Adding methods with ScriptMethod in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Adding methods with ScriptMethod in PowerShell

📖 Scenario: You are managing a list of simple objects representing books in a library. Each book has a title and an author. You want to add a method to each book object that can display its details in a friendly format.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to add a method called ShowDetails to each book object using ScriptMethod. This method will print the book's title and author in a readable sentence.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of book objects with Title and Author properties

Add a ScriptMethod called ShowDetails to each book object

The ShowDetails method should output a string like: 'Title: [Title], Author: [Author]'

Call the ShowDetails method for each book and display the output

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Adding methods to objects dynamically is useful when working with data that needs custom behavior without creating full classes. For example, enhancing data from APIs or files.

💼 Career

PowerShell scripting with custom objects and methods is common in system administration and automation tasks, helping to organize and extend data processing.

1

Create the list of book objects

Create a variable called books that contains two custom objects. The first object should have Title set to 'The Hobbit' and Author set to 'J.R.R. Tolkien'. The second object should have Title set to '1984' and Author set to 'George Orwell'.

PowerShell

# Create the list of book objects with Title and Author properties
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use [PSCustomObject] to create each book with Title and Author properties inside an array.

2

Add the ScriptMethod to each book

Add a ScriptMethod called ShowDetails to each book object in $books. The method should return a string formatted as 'Title: [Title], Author: [Author]' using the object's properties.

PowerShell

$books = @(
    [PSCustomObject]@{ Title = 'The Hobbit'; Author = 'J.R.R. Tolkien' },
    [PSCustomObject]@{ Title = '1984'; Author = 'George Orwell' }
)

# Add ScriptMethod ShowDetails to each book
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a foreach loop to add a PSScriptMethod named ShowDetails to each book's PSObject.Members.

3

Call the ShowDetails method for each book

Use a foreach loop to call the ShowDetails method on each book object in $books and store the results in a new list called details.

PowerShell

$books = @(
    [PSCustomObject]@{ Title = 'The Hobbit'; Author = 'J.R.R. Tolkien' },
    [PSCustomObject]@{ Title = '1984'; Author = 'George Orwell' }
)

foreach ($book in $books) {
    $book.PSObject.Members.Add(
        [System.Management.Automation.PSScriptMethod]::new('ShowDetails', { "Title: $($this.Title), Author: $($this.Author)" })
    )
}

# Call ShowDetails on each book and save results in $details
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a foreach loop to call ShowDetails() on each book and collect the output in $details.

4

Display the details of all books

Print the contents of the $details list to show the formatted details of each book.

PowerShell

$books = @(
    [PSCustomObject]@{ Title = 'The Hobbit'; Author = 'J.R.R. Tolkien' },
    [PSCustomObject]@{ Title = '1984'; Author = 'George Orwell' }
)

foreach ($book in $books) {
    $book.PSObject.Members.Add(
        [System.Management.Automation.PSScriptMethod]::new('ShowDetails', { "Title: $($this.Title), Author: $($this.Author)" })
    )
}

$details = foreach ($book in $books) {
    $book.ShowDetails()
}

# Print the details list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Write-Output or Write-Host to print each string in $details.