Scripting Question

kenny504

I want to create a script that can search a directory for a specific file.

How do I go about doing this.

I would like for the interface to be user-friendly. Where the user can actually type in a date for when the report was created and have the script search the folder to find the name of the report.

Can anyone help me Im not fluent with this kind of scripting.

Therhino

windows or unix?

kenny504

sorry its a windows machine windows xp clients specifically

HeroPsycho

With Powershell it's simple...

get-childitem c:\path\* -include filename.txt

Tack on -recurse to search subdirectories as well.

You could easily write a script that asks for input of what to use for -include. Just define it as a variable (-include $variablename), make it a mandatory parameter when launching the script.

If you need to search remote machines, you can use a get-wmiobject command to do this.

You could go further and make a WinForm that asks for what they're looking for.

aordal

Here's a quick & dirty function. You can modify it so that it doesnt prompt for a computer name and just automatically searches the local machine.

function SearchFile {
clear
$computername = Read-Host "Input the name of the Computer you want to seach: "
$path = Read-Host "Input the root Directory you want to search: "
$file = Read-Host "Input the name of the file you want to find: "
Get-ChildItem -erroraction silentlycontinue -recurse -Path $path $file
" "
write-host "End of File List"
}

royal

Even with the computername specified, it wouldn't search that computer. There's no PowerShell Remoting in the current version of PowerShell. Would need to use WMI and re-write that function as that Get-ChildItem cmdlet doesn't even use that $computername variable.

HeroPsycho

royal wrote: »

Even with the computername specified, it wouldn't search that computer. There's no PowerShell Remoting in the current version of PowerShell. Would need to use WMI and re-write that function as that Get-ChildItem cmdlet doesn't even use that $computername variable.

Word!

Powershell 2.0 CTP3 could work with rewrites, but that's obviously beta software and probably not a good idea to use, and that function wouldn't work anyway.

royal

Here's a script I wrote that can be tweaked a bit to give you the functionality you want. I'm way too busy at work to tweak it. In the .txt file, you can specify the directories you want to look in with each directory on its own line. Or just replace it with Get-Content X:\. It'll search subfolders by default and you can take -recurse out of the function to stop it from doing so.

you can also modify the LastWriteTime attribute and data to specify the attribute you want it to search on and the date.

$directories = Get-Content C:\directories.txt

function Get-Data {
foreach ($dir in $directories) {
Get-ChildItem $dir -recurse | Select-Object FullName,CreationTime,LastAccessTime,LastWriteTime | Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -ge [datetime] "10/10/08" } |
}
}
Get-Data | Export-CSV C:\data.csv -NoTypeInformation

aordal

Hah yeah i totally forgot to implement that part. Let me see..