{"id":1443,"date":"2009-05-26T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/26\/creating-xml-configuration-files-the-powershell-way\/"},"modified":"2009-05-26T05:00:39","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T13:00:39","slug":"creating-xml-configuration-files-the-powershell-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/26\/creating-xml-configuration-files-the-powershell-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating XML Configuration Files the PowerShell Way."},"content":{"rendered":"

Several weeks ago I posted an entry on creating configuration files<\/a>. This same technique can also work with XML files. I’m still working on a more advanced technique but wanted to share this simpler approach.  First, here’s a sample XML configuration file:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
#DemoXMLConfig.ps1<\/span><\/pre>\n
#Sample configuration template<\/span><\/pre>\n
#this is for demonstration purposes and proof of concept<\/span><\/pre>\n
@\"<\/pre>\n
<Configuration><\/pre>\n
        <Computer Help=\"<\/span>Enter a computername\">{0}<\/Computer><\/pre>\n
        <IP Help=\"<\/span>Enter an IPv4 Address\">{1}<\/IP><\/pre>\n
        <Subnet Help=\"<\/span>Enter an IPv4 SubnetMask\">{2}<\/Subnet><\/pre>\n
        <Gateway Help=\"<\/span>Enter the default<\/span> gateway\">{3}<\/Gateway><\/pre>\n
        <DNS><\/pre>\n
            <DNSServer Help=\"<\/span>Enter the primary DNS Server\">{4}<\/DNSServer><\/pre>\n
            <DNSServer Help=\"<\/span>Enter the secondary DNS Server\">{5}<\/DNSServer><\/pre>\n
        <\/DNS><\/pre>\n
        <Comments><\/pre>\n
            <Comment Help=\"<\/span>Enter a comment\">{6}<\/Comment><\/pre>\n
        <\/Comments>    <\/pre>\n
        <Update help=\"<\/span>Enter True or False to enable FOO\"><\/pre>\n
            EnableFoo={7}<\/pre>\n
        <\/Update><\/pre>\n
        <Locations><\/pre>\n
            <Location><\/pre>\n
                <City help=\"<\/span>Enter a city name\">{8}<\/City><\/pre>\n
                <CostCenter help=\"<\/span>Enter a cost center\">{9}<\/CostCenter><\/pre>\n
            <\/Location><\/pre>\n
        <\/Locations><\/pre>\n
<\/Configuration><\/pre>\n
\"<\/span>@<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The XML is contained within a here string in a PowerShell script. Notice the placeholders like {0} and {1}. I’ll use the  -f operator to fill in the blanks. To make this more interesting, I’m going to pull the data from a CSV file.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
Computername,IP,Subnet,Gateway,PrimaryDNS,SecondaryDNS,Comment,Enable,City,CostCenter<\/pre>\n
SERVERA,192.168.34.56,255.255.255.0,192.168.34.1,192.168.1.10,172.16.8.7,\"Sample configuration\"<\/span>,TRUE,Tacoma,87321<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
To create the XML configuration file I’ll need to get these values and merge them with the XML in DemoXMLConfig.ps1. I put together a short script to handle that.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
#New-XMLConfig.ps1<\/span><\/pre>\n
#define XML configuration template<\/span><\/pre>\n
$config=\"c:\\scripts\\posh\\demoxmlconfig.ps1\"<\/span><\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
#define the name of the xml file to create<\/span><\/pre>\n
$xml=\"c:\\test\\MySampleConfig.xml\"<\/span><\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
#let's create a custom object that has the values we <\/span><\/pre>\n
#need for the XML file pulled from a CSV file.<\/span><\/pre>\n
$data=Import-Csv c:\\scripts\\posh\\xmlconfigdata.csv<\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
[xml]$x=(&$config) -f $data.Computername,$data.IP,$data.subnet,$data.gateway,$data.PrimaryDNS,$data.SecondaryDNS,$data.comment,$data.enable,$data.city,$data.CostCenter<\/pre>\n
$x.save($xml)<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The data from the CSV file is imported using Import-CSV<\/strong> and saved to $data. I then “execute” the here string script and use -f to replace placeholders with corresponding values from $data. The output is an XML file so I’ll save it to a variable, $x, specifically cast as an [XML] object. This step is important because in the last line I call the Save()<\/strong> method which commits the XML in memory to a file. Just like that I have a valid XML document ready to use.<\/p>\n
It’s not too hard to have a CSV file with several lines and creating multiple XML documents in a matter of seconds.<\/p>\n
\n
If you want to try this out yourself you can download a zip file with these samples here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several weeks ago I posted an entry on creating configuration files. This same technique can also work with XML files. I’m still working on a more advanced technique but wanted to share this simpler approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[498,507,28,197],"class_list":["post-1443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-powershell","tag-configuration","tag-import-csv","tag-powershell","tag-xml"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}