Example of showing a folder dialog

In this short example I will demonstrate how easy it is to use .net objects from PowerShell. This practically enables you to develop straight from PowerShell (although there is no designer.cs nor a visual interface).

In the example I will open a dialog were the user can select a folder which then will be stored in a variable (only if the user clicked “OK”).

Here is the script:

function Get-Folder { 
    if(!([appdomain]::CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies() | ? {$_.GetName().Name -eq "System.Windows.Forms"}))
    {
        Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
    }
    [System.Windows.Forms.FolderBrowserDialog]$fbdlg = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.FolderBrowserDialog
    [System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult]$result = $fbdlg.ShowDialog();
    $path = $null;
    if($result -eq [System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult]::OK)
    {
        $path = $fbdlg.SelectedPath;
    }
    return $path
}

First I check if System.Windows.Forms is already loaded (line 2)
[appdomain]::CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies() returns all currently loaded assemblies. If none of them have the name “System.Windows.Forms” it will be loaded then (at line 4).

In the same way other assemblies can be loaded (like System.Drawing, System.IO, System.Net etc.).

After this I simply create a FolderBrowserDialog object (line 6) using the default constructor with no parameters.

Next I call the “ShowDialog” function on the FolderBrowserDialog object and store the result in a DialogResult object (line 7)

If this object is equal to DialogResult.OK (line 9) the path will be stored in the $path variable (line 11).

Finally the $path variable is returned (line 13). This will be $null if the dialog was canceled.