Revise PowerShell basics with a simple script that opens a browser for each specified URL. We’re gonna cover how to declare variables, define arrays, concatenate strings and run CMD commands.
Table of Contents
Just a second! 🫷 If you are here, it means that you are a software developer.
So, you know that storage, networking, and domain management have a cost .
If you want to support this blog, please ensure that you have disabled the adblocker for this site. I configured Google AdSense to show as few ADS as possible – I don’t want to bother you with lots of ads, but I still need to add some to pay for the resources for my site.
Thank you for your understanding. – Davide
Say that your project is already deployed on multiple environments: dev, UAT, and production; now you want to open the same page from all the environments.
You could do it manually, by composing the URL on a notepad. Or you could create a PowerShell script that opens them for you.
In this article, I’m going to share with you a simple script to open multiple browsers with predefined URLs. First of all, I’ll show you the completed script, then I’ll break it down to understand what’s going on and to brush up on some basic syntax for PowerShell.
Understanding the problem: the full script
I have a website deployed on 3 environments: dev, UAT, and production, and I want to open all of them under the same page, in this case under “/Image?w=60”.
So, here’s the script that opens 3 instances of my default browser, each with the URL of one of the environments:
In fact, to declare an array you must simply separate each string with ,.
Foreach loops in PowerShell
Among the other loops (while, do-while, for), the foreach loop is probably the most used.
Even here, it’s really simple:
foreach($baseUrl in $baseUrls)
{
}
As we’ve already seen before, there is no type declaration for the current item.
Just like C#, the keyword used in the body of the loop definition is in.
foreach (var item in collection)
{
// In C# we use the `var` keyword to declare the variable}
String concatenation in PowerShell
The $fullUrl variable is the concatenation of 2 string variables: $baseUrl and $path.
$fullUrl = "$($baseUrl)$($path)";
We can see that to declare this new string we must wrap it between "...".
More important, every variable that must be interpolated is wrapped in a $() block.
How to run a command with PowerShell
The key part of this script is for sure this line:
Invoke-Expression "cmd.exe /C start $($fullUrl)"
The Invoke-Expression cmdlet evaluates and runs the specified string in your local machine.
The command cmd.exe /C start $($fullUrl) just tells the CMD to open the link stored in the $fullUrl variable with the default browser.
Wrapping up
We learned how to open multiple browser instances with PowerShell. As you can understand, this was just an excuse to revise some basic concepts of PowerShell.
I think that many of us are too focused on our main language (C#, Java, JavaScript, and so on) that we forget to learn something different that may help us with our day-to-day job.
After 100 articles, I’ve found some neat ways to automate my blogging workflow. I will share my experience and the tools I use from the very beginning to the very end.
Table of Contents
Just a second! 🫷 If you are here, it means that you are a software developer.
So, you know that storage, networking, and domain management have a cost .
If you want to support this blog, please ensure that you have disabled the adblocker for this site. I configured Google AdSense to show as few ADS as possible – I don’t want to bother you with lots of ads, but I still need to add some to pay for the resources for my site.
Thank you for your understanding. – Davide
This is my 100th article 🥳 To celebrate it, I want to share with you the full process I use for writing and publishing articles.
In this article I will share all the automation and tools I use for writing, starting from the moment an idea for an article pops up in my mind to what happens weeks after an article has been published.
I hope to give you some ideas to speed up your publishing process. Of course, I’m open to suggestions to improve my own flow: perhaps (well, certainly), you use better tools and processes, so feel free to share them.
Introducing my blog architecture
To better understand what’s going on, I need a very brief overview of the architecture of my blog.
It is written in Gatsby, a framework based on ReactJS that, in short, allows you to transform Markdown files into blog posts (it does many other things, but they are not important for the purpose of this article).
So, all my blog is stored in a private GitHub repository. Every time I push some changes on the master branch, a new deployment is triggered, and I can see my changes in a bunch of minutes on my blog.
As I said, I use Gatsby. But the key point here is that my blog is stored in a GitHub repo: this means that everything you’ll read here is valid for any Headless CMS based on Git, such as Gatsby, Hugo, NextJS, and Jekyll.
Now that you know some general aspects, it’s time to deep dive into my writing process.
Before writing: organizing ideas with GitHub
My central source, as you might have already understood, is GitHub.
There, I write all my notes and keep track of the status of my articles.
Everything is quite well organized, and with the support of some automation, I can speed up my publishing process.
Github Projects to track the status of the articles
GitHub Projects are the parts of GitHub that allow you to organize GitHub Issues to track their status.
I’ve created 2 GitHub Projects: one for the main articles (like this one), and one for my C# and Clean Code Tips.
