PowerPoll

PowerShell poll program for my co-workers to decide where to eat each day :)

Overview

Configuration

• ./dat/restaurants.xml contains restaurants information :
  • "id" must be unique, different from "q","Q" or "quit"
  • <name> should be a maximum size of 12 for layout reasons
  • <time> represents the travel time (in min) to the restaurant by foot
• ./dat/users.xml contains users informations :
  • "id" of each user should match their Windows session id (use $env:UserName in PowerShell to get it)
  • For now, just the <prenom> tag is used. It corresponds to first name of the user.
• ./poll.ps1 contains the main script of the program :
  • On line 73, change the absolute path to match your PowerPoll directory :

  # Identification
  Set-Location -Path C:\Users\bryan\workspace\PowerPoll

• You can create a shortcut to launch your script just by clicking on an icon. Create a shortcut and in the target section, write %SystemRoot%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -noexit -nologo -command &'C:\Users\bryan\workspace\PowerPoll\poll.ps1' (replace it by the path to your script), like On mange où.Ink.

Getting started

• Read the configuration part
• Open PowerShell (or PowerShell ISE)
• Move to the project folder cd .\PowerPoll\
• Run the script .\poll.ps1

Instructions

• Type a restaurant number to vote for it.
• You can vote for several restaurants.
• Vote for the same restaurant to cancel your vote.
• Vote for 0. Absent(s) if you are away and don't want to go to the restaurant today.
• Vote for 99. Suiveurs if you want to go anywhere.

Add a user

You can add a user just by adding :

<user id="myid">
  <prenom>MyUserName</prenom>
</user>

inside the <users></users> tags of the users.xml file, following the previous rules.

Add a restaurant

You can add a restaurant just by adding :

<restaurant id="30">
  <name>MyRestaurant</name>
  <time>7</time>
</restaurant>

inside the <restaurants></restaurants> tags of the restaurants.xml file, following the previous rules.

Disable Execution Policy

If you have this error :

script1.ps1 cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system.

This error happens due to a security measure which won't let scripts be executed on your system without you having approved of it.

Disable it for the current user :

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope CurrentUser -Force

Or definitively on the computer :

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Force

Useful information

• Effective Windows PowerShell ebook from Keith

Author

Bryan MARTINET