en-us/About_Splatter.help.txt
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## Splatter is a simple Splatting toolkit
Splatting is a technique of passing parameters in PowerShell. Splatter makes splatting more powerful, flexible, and easy to use. With Splatter you can: * Splat any object to any command * Pipe splats to commands * Validate splats * Find commands for a splat Splatter is tiny, and can be easily embedded into any module. ### Using Splatter Splatter has four core commands: * Get-Splat (?@) * Find-Splat (??@) * Merge-Splat (*@) * Use-Splat (.@) #### Get-Splat | Alias | Variables | |-----------|----------------------------| | ?@,gSplat | ${?@}, $gSplat, $GetSplat | Get-Splat returns a Dictionary of parameters, given a command or ScriptBlock. This only contains parameters for the command, and converts the parameters into the desired types. Get-Splat can take any object or Dictionary as input. @{Id=$pid;Junk='Data'} | Get-Splat Get-Process # -or @{Id=$pid;Junk='Data'} | ?@ gps # -or @{Id=$pid;Junk='Data'} | & ${?@} gps Get-Splat can take more than one command as input. If it does, it will return the matching inputs for each command. @{FilePath = 'pwsh';ArgumentList = '-noprofile';PassThru=$true} | Use-Splat Start-Process | Add-Member NoteProperty TimeOut 15 -PassThru | Get-Splat Wait-Process, Stop-Process Get-Splat will also attach a properties to the Dictionary. These property won't be used when calling the splat, but can be peeked at: | Property | Description | |---------------|-----------------------------------------------| | Command | The Command | | CouldRun | If the command could run, given the splat | | Invalid | Parameters that are invalid | | Missing | Mandatory parameters that are missing | | PercentFit | % of properties that map to parameters | | Unmapped | Properties that don't map to parameters | $splat = @{id=$pid;foo='bar'} | ?@ gps $splat.Command, $splat.PercentFit, $splat.Unmapped #### Find-Splat | Alias | Variables | |------------|----------------------------| | ??@,fSplat | ${??@}, $fSplat, $FindSplat| Find-Splat will find commands that match a given splat, and return information about a match. @{id=$pid} | Find-Splat *-Process Find-Splat may also be scoped to a given module @{splat=@{}} | Find-Splat -Module Splatter #### Merge-Splat | Alias | Variables | |------------|----------------------------| | *@,mSplat | ${*@}, $mSplat, $MergeSplat| Merge splat will merge multiple splats together. @{a='b'}, @{c='d'} | Merge-Splat #### Use-Splat | Alias | Variables | |--------------|----------------------------------| | .@,uSplat | ${.@}, $uSplat, $UseSplat | Use-Splat will run a splat against one or more commands. @{id=$pid} | Use-Splat Get-Process # Gets the current process # Gets the process, and then doesn't stop the process because Stop-Process is passed WhatIf @{id=$pid;WhatIf=$true} | .@ Get-Process,Stop-Process ### Using Splatter with ScriptBlocks In PowerShell, you can treat any ScriptBlock as a command. Splatter makes this simpler. Take this example, which takes a little bit of input data and uses it in a few different scripts. @{ Name='James' Birthday = '12/17/1981' City = 'Seattle' State = 'Washington' } | .@ { param($Name) "$name" }, { param([DateTime]$Birthday) $ageTimespan = [DateTime]::Now - $birthday "Age:" + [Math]::Floor($ageTimespan.TotalDays / 365) }, { param($city, $state) "$city, $state" } Since Splatter will also convert objects to hashtables, you could also write something like: Import-Csv .\People.csv | .@ { param($Name) "$name" }, { param([DateTime]$Birthday) $ageTimespan = [DateTime]::Now - $birthday "Age:" + [Math]::Floor($ageTimespan.TotalDays / 365) } ### Embedding Splatter Initialize-Splat will output a script containing the core commands for Splatter. Using this output, you can directly embed Splatter into any script or module. Initialize-Splatter To install this into a module: Get-Module TheNameOfYourModule | Split-Path | Push-Location Initialize-Splatter > '@.ps1' Pop-Location Then add the following line to your module: . $psScriptRoot\@.ps1 By default, when Splatter is embedded, it will not export functions or aliases, and you will need to use the variable syntax: & ${?@} # Get-Splat & ${??@} # Find-Splat & ${*@} # Merge-Splat & ${.@} # Use-Splat You can override this by using -AsFunction Initialize-Splatter -AsFunction If you don't need all of the commands, you can use -Verb Initialize-Splatter -Verb Get, Use |