Cash Talks - BS Walks RSS 2.0
 Friday, March 21, 2008

Buck Hodges' VSTS 2005 and 2008: Building Database Projects with Team Build

While this is specifically about Team Build, it applies to any kind of automated build process using MSBuild.  We're still using CCNet as our primary Build engine but Team Build is looking more appealing with 2008.

Friday, March 21, 2008 8:15:26 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Visual Studio | MSBuild
 Sunday, March 09, 2008

In my previous blog entry, Easily setting Tags on Media Files using PowerShell, I described how to set the media tags used by common MP3 players.

The reason I had this need stemed from a frustration from RIPing Audio Books into MP3s.  For example, let's say I'm compressing a 10 CD book.  Even with "good" audio naming from Internet Naming sources, you get 10 different albums with numberd tracks from 1 to whatever.  Sometimes the naming fixes this and sometimes it does a miserable job.  Copying and renaming the files doesn't do the job.  When you RIP the CD the encoder creates Meta Tags Used by MP3 players.

When your favorite tool is a hammer...

I didn't even look for a tool to solve this problem so if there is one... that's not really the point.  I was curious if I could solve it very easily using Powershell.  This is what I want:

  • Copy all files to a single directory
  • Name all files with some base name with a Zero padded count.
  • Provide for a flexible means for setting Tags on all Files.  For example, Author
  • Set the Album Tag so all files will appear as a single album
  • Set Meta Track number to coorespond the the Count and Title to the Filename

When I RIP the CDs it easy to get them all under a single directory and organize the directories Alphabetically so the CDs are in order.  The individually named where they also sort alphabetically.  As such the following line will return all MP3s under a directory in the order they should be played:

dir -Recurse -Filter *.mp3

As such, I need a CmdLet where I can pipe these.  This CmdLet will also take an Array parameter if that is your preference.

function Copy-NumberFile
 
( [
system.IO.FileInfo] $file=$(Throw "File is required"
)
 
, [string] $BaseName=$(Throw "BaseName is required"
)
  ,
$DestDir=$(Throw "DestDir is required"
)
  , [
int] $Count=$(Throw "Count is required"
)
  , [
int] $Digits=
1
  , [
switch]
$Verbose
 
, [switch]
$PassThru
 
)
{
 
$nbrStr = "{0:d$Digits}" -f
$Count
 
$NewName =
"$($BaseName)$($nbrStr)$($file.Extension)"
 
$NewFileName = [System.IO.Path]::Combine($DestDir.FullName,$NewName
)
 
if ($Verbose
)
  {
   
Write-Host
"Copy $($file.fullname) to $NewFileName"
 
}
  
Copy-Item $file.FullName -Destination $NewFileName -PassThru:
$PassThru
}

Function
Organize-AudioBookFiles 
 
( [
System.IO.DirectoryInfo]
$DestDir
 
, [hashtable]
$Tags
 
, [string]
$BaseName
 
, [int]$CountStart=
1
  ,
$Digits=-
1
  , [
array]$Files
)
{
 
begin
 
{
    [
array] $fileList =
$null
   
function AddFile( $FileToCheck
)
    {
     
if ($fileToCheck -ne $null
)
      {
        [
system.IO.FileInfo] $file =
$FileToCheck
       
if (!$file.Exists) { Throw "File does Not Exist"
}
       
$file
     
}
    }
    
    if (!$DestDir.Exists
)
    {
      $DestDir.Create
()
    }
    
if ((dir $DestDir.FullName | Measure-Object).Count -gt
0)
    {
     
Throw
"Destination Directory $($DestDir.FullName) is not empty"
    
}
   
foreach ($file in $files
)
    {
     
$fileList += AddFile($file

    }
  }
 
 
process
 
{
   
$fileList += AddFile($_
)
  }

  end
 
{
    $Count =
$CountStart
    
if ($digits -lt
0)
    {
      [
int]$Digits = [System.Math]::Truncate(([System.Math]::Log10($fileList.Count + $Count)))+
1
    }
   
foreach ($file in $fileList
)
    {
     
$file = Copy-NumberFile -file $file -DestDir $DestDir -BaseName $BaseName
`
       
-Digits $digits -Count ($Count) -Verbose
-PassThru
     
$filename = $file.
Name
     
$Tags.Track =
$Count
     
$Tags.Title = $filename.Substring(0,($filename.length-$file.extension.length
))
     
SetMedia-Tags -file $file -Tags
$Tags
     
$Count
++
   
}
  }
}

I have a helper function "Copy-NumberFile".  While I'm not sure if I'll ever need it in another operation, I can imagine it.  It copies a file to a Destination Directory, renames it with a BaseName followed by a Number and preserving the extension.  The number of Zero padded digits is specified in the $Digits parameter.  The $PassThru allows the caller to get the FileInfo for the created file.

