"Manipulating" powershell or command prompt

[kestrel]

Does anyone use AutoIt with PowerShell?

I'm a somewhat experienced but still newb autoit user and what I'm thinking of doing, is just creating input fields and add some buttons to an AutoIt GUI, and then make it send commands into an open Powershell window in order to manipulate it.

Does anyone else do this with powershell? or command prompt perhaps? Is it a bad practice?

[JLogan3o13]

The question I would ask is why mingle languages if you do not have to? You have to decide what it is you're doing in PowerShell that you cannot accomplish natively in AutoIt.

Edited July 17, 2012 by JLogan3o13

[DicatoroftheUSA]

I often make small applications that get used in other peoples batch files, such as SMTP from the command line.

And visa versa you can do something like:

clipput($whatever)

winactivate($hCMDwindow)

send(!{space}ep}

[DicatoroftheUSA]

The question I would ask is why mingle languages if you do not have to?

In my case, some coworkers refuse to learn autoit, and sometimes batch files are simply faster to put together.

Edited July 17, 2012 by DicatoroftheUSA

[BrewManNH]

In my case, some coworkers refuse to learn autoit, and sometimes batch files are simply faster to put together.

Why would your co-workers need to have any knowledge of AutoIt to run your scripts? Also, it's faster for me to cobble together an AutoIt script than a batch file, mainly because I haven't used batch files in a long time except for very basic tasks.

The point JLogan was asking was, why use 2 languages to do something that one can do all on it's own?

[water]

I only used PowerShell from AutoIt once to create an Exchange mailbox. I take the input from the user, create the complete command line and execute it. This way it's easier to catch the output from PowerShell and check the result.

From what I have seen I wouldn't recommend PowerShell. It's slow, uses a lot of memory and is too complex.

Just my 0.02 $.

[DicatoroftheUSA]

Why would your co-workers need to have any knowledge of AutoIt to run your scripts?

Because I am not the only guy who works here. Batch files are universally known here. So instead of me writing absolutely every script, I will write the scripts/tools that are not feasible from batch files for other people.

I don't know power-shell so I can't answer why you would ever use it. Honestly only the Exchange admin is the only guy who uses them, and he says it is because "he has too". I don't know enough about it to argue with him.

Edited July 17, 2012 by DicatoroftheUSA

[kestrel]

Sorry I forgot to mention, I use Powershell mostly for Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange 2010 tasks. Many types of things I do in PowerShell such as, updating user account/Employee fields, setting up/updating AD group permissions, granting Full Mailbox Access/SendAs permissions, getting group membership information, etc.

Instead of editing ps1 files and csv files that I import, I could just throw the values into variables in an AutoIt GUI and then have it string the commands together and send over to PowerShell.

So in an AutoIt window I could have two input boxes: 1)Employee Username and 2) Employee ID. Then a button.

I put in "JSmith" into Employee Username box, then "100101" into Employee ID, and then AutoIt would send to a Powershell window the command "Set-ADUser "JSmith" -EmployeeID "100101"

That's just a basic example but you can see how it can save time from typing in PowerShell.

As to how AutoIt can do everything PowerShell can, I do not know, but I suspect it's a little more difficult to shoehorn such functions in... I searched around but didn't find anything I could understand more easily.

[DicatoroftheUSA]

There is an and it probably uses the methods under that hood as power-shell.

[kestrel]

There is an and it probably uses the methods under that hood as power-shell.

Thanks, I'll experiment with this in the lab.

[water]

So in an AutoIt window I could have two input boxes: 1)Employee Username and 2) Employee ID. Then a button.

I put in "JSmith" into Employee Username box, then "100101" into Employee ID, and then AutoIt would send to a Powershell window the command "Set-ADUser "JSmith" -EmployeeID "100101"

With my Active Directory UDF (for download please see my signature) this would be as easy as:

_AD_Open()
_AD_ModifyAttribute($sUsername, "<the name of the attribute to modify>", $sValue)
_AD_Close()

[saywell]

It would also be handy for Sharepoint automation [and manipulating SP from an autoit script].

William

[JLogan3o13]

With my Active Directory UDF (for download please see my signature) this would be as easy as:

_AD_Open()
_AD_ModifyAttribute($sUsername, "<the name of the attribute to modify>", $sValue)
_AD_Close()

As opposed to the PowerShell command (modify attributes to add someone to my Chicago office):

Get-ADUser -Filter {Office -eq "Chicago"} | Set-ADUser -StreetAddress "8888 Chicago Lane City" -City "Chicago" -State "IL" -PostalCode "60066" -Country "US"

Personally, I use Water's AD UDF over Powershell every day, and have yet to find anything I can't accomplish with it.