to string or not to string - 19061B LAB A in Module 10 $OldIpaddress

PowerShell Help
1

Hi,

I’m a MCT and giving Powershell Classes. I’m teaching the Course 10961 for a while now, but I never figured something out, occuring in the LAB from Module 10 (Putting it all together):

in the Lab you get the “Old Ipaddress” via get-DHCPv4ServerLease and the MACAddress of that Server Core instance.

$OldIPaddress = get-DHCPv4Serverlease -Computername LON-DC1 -ScopeID 10.0.0.0 | where-object {$_.ClientID -eq "WA-TH-EV-ER-00"} | select -expandproperty IPAddress | select -expandproperty IPAddressToString

as a result you get the IP adress saved in the Variable $OldIPAddress… if you pipe it in get-member you see its a [System.String]

but nonetheless, you have to “place the $OLDIpaddress variable in double quotationmarks, and assign the resulting string to $OLDIpaddress. This will convert the IP Address to a string Object” (Page 10-9 from the offical MOC Course-Book, Exercise 2, Task2, step number 10)

Alright it works… but I don’t get why you need to do this… because it is already a string!

If you do not do this, Setting the trustedHostsList will fail with “cannot convert System.Object[] to System.String” even though get-Member (or the method gettype()) says that it IS ALREADY a System.String…

Set-Item WSMAN:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts -Value $OldIPaddress

That really bothers me and I cannot explain this to my Students…

Can anyone help me?

Sorry for bad english… I’m German :wink:

2

It sounds to me more like it is an array of strings than a string. Get-Member is probably just describing the contents of the array.

What happens if you do $OLDIPAddress[0] with it?

3

TrustedHosts is a comma-separated string value. If you’ve got an array of IP addresses and want to assign them all to trusted hosts, you can do something like this:

Set-Item WSMAN:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts -Value ($OldIPAddress -join ',')
4

The result of 

$OldIPaddress = get-DHCPv4Serverlease -Computername LON-DC1 -ScopeID 10.0.0.0 | where-object {$_.ClientID -eq “WA-TH-EV-ER-00”} | select -expandproperty IPAddress | select -expandproperty IPAddressToString

Is a string array, not a string. Using it in double quotes collapses it into a simple string.

5

Hello,

thanks for your responses.
I thought of this (beeing an array of strings) too, but I didn’t find a way to show it to my students that $OldIPaddress is an array, before I put it in Quotationmarks…

because if I type:

$oldipaddress[0]

-> 1
(first digit of 10.0.0.101)

it says the same value (the first digit of the IP) as after the re-assignment of the variable:

$OldIPAddress = "$OldIPAddress"
$OldIPAddress[0]

-> 1

so how can you determine if the variable is an array?

thanks again for your quick reactions.

6

Couple of options:

$OldIPAddress.GetType()

Get-Member -InputObject $OldIPAddress
7

Hey Dave,

thanks for your answer, but I am aware of this technique. Nevertheless this does NOT give me a possibility to distinguishe between an array of strings with one Object and an non-array variable with one Object, in this special case!

PS C:\WINDOWS> $OldIPaddress.gettype()

[i]IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType

True True String System.Object[/i]

and after:

$OldIPaddress = "$OldIPaddress"

it is the stays the same result:

PS C:\WINDOWS> $OldIPaddress.gettype()

[i]IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType

True True String System.Object[/i]

same here with:

 Get-Member -InputObject $OldIPaddress

I appreciate your help, but I have no solution so far. :slight_smile:

8

If $OldIPAddress.GetType() is telling you it’s a string, then you should be able to pass it to WSMan as-is. The problem only comes up when the pipeline starting with “get-DHCPv4Serverlease” returns multiple results, instead of a single record. When that happens, $OldIPAddress will be an Object array containing two or more String objects.

If you want to reliably demonstrate this, then you’ll need to make sure you can duplicate the conditions that cause Get-DHCPv4ServerLease to return multiple results.

9

Thanks for your seggestion.

But I can reproduce the case reliably without Problems. And look:

1576×422 13.7 KB

so I don’t understand whats going on here. :slight_smile:

I appreciate your help and hope we find a solution to this weird stuff :wink:

10

There’s a big difference between $OldIPAddress.GetType() and (Get-Member -InputObject $OldIPAddress).GetType() . I’m not sure where the latter one came from, in your screenshot.

11

Sorry, I was accidentially attaching the wrong Picture. I was not sure if I was posting the Picture correctly, so I wanted to to upload the same pic which I also embedded/posted it the text. I will delete the attachment.

12

Whoa… that is incredibly weird. I’ll see if I can reproduce it.

13
Whoa… that is incredibly weird. I'll see if I can reproduce it.

happy to see that other People find it strange too and I not went crazy :slight_smile:

14

I can recreate this like this:

$OldIPAddress = [ipaddress] "192.168.0.1" | select -ExpandProperty IPAddressToString
Set-Item WSMan:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts -Value $OldIPAddress

IPAddressToString is a ScriptProperty added by the extended type system. Turns out you’ll get the same error if you extend an object yourself:

$Test = "*" | Add-Member -NotePropertyName TestProperty -NotePropertyValue test -PassThru
Set-Item WSMan:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts -Value $Test  # Fails
Set-Item WSMan:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts -Value $Test.psobject.BaseObject  # Succeeds

It looks like the WSManConfigProvider really doesn’t like extended objects.

15

Wow thanks, you made my day. That seems to be the Problem. It is indeed the WSMANConfig-provider. I think this may be a useful information for the publisher of the Powershell-Course MOC 10961. I see to give them a feedback, with this information.

Thanks alot you guys for helping me out. :slight_smile: