Crate powershell_script

Windows Powershell script runner

This crate is pretty basic. It uses std::process::Command to pipe commands to PowerShell. In addition to that there is a convenient wrapper around process::Output especially tailored towards the usecase of running Windows PowerShell commands.

Example

I recommend that you write the commands to a *.ps file to be able to take advantage of existing tools to create the script.

This example creates a shortcut of notepad.exe to the desktop.

NB. If you use OneDrive chances are that your desktop is located at “$env:UserProfile\OneDrive\Desktop" instead.

In script.ps

$SourceFileLocation="C:\Windows\notepad.exe"
$ShortcutLocation="$env:UserProfile\Desktop\notepad.lnk"
$WScriptShell=New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
$Shortcut=$WScriptShell.CreateShortcut($ShortcutLocation)
$Shortcut.TargetPath=$SourceFileLocation
$Shortcut.Save()

In main.rs

use crate powershell_script;

// Creates a shortcut to notpad on the desktop
fn main() {
    let create_shortcut = include_str!("script.ps");
    match powershell_script::run(create_shortcut) {
        Ok(output) => {
            println!("{}", output);
        }
        Err(e) => {
            println!("Error: {}", e);
        }
    }
}

You can of course provide the commands as a string literal instead. Just beware that we run each line as a separate command.

The flag print_commands can be set to true if you want each command to be printed to the stdout of the main process as they’re run which can be useful for debugging scripts or displaying the progress.

Use the PsScriptBuilder for better control

Instead of running a script using powershell_script::run() you can use PsScriptBuilder to configure several options:

use powershell_script::PsScriptBuilder;

fn main() {
    let ps = PsScriptBuilder::new()
        .no_profile(true)
        .non_interactive(true)
        .hidden(false)
        .print_commands(false)
        .build();
    let output = ps.run(r#"echo "hello world""#).unwrap();

    assert!(output.stdout().unwrap().contains("hello world"));
}

Features and compatability

On Windows it defaults to using the PowerShell which ships with Windows, but you can also run scripts using PowerShell Core on Windows by enabling the core feature.

On all other operating systems it will run scripts using PowerShell core.

Structs

Output

A convenient wrapper around process::Output which indicates if the script ran successfully or not and gives easy access to both the utf-8 parsed output of stdout or stderr.

PsScript

PsScriptBuilder

Builds a PsScript instance with configurable options for running your script.

Enums

PsError

Functions

run

Runs a script in PowerShell. Returns an instance of Output. In the case of a failure when running the script it returns an PsError::Powershell(Output) which holds the output object containing the captures of stderr and stdout for display. The flag print_commands can be set to true if you want each command to be printed to the stdout of the main process as they’re run. Useful for debugging scripts.