powershell: comment based help

Question

I've created a small script to test creating my own help based powershell and i received error:

Get-Help : Cannot find Help for topic ".\testHelp.ps1". At line:49 char:15 + Get-Help <<<< @PSBoundParameters | more + CategoryInfo : ResourceUnavailable: (:) [Get-Help], HelpNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : HelpNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetHelpCommand

Heres the test script:

<#
SYNOPSIS
retrieive a list of services from local and remote machines 
.DESCRIPTION
Retrieive services from local and remote machines and reports the following fields
.PARAMETER  Servers 
The Get-Service cmdlet gets objects that represent the services on a local computer or on a remote computer.
.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Something 'One value' 32
#>
param($computername="localhost")
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_BIOS -ComputerName $computername

Answer 1

Looks like you're missing the . in front of .SYNOPSIS. Also your help says the parameter is called Servers but the param block says $computername. PowerShell is pretty finicky about the help formatting being just right although I don't think it validates parameter names. :-)

The result is:

PS> Get-Content .\FuncHelp.ps1
<#
.SYNOPSIS
retrieive a list of services from local and remote machines 
.DESCRIPTION
Retrieive services from local and remote machines and reports the following fields
.PARAMETER  Servers 
The Get-Service cmdlet gets objects that represent the services on a local computer or on a remote computer.
.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Something 'One value' 32
#>
param($computername="localhost")
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_BIOS -ComputerName $computername


PS> .\FuncHelp.ps1 -?

NAME
    C:\Users\hillr\FuncHelp.ps1

SYNOPSIS
    retrieive a list of services from local and remote machines


SYNTAX
    C:\Users\hillr\FuncHelp.ps1 [[-computername] <Object>] [<CommonParameters>]


DESCRIPTION
    Retrieive services from local and remote machines and reports the following fields


RELATED LINKS

REMARKS
    To see the examples, type: "get-help C:\Users\hillr\FuncHelp.ps1 -examples".
    For more information, type: "get-help C:\Users\hillr\FuncHelp.ps1 -detailed".
    For technical information, type: "get-help C:\Users\hillr\FuncHelp.ps1 -full".

Answer 2

You can use free Quest editor called PowerGui. You've got the a snippet (CTRL+I) for functions with advanced help. It gives you all the advanced help keywords as you can find in about_Comment_Based_Help

You can put <# #> befor your function or inside, but be careful with special characters inside the help it cause me some errors when copy/pasting some examples from the net or PDF documents.