EZOut

Installing EZOut

You can install EZOut from the PowerShell Gallery. Simply:

Install-Module EZOut -Scope CurrentUser

Using EZOut as a GitHub Action:

You can use EZOut as a GitHub Action to automatically build your formatting and types files on every checkin.

 - name: Build Formatting and Types   
   uses: StartAutomating/EZOut@master
   id: BuildEZOut

Understanding PowerShell Formatting

Unlike many languages, PowerShell has a formatting engine built into the box.
You can define one or more “Views” that will change how PowerShell will display an object. These views are stored in a .format.ps1xml file, and loaded in a module manifest with the setting ‘FormatsToProcess:’ This is an example of a minimal module with just a format file:

@{
    ModuleVersion = 0.1
    FormatsToProcess = 'My.Format.ps1xml'
}

PowerShell formatting primarily supports three different types of views for any typename:

A Table View
A List View
A Custom View

Table and List Views are fairly straightforward: You select some properties to display, and you get a table.

Custom Views, as the name implies, are anything you’d like them to be. Custom views can also be defined as a control, which can be referenced in other custom views.

You most likely see complex custom controls everyday: The most complex formatter built into PowerShell is the formatter for Help.

Objects in PowerShell are formatted according to their .pstypenames property. If you’re creating a normal .NET object, this property will be the inheritance hierarchy of the class. For instance:

# This will have three typenames:
# System.Management.Automation.CmdletInfo, System.Management.Automation.CommandInfo, and System.Object
# When you see the output of Get-Command, you're seeing the formatter for System.Management.CommandInfo
Get-Command Get-Command | Select-Object -ExpandProperty PSTypenames

You can switch out the typenames of any given object by manipulating the typenames property

$helpCommand = Get-Command Get-Help  # Get the command Get-Help
$helpCommand.pstypenames.clear()     # Clear it's typenames
$helpCommand                         # When we echo it now, it will be unformatted.

$helpCommand.pstypenames.add('System.Management.Automation.CommandInfo') # This adds the formatting back

You can also define a single typename when creating an object from a hashtable. As the typename in this example implies, you can have a valid typename in PowerShell that could never exist as a real type in .NET.

[PSCustomObject]@{PSTypeName='http://My/TypeName/IsNot/A/Valid/.NET#Typename';N=1}

Using EZOut

Using EZOut to build your formatting:

Switch to your module directory, then run:

Write-EZFormatFile | Set-Content .\MyModule.EzFormat.ps1 -Encoding UTF8 # Replace MyModule with the name of your module

This file will contain the scaffolding to write your formatters. Whenever you run this file, MyModule.format.ps1xml and MyModule.types.ps1xml will be regenerated.

For a working example of this, check out EZOut’s own .ezformat.ps1 file.

We can declare formatters directly in the .ezformat.ps1 file, or within a /Formatting or /Views directory, in a file named .(format

view).(ps1

xml)

In the examples below, we will be piping to Out-FormatData (to combine all of the formatting) and Add-FormatData (to register it in a temporary module).

Writing Table Views

Table views are the most commonly used view in PowerShell, and the default of Write-FormatView

Write-FormatView -TypeName APerson -Property FirstName, LastName, Age |
    Out-FormatData |
    Add-FormatData
        
[PSCustomObject]@{PSTypeName='APerson';FirstName='James';LastName='Brundage';Age=41}

We can specify a -Width for each column. Using a negative number will make the column right-aligned:

Write-FormatView -TypeName APerson -Property FirstName, LastName, Age -Width -20, 30, 5 |
    Out-FormatData |
    Add-FormatData
        
[PSCustomObject]@{PSTypeName='APerson';FirstName='James';LastName='Brundage';Age=41}

We can also specify alignment using -AlignProperty, or use -FormatProperty to determine how a property is displayed, and even -HideHeader.

Write-FormatView -TypeName MenuItem -Property Name, Price -AlignProperty @{Name='Center';Price='Center'} -FormatProperty @{
    Price = '{0:c}'
} -Width 40, 40 -HideHeader |
    Out-FormatData |
    Add-FormatData

[PSCustomObject]@{PSTypeName='MenuItem';Name='Coffee';Price=2.99}

We can define a -VirtualProperty, which will display as a column but does not really exist. Also, in most hosts, we can conditionally -ColorProperty or -ColorRow:

Write-FormatView -Property Number, IsEven, IsOdd -AutoSize -ColorRow {
    if ($_.N % 2) { "#ff0000"} else {"#0f0"}
} -VirtualProperty @{
    IsEven = { -not ($_.N % 2)}
    IsOdd = { ($_.N % 2) -as [bool] }
} -AliasProperty @{
    Number = 'N'
} -TypeName N |
    Out-FormatData|
    Add-FormatData
        
1..5 | Foreach-Object { [PSCustomObject]@{PSTypeName='N';N=$_} }

Using EZOut Interactively

As shown in the examples above, we can use EZOut to add formatting interactively, by piping to Add-FormatData.

Import-Module EZOut

Write-FormatView -TypeName 'System.TimeZoneInfo' -Property Id, DisplayName -AlignProperty @{
    ID = 'Right'
    DisplayName = 'Left'
} -AutoSize |  
        Out-FormatData |
        Push-FormatData
    
Get-TimeZone

Creating Types with EZOut

EZOut can also create types files.

You can use Write-TypeView to write a segment of a types.ps1xml directly.

You can also use Import-TypeView to import an entire directory tree into a types.ps1xml file.

Advanced EZOut examples

Due to EZOut being a build tool, we want to impact your runspace as little as possible.

Therefore, advanced EZOut formatting examples have been moved into a new module: Posh

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