One of the things that ships with every copy of PrimalScript is a collection of “PrimalToys” that the development team created. These are COM objects which help full a number of useful functions, like displaying file dialog boxes or pinging.
I’ve borrowed the “PrimalToys” name for an unofficial project I’m calling “PrimalToys for Windows PowerShell.” It’s basically a sanp-in for PowerShell that provides a number of new cmdlets:
Read-MsgBox
Read-InputBox
Ping-Computer
Get-SqlDataReader
Get-OleDbDataReader
Invoke-SqlQuery
Invoke-OleDbQuery
Test-NetConnection
Get-UserName
Get-UserDomain
Get-ComputerName
Test-LocalGroupMembership
Get-LocalTime
Get-GMTTime
Get-OSName
Get-OSPlatform
Get-OSVersion
Get-TotalPhysicalMemory
Get-TotalVirtualMemory
Get-AvailablePhysicalMemory
Get-AvailableVirtualMemory
Get-PrimalToysVersion
Write-Speech
A Word doc is included with instructions on registering and loading the snap-in, and with information on the various cmdlets. This tool will eventually be available from www.primalscript.com/freetools; however, right now I’m simply soliciting feedback on this alpha version. Please comment on these tools in the PowerShell forums on ScriptingAnswers.com – not here in the blog. That makes it a lot easier for me to reply and carry on a conversation. And if you want to see this developed further, you’d better comment. Encouragement is the spice of… er… getting stuff done.
The snap-in is available for download at www.scriptinganswers.com/download/toys.zip. Note that this is UNSUPPORTED – please do not post technical support questions in the blog comments as they’ll be ignored; use the PowerShell Forum on ScriptingAnswers.com to post questions.
This is considered “alpha-quality” code, so it may not be fully functional. Source code is not currently available; it’s undetermined whether source code will be made available for this project or not. Kinda depends on how things go, really.
So take your time, install this, give it a whirl, and let me know what you think. And, BTW, I would really appreciate it if you’d tell a friend – let folks in other forums sites know this exists, so I can get as wide a range of feedback as possible. Thanks!
Don
