Powershell Read-Host User Input Addition

Question

I have a problem and I cannot find a solution online.

I have the following code, and I would like to read two inputs and save them in a text file. When the user puts his email and API token, it creates a text file and separates his input in two lines. I don't know what to use with the Read-Host.

For example:

[email protected]
123456789abcdefg

What I would like to do is to use his input, but have a default name in front of each line such as:

Email = [email protected]
APIToken = 123456789abcdefg

Here is my code:

Write-Host 'Enter your email: '
Read-Host | Out-File $CredsFile

Write-Host 'Enter your API Token: '
Read-Host | Out-File $CredsFile -Append

$CredsFile = $CredsFile -join [Environment]::NewLine
$configuration = ConvertFrom-StringData($CredsFile)
$email = $configuration.'Email'
$api_token = $configuration.'APIToken'

My answer here could help stackoverflow.com/questions/27630925/…. It creates a hashtable based on user input from read-host — Matt
– Matt, Commented Feb 5, 2015 at 17:47

score 3 · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-05 17:54:17Z

3

You can place the calls to Read-Host inside string literals using sub-expressions $(...):

Write-Host 'Enter your email: '
"Email = $(Read-Host)" | Out-File -Append $CredsFile

Write-Host 'Enter your API Token: '
"APIToken = $(Read-Host)" | Out-File -Append $CredsFile

This will allow you build a custom label around each input.

Also, the calls to Write-Host are unnecessary since Read-Host accepts a prompt string argument:

"Email = $(Read-Host 'Enter your email')" | Out-File -Append $CredsFile
"APIToken = $(Read-Host 'Enter your API Token')" | Out-File -Append $CredsFile

Finally, make sure you use the -Append flag with Out-File as I did above. Without this, the contents of the file will be overwritten with each write operation.

edited Feb 5, 2015 at 17:54

answered Feb 5, 2015 at 17:46

user2555451

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1 Comment

user01230 Over a year ago

Thank you very much. I am new with this :-) It worked

Matt · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-05 19:12:30Z

Since you are already trying to create a hashtable we could use a single Read-Host and split the results. Depending on the target audience it could be considered less intuitive but I like opening your options. Especially if you don't need to send the data to file.

$input = (Read-Host "Please enter your email and key seperated by a space").Split(" ")
$configuration = @"
    Email = {0}
    APIToken = {1}
"@ -f $input[0],$input[1] | ConvertFrom-StringData

$email = $configuration.Email
$api_token = $configuration.'APIToken'

This is assuming that you don't really need to send it to file. You still could. Just does not need to be part of this process.

I saw a comment but I guess you deleted it. If you wanted to output this information to file exactly as you have in your example you could do this.

$configuration.GetEnumerator() | ForEach-Object{"$($_.Name) = $($_.Value)"} | Set-Content $CredsFile

Depending on the needs of the files you could make it simpler.

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