Exercise 5.md

Exercise 5: Accessing PowerShell Runspace with IronPython

In this exercise, we'll use IronPython to create a PowerShell runspace and execute a simple PowerShell command. This exercise is intended to illustrate how IronPython can integrate with PowerShell, expanding its capabilities.

1. Create a Python file called powershell.py in the same folder as your IronPython console. (ex: C:\Program Files\IronPython 3.4)
2. Start by importing the necessary .NET libraries that allow IronPython to interact with PowerShell.

clr.AddReference('System.Management.Automation')
from System.Management.Automation import PowerShell

3. After importing the necessary libraries, create a new instance of PowerShell.

ps = PowerShell.Create()

4. Next, add the PowerShell command you wish to execute. In this example, we will use the Get-Process command to retrieve the status of processes on a local or remote computer.

ps.AddScript("Get-Process")

4. After adding the command, you can now invoke it and get the output. The results will be printed on the console.

output = ps.Invoke()
print(output)

5. Finally, execute the entire IronPython script using your IronPython environment, ipy.exe.

import clr;

clr.AddReference('System.Management.Automation')
from System.Management.Automation import PowerShell

ps = PowerShell.Create()
ps.AddScript("Get-Process")

output = ps.Invoke()
print(output)

6. Do this by opening a PowerShell window in the folder. You should see a list of running processes on your machine. If you see the below result, then you have successfully accessed PowerShell runspace using IronPython, however, the information is not in a format that we can read.

.\ipy.exe powershell.py
<System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection`1[[System.Management.Automation.PSObject, System.Management.Automation, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]] object at 0x000000000000002B [System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection`1[System.Management.Automation.PSObject]]>

7. To then read the PSObject, we will need to iterate over the object and print it to our console.

import clr;

clr.AddReference('System.Management.Automation')
from System.Management.Automation import PowerShell

ps = PowerShell.Create()
ps.AddScript("Get-Process")

output = ps.Invoke()

for line in output:
    print(line)