Azure Powershell Commands

Here let's explore different PowerShell commands to manage the Azure platform.

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1. Creating Variables in Powershell

It can define a variable in PowerShell using the $ symbol followed by the name of the variable. In the below example, the variable $myfirstvar is assigned with the string “Hello World”

$myfirstvar =  "Hello World"

Going forward, we will see the different variable assignments as part of different azure operations.

Splatting

Splatting is a PowerShell feature that allows you to bundle up the parameters you want to supply to a command and pass them in a table, rather than one long line of code. With PowerShell splatting, your commands can be easier to read and navigate.

Lets see an example of this,

Copy-Item -Path "test.txt" -Destination "test2.txt" -WhatIf -Force

The above example shows copying a text file from source to destination. Here with the Copy-Item command, it passes three parameters Path, Destination, and WhatIf. If there are more parameters, then you want to add it with the command. Here the problem is as the parameter increases, readability become more difficult and the user cant reuse a set of parameter for another command. Splatting can solve these issues. Using splitting, it can implement the above command as follows.

$HashArguments = @{
  Path = "test.txt"
  Destination = "test2.txt"
  WhatIf = $true
}
Copy-Item @HashArguments

The first command creates a hash table of parameter-name and parameter-value pairs and stores it in the $HashArguments variable. The second command uses the $HashArguments variable in the command with splatting. The At symbol (@HashArguments) replaces the dollar sign ($HashArguments) in the command.

2. Connecting to the Azure Account

The command Connect-AzAccount is used to connect your PowerShell console with the azure account. Once the user invokes this command, the the user can access different resources under his account. Users can pass different parameters as part of Connect-AzAccount command. Below shows the parameters supported by the command.