Several weeks ago I posted an entry on creating configuration files. This same technique can also work with XML files. I’m still working on a more advanced technique but wanted to share this simpler approach. First, here’s a sample XML configuration file:
#DemoXMLConfig.ps1
#Sample configuration template
#this is for demonstration purposes and proof of concept
@"
<Configuration>
<Computer Help="Enter a computername">{0}</Computer>
<IP Help="Enter an IPv4 Address">{1}</IP>
<Subnet Help="Enter an IPv4 SubnetMask">{2}</Subnet>
<Gateway Help="Enter the default gateway">{3}</Gateway>
<DNS>
<DNSServer Help="Enter the primary DNS Server">{4}</DNSServer>
<DNSServer Help="Enter the secondary DNS Server">{5}</DNSServer>
</DNS>
<Comments>
<Comment Help="Enter a comment">{6}</Comment>
</Comments>
<Update help="Enter True or False to enable FOO">
EnableFoo={7}
</Update>
<Locations>
<Location>
<City help="Enter a city name">{8}</City>
<CostCenter help="Enter a cost center">{9}</CostCenter>
</Location>
</Locations>
</Configuration>
"@
The XML is contained within a here string in a PowerShell script. Notice the placeholders like {0} and {1}. I’ll use the -f operator to fill in the blanks. To make this more interesting, I’m going to pull the data from a CSV file.
Computername,IP,Subnet,Gateway,PrimaryDNS,SecondaryDNS,Comment,Enable,City,CostCenter
SERVERA,192.168.34.56,255.255.255.0,192.168.34.1,192.168.1.10,172.16.8.7,"Sample configuration",TRUE,Tacoma,87321
To create the XML configuration file I’ll need to get these values and merge them with the XML in DemoXMLConfig.ps1. I put together a short script to handle that.
#New-XMLConfig.ps1
#define XML configuration template
$config="c:\scripts\posh\demoxmlconfig.ps1"
#define the name of the xml file to create
$xml="c:\test\MySampleConfig.xml"
#let's create a custom object that has the values we
#need for the XML file pulled from a CSV file.
$data=Import-Csv c:\scripts\posh\xmlconfigdata.csv
[xml]$x=(&$config) -f $data.Computername,$data.IP,$data.subnet,$data.gateway,$data.PrimaryDNS,$data.SecondaryDNS,$data.comment,$data.enable,$data.city,$data.CostCenter
$x.save($xml)
The data from the CSV file is imported using Import-CSV and saved to $data. I then “execute” the here string script and use -f to replace placeholders with corresponding values from $data. The output is an XML file so I’ll save it to a variable, $x, specifically cast as an [XML] object. This step is important because in the last line I call the Save() method which commits the XML in memory to a file. Just like that I have a valid XML document ready to use.
It’s not too hard to have a CSV file with several lines and creating multiple XML documents in a matter of seconds.
If you want to try this out yourself you can download a zip file with these samples here.
