PowerShellArgumentCompleters

Argument Completers for some PowerShell module cmdlets

A collection of some PowerShell argument completers for various cmdlets from some PowerShell modules:

| Argument Completer Script | Description | PSGallery Info | |---------------------------|-------------|----------------| | Register-VNActiveDirectoryArgumentCompleter.ps1 | Completers for Microsoft's ActiveDirectory PowerShell module | | | Register-VNAWSArgumentCompleter.ps1 | Completers for some of the AWS PowerShell modules AWS.Tools.*, and the monolithic AWSPowerShell* | | | Register-VNVMwarePowerCLIArgumentCompleter.ps1 | Completers for VMware PowerShell module VMware.PowerCLI | |

Contents:

• What is Argument Completing?
• Getting Started
• Deeper Info

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What is Argument Completing?

Background: PowerShell argument completers are a way to enable tab-completion of cmdlet parameter values. These can be from static sources, live sources -- whatever you can imagine. Here are some examples of argument completing for a few VMware PowerCLI cmdlets' parameters:

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Getting Started

The docs for this project have the information about getting started with using argument completers. Check them out.

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Deeper Info

One can use a scriptblock of goodness in order to generate the completion results. So, for example:

## with a proper argument completer for the -Name parameter, the following cycles through VMs whose name match the given string, live, from the given virtual infrastructure
Get-VM -Name matt<tab>

By registering an argument completer scriptblock for a particular cmdlet and parameter, at tab-completion time, that completer generates a list of completion results (assuming any matches), through which the user can subsequently cycle via further Tab-ing. The workflow:

• register argument completer scriptblock for a cmdlet/parameter pair (say, by runnig a script that has argument completers in it, and that registers them for cmdlet/parameter pairs)
• for a registered argument completer, the argument scriptblock is executed one time for the first press of the Tab key, creating a list of completion results (if any)
• each subsequent press of Tab cycles through the list of completions results (assuming that there is more than one)
• one can also see the whole list of completion results, assuming they are in an environment that supports such things, like in something with IntelliSense, or in a PowerShell session with the PSReadline module loaded

A bit deeper explanation on the behavior resides at https://github.com/mtboren/PowerCLIFeedback/blob/master/PowerCLISuggestions.md in the "Support Natural PowerShell Interactive Behavior" section

For a bit more information about PowerShell argument completers (though there is not extensive official documentation on argument completers themselves to be found, yet), see Register-ArgumentCompleter