PowerShell Tutorial

Suppose you know a little bit about Linux, which provides a very rich command interface. Because of Linux rich command, Linux was a preferred platform for software development. On the other hand, windows was mostly used for UI-based uses for non-development purposes. So finally, to control all these issues, Microsoft released PowerShell version 1 for the first time in 2006. The main goal of PowerShell was to provide command rich interface to developers where developers will be able to write scripts and automate various jobs. So initially, they developed PowerShell for Windows only, but after version 6, it started supporting macOS and Linux as well.

Why do we need to learn PowerShell?

In Windows, it has DOS cmd, But if we need to do complex scripting and if we need to write any heavy scripts jobs, then the existing cmd is not good enough. PowerShell allows developers on Windows to write a script with controlling one computer to multiple remote computers at once. DOS is just a shell where PowerShell is a powerful scripting language that is completely based on .NET and is mostly used by my administrator to handle Networks and servers. On Windows, if you use DOS as cmd, you will be only checking ipconfig and some basic things, whereas by learning PowerShell, you will be a complete programmer. Because of its rich commands and object-based approach, it is a powerful tool for scripting.

Below are some points why we should learn PowerShell.

Consistency: The biggest benefit of PowerShell of the current version is that it is available for all Operating systems. So, for example, if you are developing the script on a computer X and after successfully testing your script on your computer X, you can share your script with another person who is going to run your script on his computer Y, which will work perfectly from the version 6 because PowerShell is available for all OS, ie. Windows, Linux, and macOS. So a script will work on different architecture as well. Other than Architecture, PowerShell also provides automation to administration tasks with better performance .
Interactive and scripting environments: The Powershell of Windows Prompt gives us a very interactive tool to access the command-line interface for scripting.
Object orientation: As it is totally written over the .NET, it will give us a complete Object-based approach to implementing it. So we are not just writing a command. It allows us to explore more.

Applications of PowerShell

It will be very useful for administrative management with PowerShell admin to delete, add and update users. We transfer heavy files from one computer to another to multiple network computers at once. If Admin has some task that he will run repetitively, then the Admin can use PowerShell to create a script and put it into job cycles where it will run at given intervals.

Example

Suppose, In PowerShell, we want to see the process with name “nginx” and “node.”

Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Name –eq "nginx"}

Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Name –match "node"}

Prerequisites

You can install Powershell by MSI, and you should only need to learn the basics of programming like, if, for loops and variables and it’s an available rich set of commands. Even if you do not know much programming you can directly start with PowerShell.

Target Audience

Developers: A developer can have requirements to develop a tool where he may change his data for a running application regularly. For example, on any e-commerce website, we want to show the best-selling products. So the developer will write a script that will fetch data daily and update top-selling product details so that top-selling products will be visible to end customers.

Administrator: The administrator can write a script for automation of updating, deleting, and performing certain tasks on all the users regularly to avoid repetition of the same tasks.