Simple Scripts to Supercharge Splatting

Splatting is a technique of passing parameters in PowerShell.

Splatter makes splatting more powerful, flexible, and easy to use.

With Splatter you can:

• Splat any object to any command
• Pipe splats to commands
• Validate splats
• Find commands for a splat

Splatter is tiny, and can be easily embedded into any module, or used to generate splatting code.

Splatter has four core commands:

• Get-Splat (?@)
• Find-Splat (??@)
• Merge-Splat (*@)
• Use-Splat (.@)

Get-Splat returns a Dictionary of parameters, given a command or ScriptBlock.
This only contains parameters for the command, and converts the parameters into the desired types. Get-Splat can take any object or Dictionary as input.

@{Id=$pid;Junk='Data'} | Get-Splat Get-Process    
# -or 
@{Id=$pid;Junk='Data'} | ?@ gps
# -or
@{Id=$pid;Junk='Data'} | & ${?@} gps

Get-Splat can take more than one command as input. If it does, it will return the matching inputs for each command.

@{FilePath = 'pwsh';ArgumentList = '-noprofile';PassThru=$true} | 
    Use-Splat Start-Process |
    Add-Member NoteProperty TimeOut 15 -PassThru | 
    Get-Splat Wait-Process, Stop-Process

Get-Splat will also attach a properties to the Dictionary.

These property won't be used when calling the splat, but can be peeked at:

$splat = @{id=$pid;foo='bar'} | ?@ gps
$splat.Command, $splat.PercentFit, $splat.Unmapped

Find-Splat will find commands that match a given splat, and return information about a match.

@{id=$pid} | Find-Splat *-Process

Find-Splat may also be scoped to a given module

@{splat=@{}} | Find-Splat -Module Splatter

Merge splat will merge multiple splats together.

@{a='b'}, @{c='d'} | Merge-Splat

Use-Splat will run a splat against one or more commands. @{id=$pid} | Use-Splat Get-Process # Gets the current process

# Gets the process, and then doesn't stop the process because Stop-Process is passed WhatIf
@{id=$pid;WhatIf=$true} | .@ Get-Process,Stop-Process 

In PowerShell, you can treat any ScriptBlock as a command. Splatter makes this simpler.

Take this example, which takes a little bit of input data and uses it in a few different scripts.

@{
    Name='James'
    Birthday = '12/17/1981'
    City = 'Seattle'
    State = 'Washington'
} | .@ {
    param($Name)
    "$name"
}, {
    param([DateTime]$Birthday)
    $ageTimespan = [DateTime]::Now - $birthday
    "Age:" + [Math]::Floor($ageTimespan.TotalDays / 365)
    
}, {
    param($city, $state)
    "$city, $state"
}

Since Splatter will also convert objects to hashtables, you could also write something like:

Import-Csv .\People.csv | .@ 
    {
        param($Name)
        "$name"
    }, {
        param([DateTime]$Birthday)
        $ageTimespan = [DateTime]::Now - $birthday
        "Age:" + [Math]::Floor($ageTimespan.TotalDays / 365)
    
    }

Initialize-Splat will output a script containing the core commands for Splatter. Using this output, you can directly embed Splatter into any script or module.

Initialize-Splatter

To install this into a module:

Get-Module TheNameOfYourModule | Split-Path | Push-Location    
Initialize-Splatter > '@.ps1'
Pop-Location

Then add the following line to your module:

. $psScriptRoot\@.ps1

By default, when Splatter is embedded, it will not export functions or aliases, and you will need to use the variable syntax:

& ${?@}  # Get-Splat
& ${??@} # Find-Splat
& ${*@}  # Merge-Splat
& ${.@}  # Use-Splat     

You can override this by using -AsFunction

Initialize-Splatter -AsFunction

If you don't need all of the commands, you can use -Verb

Initialize-Splatter -Verb Get, Use

You can use Out-Splat to generate code that splats.

Out-Splat -CommandName Get-Command -DefaultParameter @{Module='Splatter';CommandType='Alias'} | Invoke-Expression

You can use also use Out-Splatter to generate whole functions, including help.

$scriptBlock = 
    Out-Splat -FunctionName Get-SplatterAlias -CommandName Get-Command -DefaultParameter @{
        Module='Splatter';CommandType='Alias'
    } -ExcludeParameter * -Synopsis 'Gets Splatter Aliases' -Description 'Gets aliases from the module Splatter'
. ([ScriptBlock]::Create($scriptBlock))

Get-SplatterAlias | Out-String
Get-Help Get-SplatterAlias | Out-String