How do I configure help and usage statements in a powershell script?

August 10, 2023

Suppose I have the powershell script foo.ps1:

<# test foo.ps1 #>
param(
  [CmdletBinding()]
  [Switch]$foo,
  [Switch]$bar
)

Which has a few automatic parameters like -Debug and -Verbose in addition to the custom parameters -foo and -bar.

I should be able to see all of these parameters when I do something like .\foo.ps1 --help, or I should be able to configure that somehow.

What is the core way to do this in powershell?

>Solution :

Get-Command will return you the full list of parameters, including common parameters:

$myScript = Get-Command .\foo.ps1

# this is a dictionary containing all the parameters
$myScript.Parameters 

# we can index into it like any other dictionary to inspect the parameter metadata for a given parameter
$myScript.Parameters['bar']

With regards to Get-Help, that part is already taken care of for you – when you do Get-Help .\foo.ps1 or .\foo -? after adding a CmdletBinding, PowerShell will automatically add [<CommonParameters>] to the command syntax string to indicate that common parameters are accepted:

Without [CmdletBinding()] decorator: