{"id":601,"date":"2008-08-13T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T19:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/13\/powershell-inputbox\/"},"modified":"2016-10-27T13:51:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T20:51:42","slug":"powershell-inputbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/13\/powershell-inputbox\/","title":{"rendered":"PowerShell InputBox"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day<\/a> I gave you a function to create a VBScript style message box in PowerShell. If you find yourself needing MsgBox in PowerShell, you’re likely going to want InputBox. This too is accomplished using the [microsoft.visualbasic.interaction] class. You’ll need to load the assembly first if you haven’t already.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> [reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname(“microsoft.visualbasic”) | Out-Null<\/span><\/p>\n

PS C:\\> [microsoft.visualbasic.interaction]::Inputbox(“enter something”)<\/span><\/p>\n

As in VBScript you can also specify a title and a default value. Here’s a more complete function you could call and an example.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
   1:<\/span> Function Show-Inputbox {<\/pre>\n
   2:<\/span>  Param([string]$message=$(Throw \"You must enter a prompt message\"<\/span>),<\/pre>\n
   3:<\/span>        [string]$title=\"Input\"<\/span>,<\/pre>\n
   4:<\/span>        [string]$default<\/span><\/pre>\n
   5:<\/span>        )<\/pre>\n
   6:<\/span><\/pre>\n
   7:<\/span>  [reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname(\"microsoft.visualbasic\"<\/span>) | Out-Null<\/pre>\n
   8:<\/span>  [microsoft.visualbasic.interaction]::InputBox($message,$title,$default<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
   9:<\/span><\/pre>\n
  10:<\/span> }<\/pre>\n
  11:<\/span><\/pre>\n
  12:<\/span> $c=Show-Inputbox -message \"Enter a computername\"<\/span> `<\/pre>\n
  13:<\/span> -title \"Computername\"<\/span> -default<\/span> $env:Computername<\/pre>\n
  14:<\/span><\/pre>\n
  15:<\/span> if<\/span> ($c.Trim()) {<\/pre>\n
  16:<\/span>   Get-WmiObject win32_computersystem -computer $c<\/pre>\n
  17:<\/span>   }<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Executing the sample code will give you this inputbox:<\/p>\n
\"pshinputbox\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The inputbox’s return value is whatever you enter. What you need to do, as I’ve done, is add code to validate the data.<\/p>\n
$c=Show-Inputbox -message “Enter a computername” `
\n-title “Computername” -default $env:Computername <\/span><\/p>\n
if ($c.Trim()) {
\nGet-WmiObject win32_computersystem -computer $c
\n}<\/span><\/p>\n
In my example I only use the value in the Get-WMIObject expression if $c has a value. I used the Trim() method to remove any spaces. It’s possible a user could accidentally enter space somewhere so using Trim cleans that up.<\/p>\n
\n
Download this sample here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other day I gave you a function to create a VBScript style message box in PowerShell. If you find yourself needing MsgBox in PowerShell, you’re likely going to want InputBox.<\/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":[24,25],"tags":[198,270,28,57,996],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vbscript","category-windows-powershell","tag-function","tag-inputbox","tag-powershell","tag-scripting","tag-vbscript"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","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=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12767,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/12767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}