Powershell: Get return result from Powershell Script called from Within other PS Script

Question

Background: I have a powershell script:script1 that takes in a sourceDirectory and two destinations (call them dest1Directory and dest2Directory).

The sourceDirectory is structured like this:

\Source\dest1\STUFF1

and

\Source\dest2\STUFF2

script1 calls another script:script2, foreach STUFF (so script2 may be run 10 times for example), providing script2 with the necessary destination parameter, which creates backups of all of the contents "STUFF" is replacing on dest1Directory and dest2Directory, and then copies all of STUFF to the corresponding destination.

Script1:

foreach ($folder in $STUFF1)
{           
& $script2 -stuffParameter $folder -destDrive $dest1Directory -backUpDrive $BackUpDirectory
}

The issue I'm having is:

I'm calling script1 from a visual studio website and would like script2 to output all of the backup directory paths it creates so I have references to them for later. I have tried this inside of script2:

$returnRollBackObj = New-Object Object
Add-Member -memberType NoteProperty -name "RollBackLocation" -value $folderobj -inputObject $returnRollBackObj
return $returnRollBackObj

But it doesn't seem to return the objects since they are subscript calls. I don't know how to return an undefined number of these objects from script1 so I'm at a loss. Can someone help me out?

manojlds · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-08 22:05:10Z

11

Any uncaptured output is returned in Powershell.

So something like

return $returnRollBackObj

is equivalent to

$returnRollBackObj
return

So, since script2 is returning these objects, as long as these objects are not captured in script1, they will be returned by script1 as well. So you not have to do anything about "returning undefined number of objects"

Try running the scripts from console first, to see if you are getting the intended behaviour.

answered Aug 8, 2011 at 22:05

manojlds

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2 Comments

Evan Layman Over a year ago

I figured as much but when I tried it didn't work as expected. I have script1 calling script2 with uncaptured returns, however only the one return statement from script1 outputs to my console. There is a bunch of Write-Host/Write-Warning output that works fine from script2 however.

Evan Layman Over a year ago

Sorry I did not think it was necessary to include this: I have another object containing a log location being returned from script1 (and this works correctly)

Matt · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-09 16:58:06Z

2

How's your IIS setup?

Just thinking , if you hve eimpersonation on, tha it might not have access to the second script's location due to the double hop issue.

Something else that may help is the transcript functionality. Add a start-transcript at the top of yu script/code and you'll get a dump of everything, comands and output (inc. Errors and warnings).

Edit:

Just realised your not assigning the returned values from script2 to aaything in script1.

You may need something like this:

$ret = & $script2 ...

Do something with $ret...

OR put it in an array $ret = @()

For loop...

$temp = & $script2 ... $ret = $ret + $temp

Then return $ret after the for loop.

Matt

edited Aug 9, 2011 at 16:58

answered Aug 9, 2011 at 4:50

Matt

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5 Comments

Evan Layman Over a year ago

Both good ideas, however this is happening when I test it through a powershell command prompt (and the second script is definitely running correctly, besides the output), and I actually have a transcript running, however it doesn't help me with this issue.

Matt Over a year ago

I don't think running from the command prompt negates a double hop issue, i would expect it to work. That said i notice you're not doing anything with the returned variable. I edited my response to show that.

Evan Layman Over a year ago

I will try that, but I figured the returns from script2 would propagate up. Maybe not :). Thanks for the sample

Matt Over a year ago

they would be outputted on stdout. I'll format it when not on my phone. Matt

Evan Layman Over a year ago

I ended up changing something and it worked. I think I was just defining my return objects incorrectly in script2. Thanks for all of your help, but I actually got it working without handling the script2 return objects.

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