An example usage might look like:

$Tags = @{Artists="Book Author";Album="Book Title";Comment="This is a comment";Genres=@("Fiction")}
$files = dir -Recurse -Filter *.mp3
Organize-AudioBookFiles -Files $files -DestDir "C:\temp\Book" -BaseName "BookName " -Tags $Tags

Sunday, March 09, 2008 9:27:18 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Powershell

This weekend I found the need to set the Media Meta Tags in MP3 files I have RIPed.  I found this Huddled Masses article for using the taglib-sharp library.  I find Hashtables as a convenient machine for passing Pthese kinds of adhoc Name\Value pairs.

[void] [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile(".\taglib-sharp.dll")

function SetMedia-Tags
 
( [System.IO.FileInfo] $File=$(Throw "File is required")
  , [
hashtable] $Tags=$(Throw "Tags are required"
))
{
  $media = [TagLib.File]::Create($file.FullName
)
  foreach ($tag in $Tags.keys
)
  {
    $media.Tag.$tag = $Tags[$tag
]
  }
  $media.Save
()
}

Example Usage:

$Tags = @{Artists="Max Headgroom";Album="Smoke";Comment="This is a comment";Genres=@("Crazy")}
SetMedia-Tags -File ".\file1.mp3" -Tags $Tags

I used this code in a more specific project for organizing Audio Book MP3s I'll describe in a subsequent post.

Sunday, March 09, 2008 8:12:26 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Powershell
 Friday, March 07, 2008

One of the interesting things about having a blog is seeing what people are searching for when they navigate to an entry.  On at least a dozen occasions I've seen searches where people were obviously trying to invoke NAnt from PowerShell.  Because I've talked about both NAnt and PowerShell without speaking to this subject, they have been disappointed in what they've found in my blogs.  Indeed, when I've performed my own searches, I've noticed there isn't a lot of useful info on doing this subject.  Especially at detecting an error in the NAnt script.

This isn't the most comprehensive script but it does the basics:

function Invoke-NAnt ($NantFile,$target,[hashtable]$Properties)
{
  $sb = New-Object
"System.Text.StringBuilder"
 
if ($properties -ne $null)
  {
    foreach ($key in $Properties.Keys)
    {
      [void] $sb.Append( '"' + "-D:$key=$($Properties.$key)" + '" ' )
    }
  }
  
  nant "-f:$NantFile" $target $sb.ToString()

 
if (-not $?)
  {
    Throw
"Nant Failed"
 
}
}

Example Usage:

Invoke-NAnt Test.build "TestTarget" @{Test1="Value1";Test2="Value2"}

Test.Build contains:

<project>
  <
target name="TestTarget"
>
    <
echo message="Test1=${Test1}"
/>
    <
echo message="Test2=${Test2}"
/>
    <
fail message="This is a failure"
/>
  </
target
>
</
project>

Output looks like:

NAnt 0.85 (Build 0.85.2478.0; release; 10/14/2006)
Copyright (C) 2001-2006 Gerry Shaw
http://nant.sourceforge.net

Buildfile: file:///C:/Projects/PSNant/Test.build
Target framework: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
Target(s) specified: TestTarget

TestTarget:

     [echo] Test1=Value1
     [echo] Test2=Value2

BUILD FAILED

C:\Projects\PSNant\Test.build(6,6):
This is a failure

Total time: 0 seconds.

Nant Failed
At C:\Projects\PSNant\InvokeNant.PS1:19 char:10
+     Throw  <<<< "Nant Failed"

This particular script is designed to fail with the 'fail task'.  This is because I was having trouble detecting errors.

  if (-not $?)
  {
    Throw
"Nant Failed"
 
}

The $? variable is set to $true if the previous instruction succeeded.  As of yet, I'm not getting the actual failure message.  If someone can help with that, I'd appreciate it.

