One of the best and easiest ways to put data into an easy-to-read format is with a CSV (comma-separated values ) file. The CSV file will have a line of headers to indicate column name and subsequent values for each column. The structured data is required for positioning in the CSV file, to achieve the PowerShell has few option for structured data. Since a CSV file is just like a text file, it can loosely be created with Powershell’s Add-Content cmdlet. Here i had explained how to Export CSV file with Array with help of simple Add-Content cmdle.
We can use both Add-Content OR Export-Csv to create and write the CSV files, the best way is use Export-Csv (if we created a structured data/object) else we can use Add-Content cmdlet . The Add-Content does not negatively understand a CSV file, it would still be able to read one.
############################################################
#Project : Read Array values and generate CSV file
#Developer : Thiyagu S (dotnet-helpers.com)
#Tools : PowerShell 5.1.15063.1155
#E-Mail : mail2thiyaguji@gmail.com
############################################################
#Declared the File path location with the CSV format.
$FilePathLocation = "C:\PowerShell\EmployeeDetails.csv"
#Declared the Array
$Empdetails =@();
$empCount = 3;
#Declared the Column names
$columnName = '"EmpName","EMPID","EMPemail","EMPpin"'
#Add the column tile to the Excel
Add-Content -Path $FilePathLocation -Value $columnName
#Loop will get user input for 3 time
for ($loopindex=0; $loopindex -lt $empCount; $loopindex++)
{
#Getting the User Input from the console
$Empdetails += Read-Host " Enter EMPName,EMPID,EMPemail,EMPpin by comma separator"
}
#looping the Emp details to print in the excel cell
$Empdetails | foreach { Add-Content -Path $FilePathLocation -Value $_ }
Output:
Export CSV file with Array
What do you think?
I hope you have an idea of How To Read Array values and generate CSV file with PowerShell. I would like to have feedback from my posts readers. Your valuable feedback, question, or comments about this article are always welcome.
As as system admin/DevOps guys, usually during audit time we need to complete the finding (by make the grouping to filter) in faster manner instead of doing as manual work, like similar we got the review command that all the resources need to be have the tags. But completing this task will have huge manual effort as we maintaining lot of resources so thought to make automation to complete this task. Here we going to discuss bout how to Add Tags On An AZURE SQL DATABASE Using PowerShell
What Is A Tag In Azure?
Its Creates a predefined Azure tag or adds values to an existing tag | Creates or updates the entire set of tags on a resource or subscription.
Azure tagging is an excellent feature from Microsoft that was help you to logically group your Azure resources and help you to track your resources. It also helps to automate the deployments of the resources and another important feature is this feature helps to provide the visibility of the resource costs that they are liable for.
The Azure Tag enables the key-value pairs to be created and assigned to the resources in Azure using Azure Portal, PowerShell. Azure CLI, etc.
Note: Tag names and Tag Values are case-sensitive in nature.
Why Use The Azure tag ?
The main intention to use the Azure tags is to organize the resources in Azure Portal. When you are organizing the resources properly helps you to identify the category that the resources belong to. So basically, Azure tags are the name-value pairs that help to organize the Azure resources in the Azure Portal
For example (consider you having the tag), When you have more resources in your Azure Portal, that time it really helps you to categorize your Azure Resources. Suppose you have 6 Virtual machines (VM) in your Azure Subscription, among them 2 are under our development environment and 2 are for the QA environment and remain 2 belong to our Production environment. So we can tag them as Environment = Development, Environment = QA, or Environment = Production. so now we can easily get the view of each resource coming under the specific environment.
How To Create Azure Tags Using powershell
Step 1: Connect to your Azure account using Connect-AzAccount
Before starting please gather secret for service principal , AppId , tenantId to establish the connect to the azure portal to perform the operation against the Azure services.
#Converts plain text or encrypted strings to secure strings.
$SecureServicePrinciple = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "rfthr~SSDCDFSDFE53Lr3Daz95WF343jXBAtXADSsdfEED" -AsPlainText -Force
#Assigning the App ID
$AppId = "0ee7e633-0c49-408e-b956-36d62264f644"
#Assigning the Tenant ID
$tenantId= "32cf8ba2-403a-234b-a3b9-63c2f8311778"
#storing a username and password combination securely.
