{"id":575,"date":"2008-08-06T23:00:27","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T07:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/06\/touch-this\/"},"modified":"2008-08-06T23:00:27","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T07:00:27","slug":"touch-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/06\/touch-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Touch This"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the last tasks for the Active Directory Powershell book<\/a> was to assemble all the script samples. When the book is available you’ll be able to download a zip file from SAPIENPress.com. One thing I wanted to do was to use the file time stamp as a versioning tool.<\/p>\n

This is pretty easy to do by modifying the CreationTime property among others. I put together a simple function called Touch-File. The function takes a filename and datetime as parameters. Even though the function will likely be used in a pipeline, I wanted to add some code to verify the file exists.<\/p>\n

$file=Get-Item $path -ea “silentlycontinue”<\/font> <\/p>\n

By setting the -errorAction parameter to silentlyContinue, PowerShell will continue in the event the file doesn’t exist. Then I can use an If statement to see if $file has a value.<\/p>\n

if ($file) {
        Write-Host “Touching $path” -foregroundcolor Green<\/font> <\/p>\n

Once I know the file exists, I can easily change the CreationTime properties, among others:<\/p>\n

$file.CreationTime=$touch<\/font> <\/p>\n

Here’s a script I used to update all my AD scripts that puts this function to work.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
   1:<\/span> #Touch-File.ps1<\/span><\/pre>\n
   2:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
   3:<\/span> Function Touch-File {<\/pre>\n
   4:<\/span>     Param([string]$path=$(Throw \"You must specify the name of a file\"<\/span>),<\/pre>\n
   5:<\/span>           [datetime]$touch=(Get-Date)<\/pre>\n
   6:<\/span>           ) <\/pre>\n
   7:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
   8:<\/span>     #properties to change<\/span><\/pre>\n
   9:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
  10:<\/span>     [datetime]$UTCTime=$touch.ToUniversalTime()<\/pre>\n
  11:<\/span>     <\/pre>\n
  12:<\/span>     $file=Get-Item $path -ea \"silentlycontinue\"<\/span><\/pre>\n
  13:<\/span>     if<\/span> ($file) {<\/pre>\n
  14:<\/span>         Write-Host \"Touching $path\"<\/span> -foregroundcolor Green<\/pre>\n
  15:<\/span>         $file.CreationTime=$touch<\/pre>\n
  16:<\/span>         $file.CreationTimeUtc=$UTCTime<\/pre>\n
  17:<\/span>         $file.LastAccessTime=$touch<\/pre>\n
  18:<\/span>         $file.LastAccessTimeUtc=$UTCTime<\/pre>\n
  19:<\/span>         $file.LastWriteTime=$touch<\/pre>\n
  20:<\/span>         $file.LastWriteTimeUtc=$UTCTime<\/pre>\n
  21:<\/span>     }<\/pre>\n
  22:<\/span>     else<\/span> {<\/pre>\n
  23:<\/span>         Write-Warning \"Failed to find $path\"<\/span><\/pre>\n
  24:<\/span>         <\/pre>\n
  25:<\/span>     }<\/pre>\n
  26:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
  27:<\/span> }<\/pre>\n
  28:<\/span>  <\/pre>\n
  29:<\/span> dir c:\\scripts\\posh\\ad\\*.ps1 | foreach<\/span> {<\/pre>\n
  30:<\/span>   Touch-File $_ \"8\/1\/2008 01:00:00\"<\/span><\/pre>\n
  31:<\/span>   }<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Every file in C:\\scripts\\posh\\ad is sent to the Touch-File function that sets the file date to “8\/1\/2008 01:00:00”. Not sure if you have a need for a function like this but I like to share.<\/p>\n
\n
Download my sample script here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the last tasks for the Active Directory Powershell book was to assemble all the script samples. When the book is available you’ll be able to download a zip file from SAPIENPress.com. One thing I wanted to do was to use the file time stamp as a versioning tool.<\/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":[19,25],"tags":[263,28,57,262],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-training","category-windows-powershell","tag-file","tag-powershell","tag-scripting","tag-touch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","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=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}