Other usage comments:

The $properties parameter takes a hash table that gets marshaled into -D:<propname>=<propvalue> line arguments. I find the syntax of @{Test1="Value1";Test2="Value2"} to be more natural for PowerShell.

This function will return an array of text lines which are the output from NAnt.  If you don't want them to pipe out you'll need to assign it to a variable or [void] it.

$NantOutput = Invoke-NAnt Test.build "TestTarget" @{Test1="Value1";Test2="Value2"}

Finally:  Obviously this needs to be dressed out a little more for supporting some useful parameters to NAnt like Logger and Default Framework. 

Friday, March 07, 2008 5:26:48 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Powershell
 Saturday, February 23, 2008

Good writeup on installing Ubuntu 7.10 on Virtual PC.  However, it hung for me right after the first screen with two different ISO downloads.  I was trying this at home on my AMD Vista Laptop.  Some comments on the page makes me suspicious that I'll need use my Virtual Server at work.

Update:

With an RDP connection to an XP system at work I was able to get the Ubuntu to install.  I'll conclude, for now, there is some issue with VPC on Vista.

The mouse continued to be flaky but it could be the system within system within system connection I was using.  I'm on a Vista laptop with a touchpad, running an XP VPC with VPN RDP connection to an XP System running the Ubuntu VPC! Now why can't my mouse work?! :)

I guess on Monday I'll see how well the mouse works when I can get direct access to the VPC.  Next hurdle... get it on the network.  Then to see if I can Admin the thing through Powershell!

Saturday, February 23, 2008 7:33:58 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Virtual Linux
 Friday, February 22, 2008

I'm in the initial stages of attempting to control Linux servers from Windows using PowerShell.

The obvious path is using SSH.  The question is how.  Unfortunately with all the buzz around PowerShell Remoting, what I'm finding is a lot of the reverse... accessing PowerShell through SSH.  The reciprocity of this may make the reverse true but I haven't found the confirmation link yet.

The long way around the block might be through Cygwin and Putty.  The link is a little old but it shows a way.  I'm hoping for a direct path from PowerShell so I can minimize installation dependencies.

Update:

NetCmdlets is the "almost" direct path.  It looks good but too pricy for the way I want use it.  Besides, it's "just" a wrapper for rsh.exe.  Looks like I'll be attempting my own wrapper.  Anyone else try to do this?

Friday, February 22, 2008 11:11:47 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Powershell | Virtual Linux
 Sunday, February 17, 2008

The other day I was given a hard drive and asked to analyze what was on it.  While it was easy to determine it had over 300,000 files and about 10 Gigs I didn’t want to navigate through the whole thing looking in the hundreds of folders.  I figured a good thing to know was the number of files and size by extension.

 

Powershell to the rescue.  After several iterations of various techniques I came up with a CmdLet allowing me to measure any kind of object.  You can specify which property to use as the Group and for measurement.  I’m not sure what else I’ll use it for, but I love making things generic.

 

function MeasureGroup-Object

  ( [string]$group=$(Throw "Group Name is Required")

  , [string]$property=$(Throw "Property Name is Required")

  , $items

  )

{

  begin

  {

    function processItem($item)

    {

      $key = $item.$group

     

      if ($Aggregate.$key -eq $null)

      {

        $Aggregate.$key = @{Count=0;Sum=0}

      }

      $Aggregate.$key.Count += 1

      $Aggregate.$key.Sum += $item.$property

    }

 

    # Hash table to collect stats

    $Aggregate = @{}

 

    if ($items -ne $null)

    {

      foreach ($item in $items)

      {

        processItem $item

      }

    }

  }

  process

  {

    if ($_ -ne $null)

    {

      processItem $_

    }

  }

  end

  {

    function AddProperty ($object,$name,$value)

    {

      $member = new-object management.automation.PSNoteProperty $name,$value

      $object.psobject.members.Add($member)

    }

 

    foreach ($key  in $Aggregate.Keys)

    {

      $obj = new-object management.automation.psobject

      AddProperty $obj $group $key

      AddProperty $obj Count $Aggregate.$key.Count

      AddProperty $obj Sum $Aggregate.$key.Sum

      $obj

    }

  }

}

 

 

So let’s put it to work.  First you have to collect the objects you want to measure.

