Set up multiple aliases in Powershell at once

Powershell • Scripting

Using the command-line in Windows used to be a horrible experience compared to *nix. Nowdays though Windows PowerShell is a really nice command-line shell, especially in Windows 10. The shell’s in Windows (thats PS and of course the good old cmd.exe) works in another way than in *nix. In Windows they treat everything as objects while in *nix they treat everything as a file. Both have their pro’s and cons but I’m not the right person to dig into that. Instead I will show you how I use small scripts for my most used commands.

Starting to use the command-line, again…

I’ve grown to like Powershell more and more since I first started using it. After I gave up Linux for like 5 years ago I thought I would miss the terminal. I didn’t. However, now I’m studing web development and I’m now using the Powershell for some tasks, as working with git and vagrant. I still prefer a nice GUI but I guess *nix users haven’t got enough powerful computers just yet. Jokes beside, the command-line is a great tool for some tasks and I have made some scripts for my most used commands.

Using scripts in the everyday life as an developer

In the folder C:\Users\Oskar\Documents\WindowsPowerShell, where Oskar is my user, I have created the file profile.ps1 that only consists of 5 small lines:

$Path = "C:\Users\Oskar\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\myScripts"
$files = Get-ChildItem $Path\*.ps1
ForEach ($file in $files) {
    set-alias $file.BaseName $file.FullName
}

This scripts takes all files from C:\Users\Oskar\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\myScripts that ends with .ps1, which is a PS-script file, and sets aliases to the script file ($file.FullName gives back a string with the name and path to the file). The alias name of the file, $file.BaseName, becomes the alias for the script.

Lets see a script!

So, what do I acutally have in my script-folder? I am currently participating in a PHP-course where I have been using a Homestead vm for Vagrant (Homestead is a virtual machine from Laravel, the popular php-framwork) a lot. In order to start the vm easy from PhpStorms I have this script:

$currentPath = $Pwd 		#Store current path
cd D:\Devtools\Homestead	#Go to Homestead's folder
vagrant up					#Boot with vagrant
cd $currentPath				#Go back to where we came from

The script is named homestead-up so when I open up PhpStorms I just type in the terminal homestead-up and voilà, the script is excecuted and my vm is booting!
I also have a script for commiting, it’s honestly pretty unnecessary but I did it to learn how to use arguments in a script. Here goes:

if ($args[0]) {
    git commit -am $args[0].ToString()
    if(![string]::IsNullOrEmpty($args[1])) {
        if (!$args[1].ToString().ToLower().CompareTo("push")) {
            git push
            echo "Pushed it!"
        }
    }
    else {
        echo "This should not be shown"
        }
}
else {
    echo "You have to write a comment to the commit."
}

It takes the first argument as the commit and if it has a second argument that is equal to push it also pushes the commit directly to github.

Hope you learned something new!

If you liked this post, you can share it with your followers or follow me on Twitter!

Yours sincerely,
Oskar Klintrot