In this way, I can use different columns and have more flexibility when handling the status of the tasks.
GitHub issues templates
As I said, to write my notes I use GitHub issues.
When I add a new Issue, the first thing is to define which type of article I want to write. And, since sometimes many weeks or months pass between when I came up with the idea for an article and when I start writing it, I need to organize my ideas in a structured way.
To do that, I use GitHub templates. When I create a new Issue, I choose which kind of article I’m going to write.
Based on the layout, I can add different info. For instance, when I want to write a new “main” article, I see this form
which is prepopulated with some fields:
Title: with a placeholder ([Article] )
Content: with some sections (the titles, translated from Italian, mean Topics, Links, General notes)
Labels: I automatically assign the Article label to the issue (you’ll see later why I do that)
How can you create GitHub issue templates? All you need is a Markdown file under the .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE folder with content similar to this one.
---
name: New article
about: New blog article
title: "[Article] - "
labels: Article
assignees: bellons91
---
## Argomenti
## Link
## Appunti vari
And you’re good to go!
GitHub action to assign issues to a project
Now I have GitHub Projects and different GitHub Issues Templates. How can I join the different parts? Well, with GitHub Actions!
With GitHub Actions, you can automate almost everything that happens in GitHub (and outside) using YAML files.
So, here’s mine:
For better readability, you can find the Gist here.
This action looks for opened and labeled issues and pull requests, and based on the value of the label it assigns the element to the correct project.
In this way, after I choose a template, filled the fields, and added additional labels (like C#, Docker, and so on), I can see my newly created issue directly in the Articles board. Neat 😎
Writing
Now it’s the time of writing!
As I said, I’m using Gatsby, so all my articles are stored in a GitHub repository and written in Markdown.
For every article I write, I use a separate git branch: in this way, I’m free to update the content already online (in case of a typo) without publishing my drafts.
But, of course, I automated it! 😎
Powershell script to scaffold a new article
Every article lives in its /content/posts/{year}/{folder-name}/article.md file. And they all have a cover image in a file named cover.png.
Also, every MD file begins with a Frontmatter section, like this:
---
title: "How I automated my publishing flow with Gatsby, GitHub, PowerShell and Azure"
path: "/blog/automate-articles-creations-github-powershell-azure"
tags: ["MainArticle"]
featuredImage: "./cover.png"
excerpt: "a description for 072-how-i-create-articles"
created: 4219-11-20
updated: 4219-11-20
---
But, you know, I was tired of creating everything from scratch. So I wrote a Powershell Script to do everything for me.
where article-creator.ps1 is the name of the file that contains the script.
Now I can simply run npm run create-article to have a new empty article in a new branch, already updated with everything published in the Master branch.
Markdown preview on VS Code
I use Visual Studio Code to write my articles: I like it because it’s quite fast and with lots of functionalities to write in Markdown (you can pick your favorites in the Extensions store).
One of my favorites is the Preview on Side. To see the result of your MarkDown on a side panel, press CTRL+SHIFT+P and select Open Preview to the Side.
Here’s what I can see right now while I’m writing:
Grammar check with Grammarly
Then, it’s time for a check on the Grammar. I use Grammarly, which helps me fix lots of errors (well, in the last time, only a few: it means I’ve improved a lot! 😎).
I copy the Markdown in their online editor, fix the issues, and copy it back into my repo.
Fun fact: the online editor recognizes that you’re using Markdown and automatically checks only the actual text, ignoring all the symbols you use in Markdown (like brackets).
Unprofessional, but fun, cover images
One of the tasks I like the most is creating my cover images.
I don’t use stock images, I prefer using less professional but more original cover images.
Creating and scheduling PR on GitHub with Templates and Actions
Now that my article is complete, I can set it as ready for being scheduled.
To do that, I open a Pull Request to the Master Branch, and, again, add some kind of automation!
I have created a PR template in an MD file, which I use to create a draft of the PR content.
In this way, I can define which task (so, which article) is related to this PR, using the “Closes” formula (“Closes #111174” means that I’m closing the Issue with ID 111174).
Also, I can define when this PR will be merged on Master, using the /schedule tag.
It works because I have integrated into my workflow a GitHub Action, merge-schedule, that reads the date from that field to understand when the PR must be merged.
So, every Tuesday at 8 AM, this action runs to check if there are any PRs that can be merged. If so, the PR will be merged into master, and the CI/CD pipeline builds the site and publishes the new content.
As usual, you can find the code of this action here
After the PR is merged, I also receive an email that notifies me of the action.
After publishing
Once a new article is online, I like to give it some visibility.
