Hi,

I’m in the process of transferring a bunch of script from powershell to
ruby to aid interoperability with an existing application and I’m
looking for two ruby equivalents to powershell commands:

PSBASE is a view which returns the raw view of an object.
getText returns the text between the current location and the specified
location in the buffer.

I use these a lot with WMI code in powershell, an example:

$Var1 = path to WMI class or object
$Var1.psbase.gettext(1) > wmi.xml

This would give me pure XML of a WMI object.

Any greatly appreciated.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Nicholas Calvert
<nick.calvert@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm in the process of transferring a bunch of script from powershell to
> ruby to aid interoperability with an existing application and I'm
> looking for two ruby equivalents to powershell commands:
>
> PSBASE is a view which returns the raw view of an object.
> getText returns the text between the current location and the specified
> location in the buffer.
>
> I use these a lot with WMI code in powershell, an example:
>
> $Var1 = path to WMI class or object
> $Var1.psbase.gettext(1) > wmi.xml
>
> This would give me pure XML of a WMI object.

I'm not sure that you need PSBASE outside of powershell, I could be
wrong, though. GetText in OLE land is called GetText_.

Win32OLE example:

>> require 'win32ole'
=> true
>>
?> wmi = WIN32OLE.connect("winmgmts://")
=> #<WIN32OLE:0x2c50740>
>>
?> processes = wmi.ExecQuery("select * from win32_process")
=> #<WIN32OLE:0x2c280c0>
>>
?>
?> for process in processes do
?> p process.gettext_(1)
>> break
>> end
"<INSTANCE CLASSNAME=\"Win32_Process\"><PROPERTY NAME=\"__PATH\"
CLASSORIGIN=\"_
...

Ruby-WMI example:

>> require 'ruby-wmi'
=> true
>> proc = WMI::Win32_Process.find(:first)
=> #<WIN32OLE:0x2be25e0>
>> proc.gettext_(1)
=> "<INSTANCE CLASSNAME="Win32_Process"><PROPERTY NAME="__PATH" CLASSORIGIN="
...

Hope that s.

Gordon

Cheers Gordon, you are a life saver. Whilst im on the same subject, i am
also having trouble creating a new GUID. With Powershell i can do:

$NEWGUID = [GUID]::NewGUID().ToString()

Do you think its possible to do this with Ruby and ruby-wmi?

Many thanks,

Nick


Gordon Thiesfeld wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Nicholas Calvert
> <nick.calvert@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I use these a lot with WMI code in powershell, an example:
>>
>> $Var1 = path to WMI class or object
>> $Var1.psbase.gettext(1) > wmi.xml
>>
>> This would give me pure XML of a WMI object.
>
> I'm not sure that you need PSBASE outside of powershell, I could be
> wrong, though. GetText in OLE land is called GetText_.
>
> Win32OLE example:
>
>>> require 'win32ole'
> => true
>>>
> ?> wmi = WIN32OLE.connect("winmgmts://")
> => #<WIN32OLE:0x2c50740>
>>>
> ?> processes = wmi.ExecQuery("select * from win32_process")
> => #<WIN32OLE:0x2c280c0>
>>>
> ?>
> ?> for process in processes do
> ?> p process.gettext_(1)
>>> break
>>> end
> "<INSTANCE CLASSNAME=\"Win32_Process\"><PROPERTY NAME=\"__PATH\"
> CLASSORIGIN=\"_
> ...
>
> Ruby-WMI example:
>
>>> require 'ruby-wmi'
> => true
>>> proc = WMI::Win32_Process.find(:first)
> => #<WIN32OLE:0x2be25e0>
>>> proc.gettext_(1)
> => "<INSTANCE CLASSNAME="Win32_Process"><PROPERTY NAME="__PATH"
> CLASSORIGIN="
> ...
>
> Hope that s.
>
> Gordon

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 14:21, Nicholas Calvert <nick.calvert@gmail.com> wrote:
> Cheers Gordon, you are a life saver. Whilst im on the same subject, i am
> also having trouble creating a new GUID. With Powershell i can do:
>
> $NEWGUID = [GUID]::NewGUID().ToString()
>
> Do you think its possible to do this with Ruby and ruby-wmi?

This is how I create GUIDs (requires win32utils gem, might not be
tested - I'm reinstalling ruby right now):

require 'windows/com'
require 'windows/unicode'

class String
# Return the portion of the string up to the first NULL character. This
# was added for both speed and convenience.
def nstrip
self[ /^[^\0]*/ ]
end
end

class Guid

BUFFER_SIZE = 100

attr_reader :data

def initialize(data = nil)
@data = data
create if data.nil?
end

def create
@data = 0.chr * 16
raise 'GUID Error' unless CoCreateGuid(@data)
end

def to_s
ret = 0.chr * BUFFER_SIZE
i = StringFromGUID2(@data, ret, BUFFER_SIZE)
wide_to_multi(ret[0..i*2]).nstrip
end

private

include Windows::COM
include Windows::Unicode

end

if File.expand_path(__FILE__) == File.expand_path($0)
puts Guid.new.to_s
end

Thanks Jano. If you have a minute, do you think you could run through
that code and explain what its doing? I am new to Ruby and a large
portion of that went over my head

Nick
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 16:05, Nicholas Calvert <nick.calvert@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Jano. If you have a minute, do you think you could run through
> that code and explain what its doing? I am new to Ruby and a large
> portion of that went over my head

1. You'll find documentation for CoCreateGuid here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...68(VS.85).aspx
and for StringFromGUID2 here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...93(VS.85).aspx
(these are C functions from ole32.dll)

2. I call them using WIN32API, conveniently wrapped by windows-pr gem
from win32utils project.

### these are from windows-pr gem
require 'windows/com'
require 'windows/unicode'

### er function to strip everything past the first NULL character.
Copied from some file in win32utils
class String
# Return the portion of the string up to the first NULL character. This
# was added for both speed and convenience.
def nstrip
self[ /^[^\0]*/ ]
end
end

class Guid

BUFFER_SIZE = 100

attr_reader :data

### two ways of using this class - 1. either provide GUID in binary
form Guid.new(data) or create a new one (Guid.new)
def initialize(data = nil) ### nil is default value for data parameter
@data = data
create if data.nil? ### if there's no data, call create
end

### create new guid
def create
@data = 0.chr * 16 ### make empty buffer for the binary GUID "\0\0\0\0...\0"
raise 'GUID Error' unless CoCreateGuid(@data) ### call the API. the
call will place the created GUID in @data.
end

### convert binary guid to string representation
def to_s
ret = 0.chr * BUFFER_SIZE ### temporary buffer to place the string form
i = StringFromGUID2(@data, ret, BUFFER_SIZE) ### call the API
### API returns zero-terminated wide string. this is the conversion to
ordinary ruby string.
### wide_to_multi is from windows/unicode
wide_to_multi(ret[0..i*2]).nstrip
end

private

### this code includes COM and Unicode modules into this class, so
that we can use them.
include Windows::COM
include Windows::Unicode

end

### this line is kind of idiom/guard
### it allows to specify code to be run when the file is run directly.
This code will not run
### if this file is required or included in another file. (script vs. library)
if File.expand_path(__FILE__) == File.expand_path($0)
puts Guid.new.to_s
end

----

Ok, and now ask questions! ;-)
J.