The PowerShell Gallery is a collection of modules and scripts that is community driven to help us automate everyday tasks. Sometimes, we have an idea that could written into a function or script, however, most of the time, someone else had the same idea and published their work to the PowerShell Gallery. There is no need to recreate the wheel and re-write it, use the community to our advantage. We’ll take a look at multiple Cmdlets,
Find-Module,
Find-Script,
Install-Module, and
Install-Script, and find out what each of them provide.
Find-Module and Install-Module
Find-Moduleallows us the browse the PowerShell Gallery and find if there is a module in the community that has been created. Running
Get-Help Find-Module, we can see there are multiple parameters to use to help narrow our search. For demonstration, we will find the Azure PowerShell (Az) module by Microsoft using the
Find-ModuleCmdlet.
Get-Help Find-Module
NAME
Find-Module
SYNTAX
Find-Module [[-Name] ] [-MinimumVersion ] [-MaximumVersion ] [-RequiredVersion ] [-AllVersions] [-IncludeDependencies] [-Filter ] [-Tag
] [-Includes {DscResource | Cmdlet | Function | RoleCapability}] [-DscResource ] [-RoleCapability ] [-Command ] [-Proxy ] [-ProxyCredential
] [-Repository ] [-Credential ] []
ALIASES
fimo
REMARKS
Get-Help cannot find the Help files for this cmdlet on this computer. It is displaying only partial help.
-- To download and install Help files for the module that includes this cmdlet, use Update-Help.
-- To view the Help topic for this cmdlet online, type: "Get-Help Find-Module -Online" or
go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=398574.
Find-Module -Name Az
Version Name Repository Description
------- ---- ---------- -----------
1.8.0 Az PSGallery Microsoft Azure PowerShell - Cmdlets to manage resources in Azure. This module is compatible with WindowsPowerShell and P...
Great. We were able to find the Az module and returned some information about the module: Version, Name, Repository, and Description. But what if we did not know the name of a module we are looking for? The
-Nameparameter accepts wildcards for partial searches, we can enter in
Find-Module -Name Az*and will return any module in the gallery that starts with “Az”. We can also search for DSC Resources using the
Find-ModuleCmdlet using the
-Includes DscResourceparameter. This will only return DSC Resources available in the PowerShell Gallery
Find-Module -Name xWeb* -Includes DscResource
Once we found the module that we want to use, we can install the module using the
Install-ModuleCmdlet. This will install the community module in our default module install directory:
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modulesor if using PowerShell Core:
C:\Program Files\PowerShell\Modules. Lets take the example above and use it to install the Az Module.
Find-Module -Name Az |Install-Module
We can take the
Find-ModuleCmdlet and pipe it to the
Install-ModuleCmdlet to install the module. But, we also have the ability to install a specific version of a module using the
-RequiredVersionparameter.
Install-Module -Name Az -RequiredVersion 1.7
Not using the
-RequiredVersionparameter will install the latest version of the module.
Note: Find-Module and Install-Module was introduced in PowerShell version 5.0.
Find-Script and Install-Script
Find-Scriptworks the same way as
Find-Module, however, instead of finding modules, we are now finding scripts.
Find-Scriptwill return
.ps1scripts in the PowerShell Gallery that could be installed. Lets take a look at an example to find a script and than later on we will install it. The same rules apply when trying to find a script, we can use wildcards in our search to find a certain script.
Find-Script -Name Get-* Version Name Repository Description ------- ---- ---------- ----------- 1.4 Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo PSGallery This script uses WMI to retrieve properties needed by the Microsoft Store for Business to support Windows AutoPilot deplo... 1.0.0 Get-Quotation PSGallery Get-Quote cmdlet data harvests a/multiple quote(s) from Web outputs into your powershell console 1.0.0 Get-UsersOnlineOnReddit PSGallery Script to web data scrape reddit user trend and pump all the data points script captured from Reddit’s Powershell Communi... 1.0.4 Get-PacFile PSGallery This script will access updated information to create a PAC file to prioritize Microsoft 365 Urls for... 1.1.2.7 Get-AzureAutomationDiagnosticRes... PSGallery Capture diagnostic information for Azure Automation accounts. ... 1.1.0 Get-VMotion PSGallery Report on recent vMotion events in your VMware environment. 1.2.1 Get-RemoteProgram PSGallery This function generates a list by querying the registry and returning the installed programs of a local or remote computer. 1.1 get-uptime PSGallery Get the uptime of the current machine. 1.0.1 Get-InstalledProgram PSGallery Get-InstalledProgram retrieves the programs installed on a local or remote machine. To specify a remote computer, use the... 0.0.1 Get-LockoutBlame PSGallery Script to get a Windows Event about Locked Accounts, including the host which caused the lockout.... 0.1.1 get-lastreboot PSGallery Get the last reboot information from multiple machines 1.0 Get-DnsConfiguration PSGallery Retrives primary, secondary, tertiery DNS Servers from on online system using Windows Management Instrimentation. 1.0 Get-Github PSGallery Download a github repository or a gist 1.1 Get-MyIP PSGallery Get your External IP address... 1.3.5 Get-WindowsUpTime PSGallery Get Windows UpTime StartTime and LocalTime by Wmi on local and remote system 2.9 Get-Parameter PSGallery Lists all the parameters of a command, by ParameterSet, including their aliases, type, etc.... 2.0 Get-LastLoggedOnUser PSGallery Gets the last not special user to have a loaded profile on a given system.
We searched for all scripts that start with
Get-*, now lets find the script we want to install:
Join-String
Find-Script -Name Join-String Version Name Repository Description ------- ---- ---------- ----------- 1.0 Join-String PSGallery Join String from Array
Now that we found the scripts, lets install it using the same pipeline. Using the
Install-ScriptCmdlet, the script will install in the default script location:
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Scriptsor if using PowerShell Core:
C:\Program Files\PowerShell\Scripts.
Find-Script -Name Join-String |Install-Script
We can still use the
-RequiredVersionparameter if a specified version is required, but using the command above will install the latest.
Find-Module,
Find-Script,
Install-Module, and
Install-Scriptare great to find and install modules or scripts from the PowerShell Gallery, there is no need to recreate the wheel, (Most of the time). You can also search the PowerShell Gallery by visiting the website here. When searching for a module or script, the site will show you the command to run in PowerShell to install the module or script.
Just a reminder that these Cmdlets were introduced in PowerShell version 5.0 and are in the PowerShellGet module. The links below are Microsoft’s documentation for each Cmdlet with examples and other parameters that can be used.
Find-Module
Install-Module
Find-Script
Install-Script
pwshliquori
I also use Find-Command when I want to know to which module a cmdlet belongs.
Very good reminder! Thanks Chris!