Once you go splat…

Splatting is one of those things you can get used to real quickly!

Who hasn’t used the New-ADUser cmdlet? Just have a look at the syntax. Now imagine going through all those parameters on one line…

New-ADUser -Name "irwins" -GivenName "Irwin" -Surname "Strachan" -SamAccountName "irwins" -DisplayName "Irwin Strachan"

or separate lines using the tick ` character…

 New-ADUser `
    -Name "irwins" `
    -GivenName "Irwin" `
    -Surname "Strachan" `
    -SamAccountName "irwins" `
    -DisplayName "Irwin Strachan"

Granted this is readable until the tick looks like a dead pixel on your screen and you start scratching away at it (Why? First instinct I guess…) only to realize that it was indeed the tick character (Yes I’ve been there…)

Splatting makes for better (readable) code.

$prmNewADUser = @{
    Name = "irwins" 
    GivenName = "Irwin" 
    Surname = "Strachan"
    SamAccountName = "irwins"
    DisplayName = "Irwin Strachan"
}

New-ADUser @prmNewADUser

Splatting also works with your functions. Go ahead try it! Neat huh?

Because it’s a hash table the add and remove methods are available which can make for some interesting tricks… I’ll discuss that one another time.

One thing though… When splatting the keys/parameters need to be known. For example:

$prmNewADUser = @{
    Name= "irwins" 
    GivenName = "Irwin" 
    Surname = "Strachan"
    SamAccountName = "irwins"
    NickName = “Urv”
    DisplayName = "Irwin Strachan"
}

New-ADUser @prmNewADUser

This will fail because NickName isn’t a valid parameter. Suppose you’re using a csv file that contains NickName as a field. You could do the following:

$prmNewADUser.Remove(“NickName”)

right before running

New-ADUser @prmNewADUser

Ok so I got into it just a little… 🙂

Be sure to check out some free ebooks at powershell.org I enjoyed the gotcha’s ebook. If you’re serious about your powershell scripting skill there isn’t a shortage of good internet resources.

Hope it’s worth something to you…

Ttyl,

Urv

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