How to confirm that an action has been completed

PowerShell Help
1

Hi,

I’ve written a small script to delete machine that are supplied by a text file.

All seems to work okay in a test environment, but I don’t know how to give any conformation of what’s been done.

What I’d like this to do is, output some sort of “successful deleted MACHINE1” message.

Could someone point us in the right direction?

Cheers

function delete-computers
{

Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement

$inputfile = Read-Host “Enter input file”
$computers = Get-Content $inputfile

foreach ($computer in $computers) {

            Get-QADComputer -Name $computer | Remove-QADObject -Force

                                }

}

delete-computers

2

There are several variations of how to do this, but they all boil down to checking whether the Get-QADComputer or Remove-QADObject commands produced any errors. When processing one object at a time like this, I prefer to use try/catch blocks in conjunction with -ErrorAction Stop:

function delete-computers
{

    Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement

    $inputfile = Read-Host “Enter input file”
    $computers = Get-Content $inputfile

    foreach ($computer in $computers)
    {
        try
        {
            Get-QADComputer -Name $computer -ErrorAction Stop | Remove-QADObject -Force -ErrorAction Stop
            Write-Host "Successfully deleted $computer."
        }
        catch
        {
            Write-Error -ErrorRecord $_
        }
    }
}
3

Your function would be better named “Remove-Computer,” as “Delete” is not a standard PowerShell verb, and the standard is to use singular nouns. Also, it’s more usual to let the shell prompt for input as part of a parameter, than to manually use Read-Host.

function Remove-Computer {
  [CmdletBinding()]
  param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$True)][string]$InputFile
  )
  Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement
  $computers = Get-Content $inputfile
  foreach ($computer in $computers) {
    Write-Verbose "Removing $computer"
    Get-QADComputer -Name $computer | Remove-QADObject -Force
  }
}

If you run your function using the -Verbose parameter, you’ll see the “Remove ” output. Using Write-Verbose is the standardized way of displaying “status” messages from within a script; those messages are suppressed by default, but shown when you add -Verbose.

By declaring $InputFile as a parameter, you can specify it when you run the command: “Remove-Computer -InputFile whatever.txt”. But, if you forget, the shell will prompt you automatically. It’s generally preferred to let that happen, so that all input comes in the form of a parameter value, rather than prompting for input within the function. When you use Read-Host, you can’t ever automate the use of your function, because that interactive prompt will always be there. When you use a parameter, you have the option of doing it either way - providing it in advance, or being prompted. More flexible.

4

Don, Dave, thank you very much.