$pscredential = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $AppId, $SecureServicePrinciple
#Connect to Azure with an authenticated account for use with cmdlets from the Az PowerShell modules.
Connect-AzAccount -ServicePrincipal -Credential $pscredential -Tenant $tenantId
Step 2: Define the tags and assign as a array list
Based on my requirement i had added the below tags, you can create N number of tags based on your segregation of the resources.
Step 3: Getting all the SQL database in the specific resources group
Example 1: Get single SQL database to update
Get-AzResource cmdlet will Gets All the resources from the specific subscription and filtered with Resource Type SQL.
After executing below script the RESOURCE.id variable will have all the databases names inside the specific resource type as shown in the below snap shot.
-ResourceType : The resource type of the resource(s) to be retrieved. For example, Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines
#GET the single database by where condition
$RESOURCE = Get-AzResource -ResourceGroupName "rg-dgtl-pprd" -ResourceType "Microsoft.Sql/servers/databases" | Where-Object name -Like 'sqlsrvr-dgtl-pprd/sitecore_master'
$resourceIds = $RESOURCE.Id
Example 2: Get all the database to update
#Gets All the database
$RESOURCE = Get-AzResource -ResourceGroupName "rg-dgtl-pprd" -ResourceType "Microsoft.Sql/servers/databases"
$resourceIds = $RESOURCE.Id
Step 4: Update new tags using new-AzTag command
We can Creates a predefined Azure tag or adds values to an existing tag using new-AzTag cmdlet | Creates or updates the entire set of tags on a resource or subscription.
-ResourceId : The resource identifier for the entity being tagged. A resource, a resource group or a subscription may be tagged.
Example: 1 Add tags to single database
#Creates or updates the entire set of tags on a resource or subscription.
#The resource identifier for the entity being tagged. A resource, a resource group or a subscription may be tagged.
new-AzTag -ResourceId $resourceId -Tag $tags
Example 2: Add tags to all database under ResourceGroup
foreach($resourceId in $resourceIds){
Write-Output $resourceId
#Creates or updates the entire set of tags on a resource or subscription.
new-AzTag -ResourceId $resourceId -Tag $tags
}
Output:
Note:
Get-AzResource cmdlet will Gets All the resources from the specific subscription and filtered with Resource Type SQL.
-ResourceType : The resource type of the resource(s) to be retrieved. For example, Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines
In all programming, the code will have errors, and troubleshooting those problems will be difficult. Like another programming language, PowerShell has error handling mechanisms for handling the error in our programming (in this post, we will discuss about Error handling with $ERROR variable).
In PowerShell, errors can be categories in 2 ways one is terminating and non-terminating. As the name implies, a terminating error stops the code execution when the error is thrown. A non-terminating error implies that the code will continue the next line of code execution when an error is shown.
The $Error Variable
$Error is an automatic global variable in PowerShell which always contains an Array List of zero or more Error Record objects. As new errors occur, they are added to the beginning of this list, so you can always get information about the most recent error by getting at $Error[0]. Both Terminating and Non-Terminating errors will be part of this this list.
How does the $Error variable work?
Starting a new PowerShell session the $Error will be empty. Normally, if you run a Windows PowerShell command and an error occurs, the error record will be appended to the “automatic variable” named $Error. Then we use the $Error[0] to display and access the rest of the information it holds.
The $Error variable hold a collection of information, and that’s why using $Error[0] can get to your error message objects. Also the $Error[0] variable will hold the last error message encountered until the PowerShell session ends.
Example #1: Starting a new PowerShell session
For this example, we have tried with a new PowerShell window session so the $Error variable has empty as shown below
$error[0]
Example #2: Executing the below script which had the error
When an error occurs in our code, it is saved to the Automatic variable named $Error. The $Error variable contains an array of recent errors, and you can reference the most recent error in the array at index 0.
In the below example, the path is not exit and instead of throwing an error we had included -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue, and next line we have written the current error using the $Error variable.