To do that, I heavily rely on Azure Logic Apps.
Azure Logic App for sharing on Twitter
My blog exposes an RSS feed. And, obviously, when a new article is created, a new item appears in the feed.
I use it to trigger an Azure Logic App to publish a message on Twitter:
The Logic App reads the newly published feed item and uses its metadata to create a message that will be shared on Twitter.
If you prefer, you can use a custom Azure Function! The choice is yours!
Cross-post reminder with Azure Logic Apps
Similarly, I use an Azure Logic App to send to myself an email to remind me to cross-post my articles to other platforms.
I’ve added a delay so that my content lives longer, and I can repost it even after weeks or months.
Unluckily, when I cross-post my articles I have to do it manually, This is quite a time-consuming especially when there are lots of images: in my MD files I use relative paths, so when porting my content to different platforms I have to find the absolute URL for my images.
And, my friends, this is everything that happens in the background of my blog!
What I’m still missing
I’ve added a lot of effort to my blog, and I’m incredibly proud of it!
But still, there are a few things I’d like to improve.
SEO Tools/analysis
I’ve never considered SEO. Or, better, Keywords.
I write for the sake of writing, and because I love it. And I don’t like to stuff my content with keywords just to rank better on search engines.
I take care of everything like alt texts, well-structured sections, and everything else. But I’m not able to follow the “rules” to find the best keywords.
Maybe I should use some SEO tools to find the best keywords for me. But I don’t want to bend to that way of creating content.
Also, I should spend more time thinking of the correct title and section titles.
Any idea?
Easy upgrade of Gatsby/Migrate to other headless CMSs
Lastly, I’d like to find another theme or platform and leave the one I’m currently using.
Not because I don’t like it. But because many dependencies are outdated, and the theme I’m using hasn’t been updated since 2019.
Wrapping up
That’s it: in this article, I’ve explained everything that I do when writing a blog post.
Feel free to take inspiration from my automation to improve your own workflow, and contact me if you have some nice improvements or ideas: I’m all ears!
Learn how to integrate Oh My Posh, a cross-platform tool that lets you create beautiful and informative prompts for PowerShell.
Table of Contents
Just a second! 🫷 If you are here, it means that you are a software developer.
So, you know that storage, networking, and domain management have a cost .
If you want to support this blog, please ensure that you have disabled the adblocker for this site. I configured Google AdSense to show as few ADS as possible – I don’t want to bother you with lots of ads, but I still need to add some to pay for the resources for my site.
Thank you for your understanding. – Davide
The content of the blog you are reading right now is stored in a Git repository. Every time I create an article, I create a new Git Branch to isolate the changes.
To generate the skeleton of the articles, I use the command line (well, I generally use PowerShell); in particular, given that I’m using both Windows 10 and Windows 11 – depending on the laptop I’m working on – I use the Integrated Terminal, which allows you to define the style, the fonts, and so on of every terminal configured in the settings.
The default profile is pretty basic: no info is shown except for the current path – I want to customize the appearance.
I want to show the status of the Git repository, including:
repository name
branch name
outgoing commits
There are lots of articles that teach how to use OhMyPosh with Cascadia Code. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make them work.
In this article, I teach you how I fixed it on my local machine. It’s a step-by-step guide I wrote while installing it on my local machine. I hope it works for you as well!
Step 1: Create the $PROFILE file if it does not exist
In PowerShell, you can customize the current execution by updating the $PROFILE file.
Clearly, you first have to check if the profile file exists.
Open the PowerShell and type:
$PROFILE # You can also use $profile lowercase - it's the same!
This command shows you the expected path of this file. The file, if it exists, is stored in that location.
In this case, the $Profile file should be available under the folder C:\Users\d.bellone\Documents\WindowsPowerShell. In my case, it does not exist, though!
Therefore, you must create it manually: head to that folder and create a file named Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1.
Note: it might happen that not even the WindowsPowerShell folder exists. If it’s missing, well, create it!
Step 2: Install OhMyPosh using Winget, Scoop, or PowerShell
To use OhMyPosh, we have to – of course – install it.
As explained in the official documentation, we have three ways to install OhMyPosh, depending on the tool you prefer.
And, if you like working with PowerShell, execute:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; Invoke-Expression ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://ohmyposh.dev/install.ps1'))
I used Winget, and you can see the installation process here:
Now, to apply these changes, you have to restart the PowerShell.
Step 3: Add OhMyPosh to the PowerShell profile
Open the Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 file and add the following line:
oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression
This command is executed every time you open the PowerShell with the default profile, and it initializes OhMyPosh to have it available during the current session.
Now, you can save and close the file.
