Making Reports in PowerShell (Part 3 of 3)

In Part 1, I showed you a common approach to making text-based reports in PowerShell. In Part 2, I made some improvements to bring the technique more in line with better PowerShell practices. Now, I'll show you how I really like to do these things.

[CmdletBinding()]param (    [Parameter(Mandatory=$True)]    [string]$computername)function CSInfo {    param($computername)    $cs = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ComputerSystem -computername $computername    $bios = Get-WmiObject -class Win32_BIOS -computername $computername    $props = @{'Computer'=$cs.name;               'Manufacturer'=$cs.manufacturer;               'Model'=$cs.model;               'BIOSSerial'=$bios.serialnumber}    $obj = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $props    Write-Output $obj}$html = "

COMPUTER SYSTEM

"$html += CSInfo -computername $computername | ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment $html += "

OPERATING SYSTEM

"$html += Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -computername $computername | Select-Object -Property Version,BuildNumber,ServicePackMajorVersion,OSArchitecture |ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment$html += "

PROCESSORS

"$html += Get-WmiObject -class Win32_Processor  -computername $computername |Select-Object -Property AddressWidth,MaxClockSpeed -First 1 |ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment$html += "

DISKS

"$html += Get-WmiObject -class Win32_LogicalDisk -filter "drivetype=3" -computername $computername |Select-Object -Property DeviceID,Size,FreeSpace |ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment$formatting = ""ConvertTo-HTML -Body $html -Head $formatting

Save this as C:Report.ps1 and then run it like this:

C:Report | Out-File Inventory.html

By letting PowerShell convert each section of the report to an HTML fragment, I can then combine them together. You'll see where I applied some simple CSS formatting to the final product to dress it up a bit - you could get pretty wild with that. I didn't include the out-File in the script, because sometimes I don't want this in a file - I want it in an e-mail, or someplace else, so my script doesn't worry about the final product.

I love reports like this because they're nicely-formatted, and require very little work on my part to format them.

So what do you think? What kinds of reports might you create this way? What other report-generating techniques can you share? Let me know at my new online Q&A forum!