We can use Get-Member to expose your PS variable objects. using the below-listed members we can get deeper into the $Error[0] object to extract
Example #3: Getting the detailed Error using $Error variable
In the below example, we can get deeper into the $Error[0] object to extract the line that failed during execution.This assumes that the error information is available in the first element of the $Error array. The InvocationInfo property of the ErrorRecord object contains information about the context in which the error occurred, including the line number.
Keep in mind that if there are multiple errors in the $Error array, you might want to loop through them or access a specific error by its index. Also, note that this information might not be available for all types of errors, depending on how the error was generated
$Error[0].InvocationInfo
#Display the failed code line Write-Host “Error occured at line : ” $Error[0].InvocationInfo.line
As per docs.microsoft.com, A module is a package that contains PowerShell members, such as cmdlets, providers, functions, workflows, variables, and aliases. The members of this package can be implemented in a PowerShell script, a compiled DLL, or a combination of both. These files are usually grouped together in a single directory.
In simple, PowerShell Modules allows us to organize our functions and use them in other scripts or PowerShell modules allow you to combine multiple scripts to simplify code management, accessibility, and sharing. Mostly many PowerShell scripters are slow to take that step of building a module. This allows you to be able to use the same code in many places without copying and pasting to code all over the place.
When do I create a PowerShell module?
When the same script needs to be used more than once.
if we need to break it apart into functions because it’s getting too complex to be in a single script.
If we need to share the code with others.
In this post, you can learn Step-by-step instructions on creating and using modules.
STEP #1 Starting with a PowerShell Function
A PowerShell Module can store any number of functions. To create a new module, we need to start creating a PowerShell Function. When your scripts get large, you start using more functions. These functions could be from someone else or functions that you write yourself. These functions start collecting at the top of your script.
In the below example, we creating a function called Get-BIOSInfo which will output the system BIOS information for the specific system.
function Get-BIOSInfo { param($ComputerName) Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $ComputerName -Class Win32_BIOS }
Get-BIOSInfo -ComputerName localhost
STEP #2 Create a separate Folder for Custom Module
All the custom Modules need to save under the Module folder, mostly the location will be C:\Program
Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules. We need to create a separate folder for our Module so here we creating a folder called Get-BIOSInfo as shown below.
STEP #3 Save the Function as Module with .psm1 extension
Next, we need to save our function under the Get-BIOSInfo folder. Most important thing is, the Folder name must match the Module name. Now I’ve got the Get-BIOSInfo module saved/created, and I’ve called it Get-BIOSInfo.psm1. Now I can ask my team to use it,
To make our function into Module, the file needs to be saved with .psm1 extension as shown below,
STEP #4 Test-Driving Your Module
PowerShell has automatically loaded your new module and made all of its commands available. Executing the Get-Module cmdlet will show your module just contains one function Get-BIOSInfo. To understand what just has happened, I had ran the below Get-Module cmdlet and shown the output below.
STEP #4 Finally, Import your Module to utilize in any script
Open a different PowerShell window, or open a new PowerShell (console or ISE). Your command Get-BIOSInfo is available immediately! It is now a standard PowerShell command just like the other commands you use. Importing the module brings all of the functions and variables into each user’s PowerShell session.
Note:
PowerShell caches Modules so once you have loaded and used a module in a PowerShell session, any changes to the module will not become effective. To see changes, either use the module in a new PowerShell Host or force a complete module to reload:
The module name should not be the name of your function. It should be a generic name such as a topic because later you will want to store more functions into your module.
Do not use special characters or whitespace in your module name.
A PowerShell Module can store any number of functions.
Conclusion
Having the option to create a Module in PowerShell directly is super handy and we can be really flexible in our day to day DevOps or other automation tasks.
SSL ( Secure Sockets Layer) is a digital certificate that provides an encrypted connection between server and client and authenticates a website identity. To keep user-sensitive data secure, and provide trust to users, it is very important to check SSL certificate expiration and renew them if they are due. The challenge for support team will be during the renewal activity, checking all the domains which having different certificate became critical job. To overcome the above challenge, we throught to check the powershell script to validate all the domain before and after the renewal activity. Let we discuss how to Check SSL Certificate Expiration Date in PowerShell.
