Pester and Hashtables (Passing in Parameters)

PowerShell Help
1

Hi guys,

I am writing a function that builds a hash table to pasbut what ds parameters into invoke-pester. Had the inspiration from this post How to Pass Parameters to a Pester Test Script

I have managed to build the hash table and the parameters pass through.

In the function code The hashtable looks like this:

$finalhash = @{ ‘Path’ = $testpath; ‘Parameters’ = $hash }

I have constructed the $hash hashtable to mimic the layout invoke-pester wants.
Up to this point if I do Invoke-Pester $finalhash it works great.

However what I would like is to include other parameters into the function as well programatically.

For example my function would read something like

Invoke-POVTest $a -testpath c:\test\test.test.ps1 -quiet -passthru

I would like to include both switch parameter into the underlying invoke-pester $finalhash so when i enter those switches it will add in the parameters appropriately with having to use a long condition? Is it possible to do it with Dynamic parameters? I cant picture what the end result will be like.

Many thanks in advance for the help.

WY

2

I’m sorry, but I’m not following what you’re trying to do. I don’t understand “builds a hash table to pasbut what ds parameters” unfortunately, sorry.

Are you asking how to construct $hash?

3

Hi Don,

Sorry about that,my tablet key board is playing up but that should have read “pass parameters into invoke-pester”

Anyway I have constructed the $hash to feed into $finalhash.

It works great.

What I would like is to have the ability to add in parameters like -quiet and passthru to feed into the underlying invoke-pester command

I know I can do this easily if it was just one parameter, but when it comes to two or more it will turn into a bit of a hell…when i do if statements ie for example

if ($quiet){
    Invoke-Pester $finalhash -quiet
  } 
elseif($quiet -and $passthru){
    Invoke-Pester $finalhash -passthru -quiet
}else{
    invoke-pester $finalhash
}

I know thats one way of doing it and its great if its just two but as i add more parameters i can see that it will cause more complications…I was wondering if there was another way that I can add -quiet or -passthru.

Many thanks Don,

regards,

Wei-Yen Tan

PS. I am sorry about the code formatting

4

Yeah, so you’d just pass “Quiet”=$True for a switch parameter. The $hash from your original example would be a hash table, of course, with whatever parameters you needed. Does that help?

5

Thanks Don,

I reread my function and it read as:
Invoke-Pester -Script $finalhash

So looking at it again adding to the finalhash won’t help.

So I started playing and created a hashtable like so:

$param = @{
‘Script’ =$finalhash
‘passthru’ = $true
}

Then splatted it as invoke-pester @param and this worked. :slight_smile:

Which means that i can have a base $param = @{ ‘script’ = $finalhash } and then use the add method to add additional parameters.

I just tested using $param.add(‘passthru’, $true) and splatting that to invoke-pester it works nicely.

Thanks Don for putting me on the right path.