PowerShell has an interesting cmdlet that lets you save a transcript of a PowerShell session. Every command you run and the resulting output can be recorded to a text file. This file can be used as a training aid, an audit trail, or as the source for rapid PowerShell script development.<\/p>\n
To begin recording, use the Start-Transcript cmdlet simply by specifying a filename:<\/p>\n
start-transcript c:\\transcript.txt<\/span><\/p>\n From this point, every shell command and output will also be recorded in the transcript file. To stop recording run<\/p>\n stop-transcript<\/span><\/p>\n If you open the file in Notepad (or use Get-Content) you’ll see header and footer sections plus every command you ran. You’ll see that each command includes the PowerShell prompt, which defaults to a directory path. Since a .ps1 file is really nothing more than a bunch of PowerShell expressions, you could take the transcript file, parse out the expressions and have the beginnings of a PowerShell script.<\/p>\n I’ve created a function, as demonstrated in this script, that takes a PowerShell transcript and creates a text file (presumably a ps1 file) with just the commands or expressions.<\/p>\n # ParseTranscript.ps1<\/span> The function needs the filename and path of the transcript file and a filename for the output file.<\/p>\n The function uses Select-String to only pull the lines that have “> “, which should be the end of each prompt, and creates $filteredLog<\/p>\n $filteredLog=Get-Content $log |Select-String “> “<\/span><\/p>\n Normally you would use a ForEach expression to parse out $filteredLog. However, I’m assuming I won’t need the last expression entered which will be a Stop-Transcript command. Therefore, I’m using a For expression to get every line but the last one.<\/p>\n for ($i=0;$i -lt $filteredLog.length-1;$i++) <\/span><\/p>\n The real work is splitting the line at >. I create a second temporary array to hold the results of the Split method:<\/p>\n $tmp=($filteredLog[$i].ToString()).split(“>”)<\/span><\/p>\n Finally I get the second element of the temporary array which should be a PowerShell command. I use Trim to get rid of any leading or trailing spaces:<\/p>\n ($tmp[1]).Trim() | Out-File -filepath $script -append<\/span><\/p>\n This process is repeated for every line in $filteredlog except the last one. That’s all there is to it. When I’m finished I have a .ps1 file that could be run as a script, or most likely edited and refined in PrimalScript.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PowerShell has an interesting cmdlet that lets you save a transcript of a PowerShell session. Every command you run and the resulting output can be recorded to a text file. This file can be used as a training aid, an audit trail, or as the source for rapid PowerShell script development.<\/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":[2,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-windows-powershell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","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=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Function Parse-Transcript {<\/span>
# Take a PowerShell transcript and parse it for commands,<\/span>
# sending each line to a new script file which can then<\/span>
# be further edited.<\/span>
# transcript source example<\/span>
# $log=”c:\\transcript.txt”<\/span>
# filename for script to be created from transcript<\/span>
# $script=”c:\\TempScript.ps1″<\/span>
Param ([string]$log=$(Throw “You need to specify a transcript file name”),[string]$script=$(Throw “You need to specify a filename for the output”))<\/span>
if (! (test-path $log)) {<\/span>
throw “$($log) can’t be found!”<\/span>
}<\/span>
#Create new file and overwrite any existing file<\/span>
“# Script Created “+(Get-Date).ToString() | `<\/span>
Out-File -filepath $script<\/span>
“# Source file: “+$log |Out-File -filepath $script -append<\/span>
“# Author: “+ ((get-childitem env:username).value).ToUpper() | `<\/span>
Out-File -filepath $script -append<\/span>
$filteredLog=Get-Content $log |Select-String “> “<\/span>
# drop the last line which is likely a stop-transcript command<\/span>
for ($i=0;$i -lt $filteredLog.length-1;$i++) <\/span>
{<\/span>
$tmp=($filteredLog[$i].ToString()).split(“>”)<\/span>
($tmp[1]).Trim() | Out-File -filepath $script -append<\/span>
}<\/span>
Write-Host “Finished parsing” $log”. See” $script “for your script.”<\/span>
}<\/span>
$source=Read-Host “What is the filename and path of your transcript file?”<\/span>
$dest=Read-Host “What is the filename and path for the ps1 output file?”<\/span>
Parse-transcript $source $dest<\/span><\/p>\n