How to get a Powershell script to launch from Visual Studio

Depending on your goals there's another way to go about this.

A mini-class with a PS wrapper :)

Add-Type -TypeDefinition @"
using System.Management.Automation;
using System.Management.Automation.Runspaces;

public class PS
{
    PowerShell host = PowerShell.Create(InitialSessionState.CreateDefault());

    public object RunScript(string path)
    {
        return host.AddScript(path).Invoke();
    }
}
"@ -ReferencedAssemblies ([PowerShell].Assembly.Location)

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Once it's created, the method can be invoked after you instantiate the class.

[PS]::new().RunScript('C:\Development\scratch\test.ps1')

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The advantage of this approach is that you can get detailed error information. Runtime errors (terminating errors) will throw as exceptions when Invoke is called. Non-terminating errors are written to host.Streams.Error.

I just noticed the VB .NET tag. Is the C# example easy enough for you to translate? I can change it, but I always have to double check VB .NET syntax which is only worthwhile if you find it to be.

No Chris, C# is fine. I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

ps. I have a simple text log file created which I'd like to be filled with any errors. Can I pass the errors listed in the host.Streams.Error object to that log file easily (If it's not too much trouble...I can open another question for that if you need)?

Process.Start("powershell", "-noexit  -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -file 'c:\Temp\myScript.ps1'")

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Yes, you can. The Error collection contains a list of ErrorRecord objects. This example should push that to the console, it shows how I would distinguish between the different types of error (runtime vs managed).

Add-Type -TypeDefinition @"
Imports System
Imports System.Management.Automation
Imports System.Management.Automation.Runspaces

Public Class PS
    Dim host As PowerShell = PowerShell.Create(InitialSessionState.CreateDefault())

    Public Function RunScript(path As String) As object
        Try
            Dim value As Object = host.AddScript(path).Invoke()
            If host.HadErrors Then
                For Each errorRecord as ErrorRecord in host.Streams.Error
                    Console.WriteLine(errorRecord.Exception.Message)
                Next
            Else
                Return value
            End If
        Catch e As Exception
            Console.WriteLine(e.Message)
        End Try

        Return Nothing
    End Function
End Class
"@ -ReferencedAssemblies ([PowerShell].Assembly.Location) -Language VisualBasic

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David,

Your "Process.Start" approach results in the same blue screen flash as before and no file creation. I'll keep watching for more suggestions from you while I test Chris's code.

Chris,

The "Host" object that we're instantiating has no "Create" method attached to it (at least not in the namespace I'm seeing). It does however, have a CreateNestedPowerShell method instead. If I use that one instead, I do find the "AddScript" method but  no "HadErrors" property.

I'm using/importing all three namespaces you have in your example. I'm also running VS2015.
Thoughts?

It's a static method on the System.Management.Automation.PowerShell class. Be a touch careful about assembly versions though, Visual Studio is terrible at picking a modern version when selecting references. I normally feed it the path revealed by the snippet below when adding the reference:

[PowerShell].Assembly.Location

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That gets it the assembly associated with PowerShell 5.1 not PowerShell 2.0.

Working on that now....

Have a look at this web page. Calling a PowerShell Script From Your .NET Code.

Chris,

Like you say, I think if we can persuade VS to take a different PowerShell version, we'd be home free.
This code however:

"Add-Type -TypeDefinition @" and "@ -ReferencedAssemblies ([PowerShell].Assembly.Location) -Language VisualBasic"

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surrounding the class code causes the entire class code to display as quoted-text and red-marks the whole thing with a "Statement cannot appear outside of a method body" error.

I'm putting this in an existing VB project so the VB format would be preferable, but whether in C# or VB, can you show me a working example of the ReferencedAssemblies approach please? I don't mind rewriting it to fit my environment/local-paths, etc.

Thanks in advance!

This is the resulting path given by PS:

"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.Net\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Management.Automation\v4.0_3.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35\System.Management
.Automation.dll"

Yesterday actually, I included that particular reference in the project, which was when I got the strange "CreateNestedPowerShell" method instead of the simpler "Create". Luckily, it does appear that I can download any version of the various PS namespaces through NuGet though, but I'm not sure which I need.

Here are the options:
https://www.nuget.org/profiles/PowerShellTeam

Hmm okay, well at least that bit is right.

The CreateNestedPowerShell method is a method on the instantiated host, we don't need that one. To create the host in the first place you want the static method on the PowerShell type.

Where this:

PowerShell.Create(InitialSessionState.CreateDefault())

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Is this static method:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh470726(v=vs.85).aspx?cs-save-lang=1&cs-lang=vb#code-snippet-1

Using the url you just posted, I tracked backwards (through the webpage's bread-crumb path) and found no specific version number referenced. Perhaps you can look in your object explorer in VS and see the correct version number that way?

This is my assemblies full name:

System.Management.Automation, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35

I think you have the right assembly.

Going back to this:

> The "Host" object that we're instantiating has no "Create" method attached to it

The create method is not on the instantiated "Host" object. It's a static method on the PowerShell type (does not require an instantiated object).

You're right that the instantiated "Host" object does not have such a method. But if you've instantiated it, you're done with that part and it's on to loading a script into the Commands collection (using the AddScript method).

It worked! :)

Yesterday, for whatever reason (operator error I'm sure) this line of code:

Dim host As PowerShell = PowerShell.Create(InitialSessionState.CreateDefault())

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wasn't liked by VS so I changed it to this:

Dim host As PowerShell

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and followed that up with the "Create" static method used in a constructor (Sub New) which it didn't like either (saying that a "declaration is expected").

At any rate, it works!

Thank you, thank you!

Yay :) Good work :)

A big thank you to everyone who helped!
Hat-tip to David J. and Fernando.

For any future readers of this thread, I later on needed to get this working across a network which required my changing some things. The scope and ExecutionPolicy needed to be altered and since catching all errors was still important to me (which can't be done through a simple shell process) I posted this additional question which was very useful.