we create a connection to the SMS_Site class and we display as shown above the $mc object, we only got "SMS_Site" in the console

If we use get-membere, we see that there isn't any "ImportMachineEntry" method here. This is due to the specific object output formatting of PowerShell. In order to access properties and methods of this class, we need to use the PSBASE method to have a "RAW" access on this object (more information on PSBASE here ) :

As we can see, $mc.psbase brings Methods and Properties. Now list methods :

We got here our "ImportMachineEntry" method. In the VBSCript sample in the SDK, they told us to use SpawnInstance to define parameters for this method :

Set inParams = siteClass.Methods_("ImportMachineEntry"). _
inParameters.SpawnInstance_()

inParams.Properties_.Item("MACAddress") = macAddress
inParams.Properties_.Item("NetbiosName") = netBiosName
inParams.Properties_.Item("OverwriteExistingRecord") = False
inParams.Properties_.Item("SMBIOSGUID") = smBiosGuid

To do the same thing in PowerShell, have a look at the Mow generated script :

$InParams = $mc.psbase.GetMethodParameters(“ImportMachineEntry”)

$InParams.MACAddress = [string]
$InParams.NetbiosName = [string]
$InParams.OverwriteExistingRecord = [boolean]
$InParams.SMBIOSGUID = [string]

As you can see, the code is rather simple : this example just do the same thing.

Have a more indepth look at the $inParams members :

We see here our 4 properties : MacAddress, NetbiosName, OverwriteExistingRecord and SMBIOSGUID, all empty. Notice that each properties Types are exposed in the definition column, and that they are all Read/Write (get;Set)

Great ! know let's write values for 3 of our properties (we don't need MSBIOSGUID if MacAddress is filled... XP is the key to discover this kind of funny details :) )

Sorting the Output of $Inparams, we see that our object's properties aren't empty anymore.

Now we need to execute our Method with the parameters. The VBScript sample said :

Set outParams = connection.ExecMethod("SMS_Site", "ImportMachineEntry", inParams)

With Powershell, Execution is handled as shown in the MoW Example :

$mc.PSBase.InvokeMethod($Method, $inParams, $Null)

Here we are ! Our Computer is properly import in SCCM. For now, only in the "All Systems" collection.

The next step in the SDK is to add this machine to a specific collection. We will explain this in the Part 2 of this discussion.

You know now how to identify the class, method and properties to accomplish SCCM task in the SDK, and convert them in PowerShell. Have Fun !

Introduction

2008-04-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Hi !

I'll post here the translation of my french posts on devinfra.blogger.com. We will talk here about PowerShell, .NET, Silverlight development.

Have a nice reading :)