How to create PowerGUI® Script Editor Add-ons the easy way

In case you haven’t heard, there is a contest coming up that gives you the opportunity to win some money while having fun with PowerShell and PowerGUI.  In order to win something in the contest you have to enter, and in order to enter you have to create either a PowerPack for the PowerGUI Admin Console or an Add-on for the PowerGUI Script Editor.  I have spent a lot of time creating Script Editor Add-ons over the past few months, and when you work on things like Add-ons it can be very helpful to have the right tools at your side.

One of my favorite tools that I like to use for any repetitive PowerShell scripting is PowerShell snippets.  A PowerShell snippet is an xml document (.snippet file) that defines a short piece of PowerShell script with a few fields that can be customized when the snippet is inserted into a script.  Think of a snippet as a little user interface for injecting small pieces of PowerShell script into larger scripts that you are work on.  Snippets are incredibly useful and easy to create and customize, allowing you to arm yourself with tons of useful pieces of PowerShell script and save yourself a lot of typing.

While working on the Add-ons I have been publishing I decided I should build up a collection of snippets so that I could focus my efforts on the core logic inside the Add-on that makes it do wonderful things like sign scripts, create modules, and build other Add-ons, and less on the trivial details like adding and removing menus, menu items, toolbars, toolbar buttons and dockable windows.  This effort has resulted in a collection of 31 snippets that make creating a PowerGUI Script Editor Add-on much easier and today I have published that collection so that anyone can use them when creating their own Add-ons!

If you want to see an example of how easy it is to insert one of these snippets, here is a screenshot showing the snippet menu that appears after I press Ctrl+I (or Edit | Insert Snippet), along with some of the nested folders and their contents showing some of the snippets that are available:

If you want to build Add-ons, these snippets make it much easier to get started.  All you need to do is the following:

1. Download the Authoring Toolkit Add-on version 1.0.2 or later.  In version 1.0.2 I updated the Add-ons that are generated such that they use a $pgse variable for the root of the Add-on SDK.  Most of the snippets are dependent on this variable, so you should either download this version of the Add-on or make sure you are using a $pgse variable as the root of the Add-on SDK in Add-ons you have already started building.

2. Download the Script Editor Add-on snippets.  The download page describes how to install the snippets.  Note that since they must be copied into a Program Files folder, you must have the proper permissions to put them there.

3. Create a new Add-on or open an Add-on you are already working on and start using the Edit | Insert Snippet menu item to build more extensions to the PowerGUI Script Editor UI.

Between the Authoring Toolkit, the tutorial, the SDK documentation, and now these snippets, you should now have plenty of tools available to make it easier for you to create snippets for the contest that starts on October 15th.  I’m looking forward to seeing your entries!

Kirk out.

P.S. As I was publishing this I thought of a bunch more snippets that could be useful, but this is a good first set to get you started. If you like snippets and there are other snippets you would like to see, related to Add-ons or anything else you do with PowerShell, let me know so that I can know where you would like to see more effort in the future.  Thanks!