{"id":526,"date":"2008-07-23T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/22\/fun-with-debug-messages\/"},"modified":"2008-07-22T04:43:27","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T12:43:27","slug":"fun-with-debug-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/23\/fun-with-debug-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun with Debug Messages"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my script and function development, I often add the line $DebugPreference="SilentlyContinue" to the beginning of my code. Throughout the script I add lines using Write-Debug that tell me what the script is doing or the value of a particular variable. This has been very helpful. When I want to see the debug messages, I set $DebugPreference to "Continue" and voila!.  In PrimalScript all the messages are written to the debug panel.  But I wanted to do more than merely have a line like:<\/p>\n

write-debug "creating user account"<\/font><\/p>\n

I wanted to see more information like a time stamp or user credentials. I also found it difficult sometimes to pass object properties to the debug pipeline. So I came up with a function I call New-DebugMessage.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
   1:<\/span> Function New-DebugMessage {<\/pre>\n
   2:<\/span>        Param([string]$text)<\/pre>\n
   3:<\/span>        <\/pre>\n
   4:<\/span>        # build a text string of information that can be passed<\/span><\/pre>\n
   5:<\/span>        # to different pipelines like Debug<\/span><\/pre>\n
   6:<\/span>        <\/pre>\n
   7:<\/span>        #here are some variables you might want to work with<\/span><\/pre>\n
   8:<\/span>        $computer=$env:computername<\/pre>\n
   9:<\/span>        $domain=$env:userdomain<\/pre>\n
  10:<\/span>        $user=$env:username<\/pre>\n
  11:<\/span>        $timestamp=(Get-Date -Format g).toString()<\/pre>\n
  12:<\/span>        $line=$($myinvocation.scriptlinenumber)<\/pre>\n
  13:<\/span>        $script<\/span>=$($myinvocation.invocationname)<\/pre>\n
  14:<\/span>        <\/pre>\n
  15:<\/span>        [string]$msg="[{0}:{1}\\{2}] {3} Line:{4} {5}"<\/span> -f $computer,$domain,$user,$timestamp,$line,$text<\/pre>\n
  16:<\/span>        <\/pre>\n
  17:<\/span>        write $msg<\/pre>\n
  18:<\/span>    <\/pre>\n
  19:<\/span>    }<\/pre>\n
  20:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The function returns a string that can be used by Write-Debug:<\/p>\n
Write-Debug (New-DebugMessage "Getting powershell process")<\/font><\/p>\n
The string is passed to the function. Within the function I’ve set some variables that you might find handy in your debug message. Most of them should be self-explanatory. The $line variable will display the line number of your script where the Write-Debug message occurs. If you place your Write-Debug command before key commands, it should be easy to jump to those sections.<\/p>\n
Here’s a short script that I tested this with.<\/p>\n
$debugpreference="continue" <\/font><\/p>\n
Write-Debug (New-DebugMessage "starting $($myinvocation.invocationname)")
\nWrite-Debug (New-DebugMessage "Getting Date")
\nGet-Date
\nWrite-Debug (New-DebugMessage "Getting powershell process")
\nGet-Process powershell
\nWrite-Debug (New-DebugMessage "finished")<\/font><\/p>\n
When I run the script I get this output (click the image for a larger view):<\/p>\n
\"debug\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Does this look useful to you?  What other things would you like to add or did you add to your debug messages?<\/p>\n
\n
Download the function here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In my script and function development, I often add the line $DebugPreference=”SilentlyContinue” to the beginning of my code. Throughout the script I add lines using Write-Debug that tell me what the script is doing or the value of a particular variable. This has been very helpful. When I want to see the debug messages, I set $DebugPreference to “Continue” and voila!.  In PrimalScript all the messages are written to the debug panel.  But I wanted more .<\/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":[222,198,28,57,255],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-powershell","tag-debugging","tag-function","tag-powershell","tag-scripting","tag-write-debug"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","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=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}