Realtime tabular output from a powershell script

Question

The following powershell script monitors a list of servers after they are rebooted and notifies immediately once it can attach with Get-Service.

#start all jobs here
get-job | stop-job
get-job | remove-job

$servers =  ("localhost", "127.0.0.1", "badserver")

function Ping-Service($myservers,[int]$timeout=60, [int]$waitbetweentrys=1){
    $myservers| %{
    $computername = $_
    start-job -scriptblock {
                   param(
               [string]$computername,
               [int]$maxwait,
               [int]$waitbetween
               )
               $status = "Fail"
               $StartTime = Get-Date
               $duration = 0
                do
               {
                #if successful, break out
                try {$gs = Get-Service -ComputerName $computername -ErrorAction Stop;$status = "Success";break} catch {start-sleep $waitbetween}                               
                $duration = (New-TimeSpan $StartTime $(Get-Date)).Seconds
                } while ($duration -lt $maxwait)
               $hash = [ordered]@{"Computername" = $computername; "Type" = "Service";"Status"=$status;"Done"=$(Get-Date);"Duration"=$duration}      
               $hash
           } -ArgumentList ($computername, $timeout, $waitbetweentrys)
}
}
Ping-Service -myservers $servers -timeout 10

#loops through jobs and check for completed ones
do
   {
       #process jobs that are done
       $jobsdone = Get-Job | where State -eq 'Completed'
       $joboutput = $jobsdone | Receive-Job

       $joboutput | %{New-Object PSObject -Property $_ } |ft -AutoSize

       #remove jobs once we get the output
       $jobsdone | Remove-job

       #See if there are any jobs left     
       $jobsleft = Get-Job

       #wait 5 seconds before checking jobs
       if ($jobsleft -ne $null) {start-sleep 5}

   } while ($jobsleft -ne $null)    #continue loop while there are jobs left

It works well, but the output is not formated how I would like it:

Duration Status  Computername Done                Type   
-------- ------  ------------ ----                ----   
       0 Success localhost    5/7/2013 4:09:30 PM Service



Duration Status  Computername Done                Type   
-------- ------  ------------ ----                ----   
       0 Success 127.0.0.1    5/7/2013 4:09:31 PM Service



Duration Status Computername Done                Type   
-------- ------ ------------ ----                ----   
      10 Fail   badserver    5/7/2013 4:09:42 PM Service

I would like it to look like this:

Duration Status  Computername Done                Type   
-------- ------  ------------ ----                ----   
       0 Success localhost    5/7/2013 4:09:30 PM Service
       0 Success 127.0.0.1    5/7/2013 4:09:31 PM Service
      10 Fail   badserver    5/7/2013 4:09:42 PM Service

However, the key is to have each result displayed in real time. Ironically, the start-job output at the top of the script is exactly what I want.

Frode F. · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-07 22:21:58Z

1

If you call Format-Table on each object in a loop, it will display them seperately. Output the orginial objects and PowerShell will do it's magic. Btw, why are you taking an object)job-output), and creating a new object that contains it? :S

Try replacing

$joboutput | %{New-Object PSObject -Property $_ } |ft -AutoSize

with

$joboutput

Or even simpler, drop $joboutput. Replace

$joboutput = $jobsdone | Receive-Job
$joboutput | %{New-Object PSObject -Property $_ } |ft -AutoSize

with

$jobsdone | Receive-Job

answered May 7, 2013 at 22:21

Frode F.

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3 Comments

user2359792 Over a year ago

I want to add all of the outputs together as an object so I can pass this value to another script. If I modify the output as you suggest, it will output a list view with two columns.

Frode F. Over a year ago

I'm not seeing the problem. Is the sample incomplete(is $jobsdone used somewhere else)? If so, use the first part of my answer to fix the visible output only. The only thing I removed was the unnecessary object-creation and format-table (which BY THE WAY, destroys the object you JUST created).

Frode F. Over a year ago

just to clarify more. if you save the code as a script and run it, it would return an ARRAY of the objects, that you can store and/or pass to another cmdlet/function/script. So if the default view is a list view, run something like myscript.ps1 | format-table -autosize. just remember not to use a format-... cmdlet in the code itself as it returns a special formatobject, and not the original dataobject itself.

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