In PowerShell, we can use [Net.HttpWebRequest] to make the HTTP web request to the website and get all properties associated with it, and certificate details. It will help to find the SSL certificate expiration date and other details of certificate.
The System.Net.ServicePoint is the .Net library which provides to manage the collections of ServicePoint objects. ServicePointManager returns the ServicePoint object that contains the information about the internet resource URI.
Check SSL Certificate Expiration Date
Step: 1 Get the URL properties
In the below PowerShell script lines, it uses [Net.HttpWebRequest] to create HTTP web requests to website URI and retrieve the URI properties like Address, ConnectionName, Certificate, etc… in the $webRequest variable.
[Net.ServicePointManager]::ServerCertificateValidationCallback = { $true }
# Create Web Http request to URI
$uri = "https://www.dotnet-helpers.com"
$webRequest = [Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create($uri)
Step: 2 Retrive the Certificate Start and End date
As we already having the certificate details in the $webRequest, so we can retrive the Certificate Start and end date as shown below.$webRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate gets the certificate details like issuer, Handle, and SSL certificate thumbprint. We can use the GetExpirationDateString() method to check the SSL expiration date for a website using PowerShell.
# Get Effective Date of the certificate
$Start = $webRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate.GetEffectiveDateString()
# Get Expiration Date of the certificate
$End = $webRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate.GetExpirationDateString()
Step: 3 Find the no. of Remaining days for expiration
# Calculate the no. of Dates remaining for expiration
$ExpirationDays = (New-TimeSpan -Start (Get-Date) -End $end).Days
# Prinit the required details
Write-Host "Validating for :" $webRequest.Address
Write-Host "Certificate Effective Date :" $Start
Write-Host "Certificate Expiration Date :" $End
Write-Host "No. of days to Expiration :" $ExpirationDays
Full Code: Check SSL Certificate Expiration Date in PowerShell
Below full code will helps to Check SSL Certificate Expiration Date in PowerShell for single domain, if you want to have multiple urls then place all the domain in the txt file and loop the same code for validation.
[Net.ServicePointManager]::ServerCertificateValidationCallback = { $true }
# Create Web Http request to URI
$uri = "https://www.dotnet-helpers.com"
$webRequest = [Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create($uri)
# Get Effective Date of the certificate
$Start = $webRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate.GetEffectiveDateString()
# Get Expiration Date of the certificate
$End = $webRequest.ServicePoint.Certificate.GetExpirationDateString()
# Calculate the no. of Dates remaining for expiration
$ExpirationDays = (New-TimeSpan -Start (Get-Date) -End $end).Days
# Prinit the required details
Write-Host "Validating for :" $webRequest.Address
Write-Host "Certificate Effective Date :" $Start
Write-Host "Certificate Expiration Date :" $End
Write-Host "No. of days to Expiration :" $ExpirationDays
Anyone who manages a file storage has to keep track of the size of files to ensure there is always enough free space. Documents, photos, backups and other can quickly occupy up your shared file resources — especially if you have a lot of duplicates. Duplicate files are often the result of users’ mistakes, such as double copy actions or incorrect folder transfers. To avoid wasting space and driving up storage costs, you have to analyze your file structure, find and delete duplicate Files Using PowerShell. When you say there are files with the same content but with different names
As a result we end up running out of disk space and then get in to a situation where we have to sit and find the unnecessary files to gain free storage space. One of the biggest issue that we see during such clean-up activity is to get rid of duplicate files. A simple Windows PowerShell script can help you complete this tedious task faster. we having may types of approach to handle this scenario, we will discuss about few examples here.
Find Duplicate file using Get-FileHash
Do you need to compare two files or make sure a file has not changed? The PowerShell cmdlet Get-FileHash generates hash values both for files or streams of data. A hash is simply a function that converts one value into another. Sometimes the hash value may be smaller to save on space, or the hash value may be a checksum used to validate a file. Therefore a hash will be different if even a single character in the input is changed
In this demo, i am having 4 text files, which 3 files are having same content with different file name and remaining 1 file unique content as shown in the below image.