Hint: you can open the profile file with Notepad by running notepad $PROFILE.
Step 4: Set the Execution Policy to RemoteSigned
Restart the terminal. In all probability, you will see an error like this:
The error message
The file <path>\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 is
not digitally signed. You cannot run this script on the current system
means that PowerShell does not trust the script it’s trying to load.
To see which Execution Policy is currently active, run:
You’ll probably see that the value is AllSigned.
To enable the execution of scripts created on your local machine, you have to set the Execution Policy value to RemoteSigned, using this command by running the PowerShell in administrator mode:
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
Let’s see the definition of the RemoteSigned Execution policy as per SQLShack’s article:
This is also a safe PowerShell Execution policy to set in an enterprise environment. This policy dictates that any script that was not created on the system that the script is running on, should be signed. Therefore, this will allow you to write your own script and execute it.
So, yeah, feel free to proceed and set the new Execution policy to have your PowerShell profile loaded correctly every time you open a new PowerShell instance.
Now, OhMyPosh can run in the current profile.
Head to a Git repository and notice that… It’s not working!🤬 Or, well, we have the Git information, but we are missing some icons and glyphs.
Step 5: Use CaskaydiaCove, not Cascadia Code, as a font
We still have to install the correct font with the missing icons.
We will install it using Chocolatey, a package manager available for Windows 11.
To check if you have it installed, run:
Now, to install the correct font family, open a PowerShell with administration privileges and run:
choco install cascadia-code-nerd-font
Once the installation is complete, you must tell Integrated Terminal to use the correct font by following these steps:
open to the Settings page (by hitting CTRL + ,)
select the profile you want to update (in my case, I’ll update the default profile)
open the Appearance section
under Font faceselect CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font
Now close the Integrated Terminal to apply the changes.
Open it again, navigate to a Git repository, and admire the result.
Further readings
The first time I read about OhMyPosh, it was on Scott Hanselman’s blog. I couldn’t make his solution work – and that’s the reason I wrote this article. However, in his article, he shows how he customized his own Terminal with more glyphs and icons, so you should give it a read.
We customized our PowerShell profile with just one simple configuration. However, you can do a lot more. You can read Ruud’s in-depth article about PowerShell profiles.
Finally, as I said at the beginning of this article, I use Git and Git Branches to handle the creation and management of my blog articles. That’s just the tip of the iceberg! 🏔️
If you want to steal my (previous) workflow, have a look at the behind-the-scenes of my blogging process (note: in the meanwhile, a lot of things have changed, but these steps can still be helpful for you)
GitHub Next has this cool project that is basically Copilot for the CLI (command line interface). You can sign up for their waitlist at the Copilot for CLI site.
Copilot for CLI provides three shell commands: ??, git? and gh?
This is cool and all, but I use PowerShell. Turns out these ?? commands are just router commands to a larger EXE called github-copilot-cli. So if you go “?? something” you’re really going “github-copilot-cli what-the-shell something.”
So this means I should be able to to do the same/similar aliases for my PowerShell prompt AND change the injected prompt (look at me I’m a prompt engineer) to add ‘use powershell to.’
Now it’s not perfect, but hopefully it will make the point to the Copilot CLI team that PowerShell needs love also.
Here are my aliases. Feel free to suggest if these suck. Note the addition of “user powershell to” for the ?? one. I may make a ?? and a p? where one does bash and one does PowerShell. I could also have it use wsl.exe and shell out to bash. Lots of possibilities.
function ?? { $TmpFile = New-TemporaryFile github-copilot-cli what-the-shell ('use powershell to ' + $args) --shellout $TmpFile if ([System.IO.File]::Exists($TmpFile)) { $TmpFileContents = Get-Content $TmpFile if ($TmpFileContents -ne $nill) { Invoke-Expression $TmpFileContents Remove-Item $TmpFile } } }
function git? { $TmpFile = New-TemporaryFile github-copilot-cli git-assist $args --shellout $TmpFile if ([System.IO.File]::Exists($TmpFile)) { $TmpFileContents = Get-Content $TmpFile if ($TmpFileContents -ne $nill) { Invoke-Expression $TmpFileContents Remove-Item $TmpFile } } } function gh? { $TmpFile = New-TemporaryFile github-copilot-cli gh-assist $args --shellout $TmpFile if ([System.IO.File]::Exists($TmpFile)) { $TmpFileContents = Get-Content $TmpFile if ($TmpFileContents -ne $nill) { Invoke-Expression $TmpFileContents Remove-Item $TmpFile } } }
It also then offers to run the command. Very smooth.
Hope you like it. Lots of fun stuff happening in this space.
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
