SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Basics

Hi guys,

In this post I am going to explain you what is powershell management tool  in sharepoint , how it will be used and how it is different from the classic stsadm tool.

What is Sharepoint 2010 Management Shell :

In Sharepoint 2010 , a new feature called sharepoint 2010 management shell is included to work with the administrative jobs as we can do with the stsadm.exe in prior(moss).

Generally we can say powershell is a task automation tool which is built on top of the .net frame work. to achieve the administrative tasks .Here we write the  cmdlets(Command lets) , as command in the cmdprompt/stsadm. And also along with the cmdlets, the powershell can  execute the scripts,functions and executable programs too.  Here I will give a basic idea on the cmdlets..

Cmdlet ( called as command let )  : Its like a command to performs the task, takes the input and generally returns the .net frame work objects. The cmdlet is a combination of verb and noun in syntax.

Syntax  : The syntax is like Verb-Noun

Eg : Get-SPSite  

Start working with Powershell :  

Open the sharepoint powershell  console

StartàAll programsàMicrosoft Sharepoint 2010 ProductsàSharepoint 2010 Mangement Shell-->Right click on it and run as administrator

Execute the above mentioned command Get-SpSite.It gives all the site collections as below

There are many pre defined cmdlets introduced with the SharePoint 2010, you can find here. Here  I am giving the basic cmdlets to know

1.Get-Command : It will list all the cmdlets 

In above cmdlet if we specify the command it will give the entire syntax like this 

Ex : get-command  enable-spfeature

This gives you the entire syntax of the enable-spfeature cmdlets like this

Enable-SPFeature [-Identity] [-AssignmentCollection ] [-Confirm []] [-Force ] [-PassThru ] [-Url ] [-WhatIf []]

2.Get-Help  : It gives you the help topics:

Like if you know the part/word of the command and want to know the full cmdlets then you can use this like

Get-help *feature*

This will list all the commands which contains the word feature

3. Get-command  –verb   : will list all the cmdlets which has the verb

Eg :  get-Command  –verb , lists all the cmdlets which has the verb ‘enable’

4. Get-Command  -noun   : will lists all the cmdlets which has the noun

Ex:  get-Command –noun spsite,

 list all the cmdlets which has the spsite as noun

5. Get-help -examples

If you want any cmdlet with a example use this cmdlet

Eg : get-help enable-spfeature –examples

This will give the example of the cmdlet which enables the  feature in a given scope level (site/subsite) like this

The below are the cmdlets we use at the time of deployment

Adding the solution :

Add-SPSolution -LiteralPath  c:\purna\ Mywebpcm.wsp

Installing the solution :

Install-SPSolution -Identity Mywebpcm.wsp -GACDeployment

Updating the solution :

Update-SPSolution –Identity Mywebpcm.wsp –LiteralPath “C:\purna\ Mywebpcm_v2.wsp” –GacDeployment

Uninstalling the solution :

 Uninstall-SPSolution –Identity Mywebpcm.wsp –WebApplication http://pcmweb  

Removing the Solution :

Remove-SPSolution–Identity Mywebpcm.wsp

How cmdlets are different from the stsadm commands ?

1.  Cmdlets are based on the .net Frame work they are the instances of the .net framework classes. (Ex : when we get the error it throws a object based error instead a simple text as in stsadm)

2 . You can sort /format the result this was not possible with the stsadm.

Here are the more cmdlets from the msdn  article..

Happy reading..!