WPK - 1: Creating WPF applications using PowerShell
My first article on using WPF from PowerShell. What is WPK? Were can you get it? How to get started?
I have been programming in PowerShell since 2006. At Macaw we use PowerShell for most of the development on the Macaw Solutions Factory. I have written thousands and thousands of lines of code in PowerShell 1.0. Some of the GUI tools in the Macaw Solutions Factory are even written completely in PowerShell. We use PrimalForms for the generation of the PowerShell code to render the GUI.
PrimalForms: PrimalForms Community Edition is a free GUI builder tool for PowerShell users. It edits and stores Windows Forms in a native XML format and generates PowerShell code on demand. Sample forms included.
More complex GUI tools are written in standard C#/WinForms. I prefer to have the tools in the Macaw Solutions Factory to be written completely in PowerShell. The reason is that most innovations to the Macaw Solutions Factory are done in real world projects. Because the Macaw Solutions Factory almost completely consists of script code, it is possible to add new features on any development machine that checked out the Factory code together with the source code of the project. No special development environment is needed. Good innovations are merged into the trunk of the Factory. Also fixing issues or making project specific modifications is a breeze.
Writing WinForms applications using PowerShell never really worked well for us. Writing WinForms applications without designer is just terrible. PrimalForms makes life better, but still…
Enter WPF! I have been playing with WPF and PowerShell a few years ago. Problem was that PowerShell had to be executed in a Single Threaded Apartment (STA) instead of the default Multi Threaded Apartment (MTA). My first discussion on this with Bruce Payette never resulted into a good working solution.
A few days ago I ran across an interesting project at CodePlex: PowerBoots. This tooling provides WPF from both PowerShell 1.0 and PowerShell 2.0. I did some tests with it, and had some trouble, partly due to complete lack of knowledge of WPF. While searching the web I also stumbled upon WPK, the Windows Presentation Foundation PowerShell Kit. It is part of the just released Windows 7 Resource Kit PowerShell Pack (most things work on any OS with PowerShell 2.0 installed). WPK takes a very similar approach as PowerBoots. Check them both out!
It is Christmas time. This means: two weeks no real company work, a bit of free time to dive into something new. I have been running around the last three days in PowerBoots and WPK, and I must say: the demo’s look great and most of them work, but even the most simple baby steps completely fail on me, especially due to my complete ignorance of what happened in the WPF space for the last years. Yes, I am ashamed of myself. Time to catch up… baby steps at a time. There are actually two things to dive into: the new features of PowerShell 2.0 and WPK. So don’t expect much of the next posts, it is all really basic stuff, but I see on my blog that the baby step posts are the most popular posts. Posts like how to call a PowerShell function with arguments (fn –arg1 a –arg2 b instead of fn(a,b)). So expect some post at this level… is just write down the things I go through myself.
To get yourself started on the possibilities of WPK, have a look at the WPK video’s available on Channel 9. James Brundage, part of the Microsoft PowerShell Test team, does a good job on explaining WPK. There are a few videos there now, with more to come. For questions have a look at the discussion thread on the PowerShellPack site.
Happy WPK’ing..