Powershell: A text based menu

Hi,

a long time ago I wrote a Menu function for quickly choose predefined options in a script. An example

Source the menu.ps1 in your script and call  fShowMenu. This will show the menu. The function needs 2 parameters:
Parameter 1: The menu title as string
Parameter 2: A hashtable with the Menuentries. The key of an Menuitem is returned by the function the corresponding value is shown at the menu.

# Source the file
. .\menu.ps1
# Call Menu funtion
fShowMenu "Choose your favorite Band" @{"sl"="Slayer";"me"="Metallica";"ex"="Exodus";"an"="Anthrax"}
A text based Powershell Menu
A text based Powershell Menu


Now you can navigate through the menu by pressing the up and down arrow keys and the return key to quit the menu or you can select an menu entry directly by pressing the leading number or character of the menu item at the keyboard.

PS D:\> fShowMenu "Choose your favorite Band" @{"sl"="Slayer";"me"="Metallica";"ex"="Exodus";"an"="Anthrax"}
 Choose your favorite Band
  1: Metallica
  2: Exodus
  3: Anthrax
  4: Slayer
  Your choice: 3
an

In this example “3” selects “Anthrax” and the function returns “an”.

Up to 90 menu items are possible. This should be enough for the most cases.

Michael

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A text based menu for powershell
A text based menu for powershell
Menu.zip
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8 thoughts on “Powershell: A text based menu”

    1. The limit comes from the keyboard shortcut. You have only to press one key without to hit return to select an entry and therefore only a-z, A-Z, 0-9 is available.

      Michael

  1. Is there a way to run a program using the menu in ISE?
    I get
    Choose your favorite Band
    The handle is invalid.
    At C:\Projects\PowerShell\Menu\Menu.ps1:67 char:2
    + $iMenuStartLineAbsolute=[System.Console]::CursorTop
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : OperationStopped: (:) [], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.IO.IOException

    Exception setting “CursorTop”: “The handle is invalid.

    1. Hi chavv,

      the Powershell ISE doesn’t have a “real” console, its a Windows form and therefore its not possible to use [System.Console] proberties.

      Michael

  2. Thanks, but what about “ordering” of items?
    They don’t appear in the order they are written, even your example gives:
    1: Metallica
    2: Anthrax
    3: Slayer
    4: Exodus

    while in the source they are
    @{“sl”=”Slayer”;”me”=”Metallica”;”ex”=”Exodus”;”an”=”Anthrax”}

    1. The only workaround I found – importing function into main program source and using “global” hashtable variable. No matter what I do, if I send the has as parameter it gets borked in the function.

      1. Well, I risk to become annoying, but I found a solution 😀
        Changing param declaration of the function (it seems the type [System.Collections.IDictionary] works with ordered/not ordered hashtables just fine ):

        param (
        [System.String]$sMenuTitle,
        # [System.Collections.Hashtable]$hMenuEntries
        [System.Collections.IDictionary] $hMenuEntries
        )

  3. For those who wants to use a order menu, the below will help.

    Do chavv’s actions above, where you update [System.Collections.Hashtable]$hMenuEntries to [System.Collections.IDictionary] $hMenuEntries on line 17.

    In your script where you use the function, prepare the hashtable casting it as [ordered]. Then feed that into the fShowMenu.

    #Example PowerShell, it should produce the menu as ordered below in the hashtable.

    $MyOrderMenuList = [ordered] @{
    “sl”=”Slayer”;
    “me”=”Metallica”;
    “ex”=”Exodus”;
    “an”=”Anthrax”
    }

    $MenuResponse = fShowMenu “Choose your favorite Band” $MyOrderMenuList
    $MenuResponse

    #End Example

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