Professional Windows PowerShell Programming: Snapins, Cmdlets, Hosts and Providers (Wrox Professional Guides) (Paperback)

~ Arul Kumaravel (Author), Jon White (Author), Michael Naixin Li (Author), Scott Happell (Author), Guohui Xie (Author), Krishna C. Vutukuri (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Providing you with the programmers approach to understanding Windows PowerShell, this book introduces the concepts, components, and development techniques for building software packages that leverage the power of PowerShell. The author team of PowerShell experts shows you how PowerShell makes writing code easy by providing a runtime engine with its own parser, plus youll discover that with PowerShell, all of the .NET Framework objects become accessible via scripting, making PowerShell a very powerful addition to your toolbox and a popular choice for future development.

From the Back Cover

Professional Windows PowerShell Programming

Snap-ins, Cmdlets, Hosts, and Providers

Providing you with the programmer's approach to understanding Windows PowerShell, this book introduces you to the concepts, components, and development techniques for building software packages that leverage the power of PowerShell. This author team of PowerShell experts shows you how PowerShell makes writing code easy by providing a runtime engine with its own parser, and you'll see how PowerShell offers functionality that enables you to add custom formatting when objects are displayed.

You'll find out how PowerShell's robust SDK allows you to take advantage of PowerShell within your own applications. Plus, you'll discover that with PowerShell, all of the .NET Framework objects become accessible via scripting, making PowerShell a very powerful addition to your toolbox and a popular choice for future development. Once you begin performing the tasks associated with writing command-line utilities, you'll quickly learn how PowerShell permits you to direct your attention to the business logic of your applications.

What you will learn from this book

• How to create a PowerShell snap-in

• Writing your own custom cmdlets

• Creating custom providers

• Calling to the PowerShell execution engine

• Implementing a host user interface

• Extending types and formatting

Who this book is for
This book is for developers and programmers who want to extend the functionality of Windows PowerShell technologies and extend their applications by using PowerShell.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; Pap/Onl edition (February 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470173939
• ISBN-13: 978-0470173930
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #587,788 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive guide to PowerShell development, February 25, 2008

By	R. Hill "Keith Hill" (Fort Collins, CO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been developing PowerShell cmdlets for the past year and half for the PowerShell Community Extensions project. I really wish I had this book when I started. It would have saved me a ton of time. Having everything documented in one place alone would have been a huge timesaver. The examples in the book are really good and should give any would-be developer of PowerShell cmdlets or providers a huge jumpstart. One minor quibble is that the formatting on some of the sample code output wraps making it harder to interpret the results. Other than that it is a fantastic compendium of the knowledge necessary to start knocking off some heavy duty cmdlets and providers.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best book for Powershell Programming, just one thing ..., June 25, 2008

By	Steven Burns (-) - See all my reviews

This very well may be the only decent book regarding PowerShell programming beyond the ordinary PS scripts. If you want to create your own CmdLets, Providers, etc this is the only book I've found that gets you there.

With that said, despite the authors' efforts the book feels more like a reference than a tutorial. The authors' expertise is so deep sometimes they forget to explain all the "obvious" things.

For example, when the PSObject class gets presented to the reader the details are outstanding, as always, but there's very little effort devoted to explaining why this class is needed at all. I've seen other books do better in that matter.

A different example: If you've created your own CmdLets, you already know you can derive from CmdLet or PSCmdLet, the latter being a subclass of the former with additional features but additional requirements. The book totally avoids this discussion (did I miss it?) and PSCmdLet gets used exclusively all over the chapter without telling the reader why.

Don't get me wrong, this is a wonderful book and honestly, I may come back in a few weeks to update this review and give the book an additional star. But I'm the kind of guy that always needs the "Why" before the "How".

2.0 out of 5 stars Good general content but very poor attention to details, June 1, 2009

By	Midwest Rider (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

I've found three problems with example code given and a glaring typo in a section heading all within the first 21 pages. This left a bad taste in my mouth from the extra half-hour it took to get the examples to work, as well as making me wonder what else is wrong further along.

That said, the examples did eventually work and the information on how to create the snap-in and get it set up was fine. The source code was readily available via download and at least compiled cleanly, a statement that cannot always be said of other vendors, even MS.

This is one of several books I'm using, and its only purpose to me is for information on the specific tasks relevant to building PowerShell snap-ins, cmdlets and so forth. It will probably be adequate for that purpose.

But it is patently obvious that no one took the book as printed and ran through the examples to make sure they worked, nor even proofed the section heads. I will think twice (or even three times) before ever buying a book by these authors and/or from this publisher again.