The PowerShell Scripting & Toolmaking Book

Veteran PowerShell experts and authors Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks bring you a newly updated book on PowerShell Scripting and "Toolmaking." Written in their inimitable, approachable style with plenty of examples, this book focuses on an all-new narrative based on their teaching experiences since 2010. You'll not only learn "how to script" in PowerShell, you'll learn the far more important patterns and practices that will enable you to create reusable tools that look and work like native PowerShell commands. You'll also learn a world of related topics, including how to add database access to your tools, how to publish to public and private repositories, and even an introduction to key topics like Pester testing.

Thousands of IT professionals have, after experiencing Don & Jeff's classes and books, remarked that, "now I need to go home and rewrite everything I've done!" That's what this book will do for you: change the way you think about coding in PowerShell. You'll find yourself producing more efficient, more reusable tools, more easily and more quickly. You'll cement a deep understanding of not only how PowerShell works, but why it works that way, helping you make better script design decisions, and helping you execute better PowerShell tools from now on.

This book is very much "Part 3" in Don and Jeff's approach to teaching PowerShell. Part 1 is their bestselling Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches (Manning), the "pre-scripting" PowerShell book that covers the shell's inner workings, core patterns, and basic usage. Part 2 is PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches, which covers the entry-level aspects of scripting, including the foundational narrative of "the right way" to build functions and tools. This book picks up where they leave off, providing a rapid rundown of that "right way," and quickly moving into more "grown-up" scripting techniques, advanced approaches, data handling, and a lot more.

APPLIES TO MANY VERSIONS OF POWERSHELL! If you're using PowerShell v4, v5, v5.1, or PowerShell 7, you'll find everything in this book is applicable to you in some form or another (although in PowerShell Core or PowerShell 7, any Windows-specific examples may not be functional).

NOW COVERS PESTER! Take your scripting to the next level by incorporating professional unit-testing using the ubiquitous Pester testing framework for PowerShell. A whole new section of this book covers everything you'll need to know to get started.

Hands-On Labs! You'll even find review questions and hands-on labs, complete with sample solutions, along with a short lab setup guide. These features will help you practice what you're learning, and make the book suitable for use in classroom settings (we recommend contacting the authors for an inexpensive site license, if you're a training center; we also provide slide decks, delivery guides, and other materials as part of a training center or trainer license).