STEP 1: Open the PowerShell window
Open PowerShell: Click on the Start Menu and type “PowerShell” in the search bar. Then, select “Windows PowerShell” from the results.
STEP 2: Find to the directory where you want to search for duplicate files:
$filePath = ‘C:\Thiyagu Disk\backupFiles\’
STEP 3: Get the all child items inside the file path to check the duplicate.
Use the Get-ChildItem cmdlet to find all files in the directory: Type “Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File” to list all files in the current directory and its subdirectories. The “-Recurse” option tells PowerShell to search all subdirectories.
Get-ChildItem –path $filePath -Recurse
STEP 4: Find duplicate files using Get-FileHash cmdlet.
Using Get-FileHash generates hash values both for files or streams of data and group by the hash value as shown below to find the duplicate and unique files/folders/…
After finding the duplicate files, you can move/delete based on your requirement. if you want to delete through UI, you can use Out-GridView and delete by selecting the multiple files as shown below. A user may select files to be deleted in the table (to select multiple files, press and hold CTRL) and click OK.
Note: Please be careful while using the Remove-Item cmdlet as it can permanently delete files from your computer. It’s recommended to test this command on a test folder before using it on your actual data.
If you are familiar with Linux or come from a Unix background, you probably know about Vim. For those of us that started and stay mostly in the realm of Windows however; I Let we exposed to vim editor in PowerShell, and see what it can do. Windows OS does not come with Vim as Unix-based systems do.
Vim is a powerful, widely used text editor for Unix-based systems, including Linux and macOS. It is known for its speed, efficiency, and flexibility, making it a popular choice among programmers, system administrators, and other power users who need to edit text files on a regular basis. Vim is a command-line interface (CLI) application that can be used in a terminal window, and it provides a wide range of commands and keyboard shortcuts for navigating and editing text files.
Why we need this editor?
Did you run a script that read a text file and need to change something in config for debugging or found that the file had several wrong entries? A PowerShell text editor may come in handy in such situations. You wouldn’t need to fire up an external editor or not have permission to open the file directly. Instead, you can edit the file without leaving PowerShell. How cool is that?
To edit a text file using the Vim editor in PowerShell, follow below steps:
Install the Vim editor in PowerShell
STEP 1: Open PowerShell as an Administrator.
Open PowerShell by searching for “PowerShell” in the Start menu and selecting “Windows PowerShell” or “Windows PowerShell (x86)” in admin.
STEP 2: Install Vim editor in PowerShell using Chocolatey
In the PowerShell terminal, execute the following command to install the Vim editor.
choco install vim -y
STEP 3: To verify the Vim version, run the following command
vim –version
Editing and Saving a File using Vim
For this demo, I already having the txt file (in c:\mytestfile) where i am going to edit & save my changes. By following the above steps, now that you have Vim installed, it’s time to get you to learn to edit a file. Before you go any further, you should know that there are different modes in Vim. Each mode behaves differently and affects which actions you can do inside the editor.
The three commonly-used modes are:
Normal – The default mode as soon as you open Vim. This mode allows you to navigate the text file but not add new texts.
Insert – This mode is where Vim allows you to edit the file. To enter this mode, press i (case insensitive) on the keyboard. To exit and go back to the normal mode, press ESC.
Command – In this mode, Vim lets you invoke commands such as save the file, quit Vim, or view the help document, among others.
STEP 4: Open a file using Vim Command
To open the file, run the vim command followed by the filename to open. The command below opens the mytestfile.txt file in the PowerShell console and its ready for view and edit .
vim “c:\thiyagu disck\mytestfile.txt
STEP 5: Enable the Insert Mode for the file
Next, enter the insert mode by pressing “i”. As you enter the insert mode, the text — INSERT — appears at the bottom of the editor, as shown in the following image. Now that you are in insert mode edit the file as you wish. The arrow keys will let you move the cursor inside the editor.
For this example I added new line as highlighted in the yellow arrow.
STEP 6: Append changes & Save
After making the necessary changes to the text file, press Esc to return to normal mode and Type the command :wq and press Enter to save and close the file. The command w saves the files while q exits Vim.