 

$files = Get-ChildItem -Recurse | where {$_ -is [System.IO.FileInfo]}

 

This will recursively collect all the files under the current directory.  It helps to filter out the Directories.  Because they don’t have Extensions, they would end up inflating the stats for files without extensions.

 

Now to use the MeasureGroup-Object.

 

$stats = MeasureGroup-Object Extension Length $files

 

The $stats variable will contain an array with an entry for each extension type.  Each entry will have an Extension, Count and Sum value.

 

The following will display the results but not in any particular order.

 

$stats

 

This will be more interesting.

 

# Get Top 5 file types by count

$stats | Sort-Object Count -Descending | Select-Object -First 5

 

Extension                Count                     Sum

---------                -----                     ---

.cs                        842                 3018481

.hxs                       765               980371275

.cab                       756              1801724080

.sql                       538                 6734980

.dll                       367                79635976

 

These are also interesting views.

 

# Get Top 5 file types by total Length

$stats | Sort-Object Sum -Descending | Select-Object -First 5

 

# Display all Extensions

$stats | Sort-Object Extension

 

Some comments about the implementation.

 

The End processing loops through the $Aggregate results and builds PSObjects with Note values.  The PSObjects play nice with the Sort, Select and default display.

 

Related Post: PowerShell Directory Size

Sunday, February 17, 2008 6:57:25 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Powershell

This is a useful template for starting a CmdLet that needs to work in a PipeLine or by passing parameters.

 

Processing is implemented in the processItem sub-function.  All the “–ne $null” conditions handle the differences between pipeline and parameter invocation.

 

function Test-PipelineOrParm ($parm)

{

  begin

  {

    function processItem($item)

    {

      # Implement processing in this function

      "processItem $item"

    }

   

    if ($parm -ne $null)

    {

      foreach ($item in $parm)

      {

        "begin $(processItem $item)"

      }

    }

  }

  process

  {

    if ($_ -ne $null)

    {

      "process $(processItem $_)"

    }

  }

  end

  {

    Write-Host "Done"

  }

}

 

These two examples demonstrate calling the template.

 

Write-Host "Test Pipeline processing"

Get-ChildItem | Test-PipelineOrParm

 

Write-Host "Test Parm processing"

Test-PipelineOrParm $(Get-ChildItem)

 

Sunday, February 17, 2008 5:26:38 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
Powershell

The past few weeks I’ve been working on a Powershell OO scripting framework.  I figure I better go ahead and publish it because I could keep tinkering on it for a long time.  I suspect it’s not done and even has a bug or two but it’s in decent shape.  While this is not “real” Object Oriented it does support:

 

·         Polymorphism

·         Encapsulation

·         Constructors with parameters

·         Notes – read-write variables

·         Methods – scriptblocks

·         Properties with Get scriptblocks and optional Set scriptblocks

·         Static and Private Notes and Methods

 

The New-PSClass cmdlet takes a script which acts as Class Definition.  Keywords note, method, property and constructor are local functions in New-PSClass and act as Class Definition by attaching objects to a PSClass Object returned by the CmdLet.

 

The PSClass has a New() method.  Parameters to New are passed to the constructor script.  Due to a bug in V1.0 of PowerShell, the Param statement does not work in the scriptblocks in PSClass.  While I have not tried it yet, I have good reason to believe that it will work in V2.0.  While it’s not as nice, the $Args variable works fine.

 

Instead of trying to describe all the syntax as small points in the blog entry, I’ll present an example Animal Class with a Dog and Bird Classes that inherit from it.  While looking through it take note of:

·         Private Notes use a –private switch.  Within the class, scripts access them through a $private variable.  Encapsulatioen isolates them from inherited classes and easy public access.

·         Static Notes and Methods are attached to the PSClass object.  This example shows a Static Note accessed in the Constructors.  This may seem non-intuitive considering the Class Object used in the Constructor is not created until New-PSClass is completed.   This is because the constructor script is not executed until an action Object is created using the New() method.