Return objects from Powershell Script

Question

How would one go about returning an object from powershell into another powershell script? I am looking to automate some of my deployments using powerhsell so that we can have easier to repeat deployments with a minimum amount of human intervention.

The idea would be to have a "library" of scripts for the various processes that occur during a deployment that take a series of arguments, and then have a main deployment script that just calls each of those subscripts with arguments for the files being used. For example, for one deployment, I might have to create A login on a Sql Server, add some functions or stored procedures to a database , Deploy SSRS Reports, update the shared data sources for the SSRS to use an AD Service account, etc.

I am able to cram everything into a single script with a bunch of functions, but for easier re-usability, I would like to take each basic task - (Run SQL Scripts, get a credential from Secret Server , run a folder of SQL Scripts, Deploy SSRS Reports , etc. ) and place it in its own script with parameters that can be called from my main script. This would allow me to have a main script that just calls each task script with parameters. In order to do this though, for things like updating the AD Credentials, I would need a way to return the PScredential object that the function currently returns from a separate script instead.

EBGreen · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-02 19:06:34Z

4

You can explicitly return an object by using the return keyword:

return $myObject

Or you can implicitly return the object by explicitly using Write-Ouptut or implicitly outputting the object by having it bare on a line:

Write-Output $myObject

Or

$myObject

answered Jul 2, 2018 at 19:06

EBGreen

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4 Comments

Maximilian Burszley Over a year ago

Using return can interrupt function flow (especially when involving the pipeline) and as such isn't viewed as a best practice among the PS community.

EBGreen Over a year ago

@TheIncorrigible1 Do you have a link to a MS source for that. I understand that it sometimes gets used incorrectly and thus causes problems for people that don't understand what it does, but incorrectly using a command is pretty much against best practice all the time in every language.

Maximilian Burszley Over a year ago

I'm not aware of a Microsoft best-practices list but there is a community one on GitHub that has many MSFT contributors.

Ansgar Wiechers Over a year ago

Beware, though, that returning objects normally does not work across process boundaries, i.e. if you run the script in a different PowerShell process (e.g. powershell.exe -File script.ps1) the output would not be returned as an object.

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