You have a more number of options when it comes to resolving names using DNS. Microsoft Azure DNS is one of such option. In this post, we will discuss How to create new DNS in the Azure Private DNS using PowerShell
To manage Azure DNS, you can configure it through Azure Portal UI or command-line tools like the Azure CLI or PowerShell. Often admins need to manage DNS at scale or automate the management of various objects. A great way to do that isn’t via a graphical method like the Azure Portal but with a scripting tool like PowerShell (as we can automate).
Azure DNS is a managed DNS solution. We can use it for public DNS records (use the URL for access public) as well as for private DNS records. Using Azure private DNS, we can resolve DNS names in a virtual network. There are many benefits to using Azure private DNS.
No additional servers – We do not need to maintain additional servers to run the DNS solution. It is a fully managed service.
Automatic Record Update – Similar to Active Directory DNS, we can configure Azure DNS to register/update/delete hostname records for virtual machines automatically.
Support common DNS record types – It supports common DNS record types such as A, AAAA, MX, NS, SRV, and TXT.
DNS resolution between virtual networks – Azure Private DNS zones can be shared between virtual networks.
As we had to set many URLs so we thought to have automation to create through Azure DevOps Pipeline.
using New-AzPrivateDnsRecordSet cmdlet we can able to create a new DNS record in the Azure DNS zone and Get-AzPrivateDnsRecordSet will use to list out all the DNS records which were created. The Set-AzPrivateDnsRecordSet cmdlet updates a record set in the Azure Private DNS service from a local RecordSet object. You can pass a RecordSet object as a parameter or by using the pipeline operator
Prequistion for making automation for creating a record set in a Private DNS zone.
-Name : The name of the records in this record set (relative to the name of the zone and without a terminating dot).
-RecordType : The type of Private DNS records in this record set (values may be A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, PTR, SOA, SRV, TXT)
-ZoneName : The zone in which to create the record set (without a terminating dot). In my case, all the domains need to be like .cloud.dotnethelpers.com. for example, preprod.cloud.dotnethelpers.com.
-ResourceGroupName : The resource group to which the zone belongs.
-Ttl : The TTL value of all the records in this record set.
-PrivateDnsRecords : The private DNS records that are part of this record set.
-Ipv4Address: The IPv4 address for the A record to add. For me this ip from the ingress, in your case it may be your server or anything.
The final URL will be pprd.cloud.dotnethelpers.com
Points to Remember:
Before running the above script ensure you have installed the required module in PowerShell to connect to the Azure portal to access the resources (connect using the Connect-AzAccount cmdlet). I hope you have a basic idea about How to create new DNS in the Azure Private DNS using PowerShell, if any queries please comment so I can able to answer ASAP.
Azure Key Vault is a cloud service that works as a secure secrets store. You can securely store keys, passwords, certificates, and other secrets.
In this example, I am going to create/fetch secrets in Azure key vault secrets using the PowerShell task in the Azure DevOps, so for this, you need to ensure your Agent (it may be self-hosted or default Agent) has access to the Azure Key vault.
Note: Az Module is required for performing the below operations.
STEP: 1 Connect to Azure using Connect-AzAccount
After executing the below cmdlet, you will get the pop for authentication, post successful authentication you will able to execute from the STEP 2
Connect-AzAccount
STEP: 2 Convert the Values to Secure String
Before pushing the secrets in the Azure key vault ensure you are Converts plain text to encrypted strings to secure.
We are maintaining 500+ client websites in our environment. Some day before we received a request to get the list of links/Images used on each home page. We knew that it will be very tricky to get the list of links/URLs mapped in the 500+ pages and you are also aware that the annual work will not give 100% results.
So we decided to use Powershell Links in the Invoke-WebRequest methodto reduce manual effort. In this post, we will discuss the same with a simple example using a single URL. For checking the multiple URLs, please refer to a similar article which helps to read from excel and loop it –
PowerShell’s Invoke-WebRequest is a powerful cmdlet that allows you to download, parse, and scrape web pages. The Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet is used to download files from the web via HTTP and HTTPS. However, this cmdlet enables you to do more than download files. You can use this cmdlet for analyzing the contents of web pages.
Example: Get the list of URLs
The below script will grab the innerText in addition to the corresponding links
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