In PowerShell, there are different PSProviders available. But what is a PowerShell provider, exactly? It is a representation of a data storage location, where you are able to use basic commands regarding specific data types. For example, FileSystem is the PSProvider, when working in the context of the filesystem. As you can see in the following table, this is available in the standard PSDrive. In this context, you work directly with the built-in cmdlets directed to this data store. A good example is Get-ChildItem, which retrieves the child items of the current location in the current PSDrive. When working in the filesystem, the types are files and directories, but in the certificate PSDrive, they will be the available certificates. The following table shows all of the available PSDrives with their corresponding PSProvider, which are available by default:
|
PSProvider
|
PSDrive
|
Data Store
|
|
Alias |
Alias: |
PowerShell aliases |
|
Certificate |
Cert: |
x509 certificates for digital signatures |
|
Environment |
Env: |
Environment variables |
|
FileSystem |
(*) |
Filesystem drives, directories, and files |
|
Function |
Function: |
PowerShell functions |
|
Registry |
HKLM:, HKCU: |
Windows registry |
|
Variable |
Variable: |
PowerShell variables |
|
WSMan |
WSMan: |
WS-Management configuration information for remoting |
You can retrieve a complete list of available PSProviders with the Get-PSProvider cmdlet. Later on in this book, we will provide some examples regarding PSDrives, and we will introduce a new one called Azure:. The good thing about this is that you can just work with the well-known cmdlets and use them in all of the different PSDrives. It's as easy as that.
Take a look by yourself and retrieve the PSDrives that are currently available by using Get-PSDrive. You will see a table like the following:
|
Used |
Free |
Name |
Provider |
Root |
Description |
|
Alias |
Alias |
|
Drive that contains a view of the aliases stored in a session state |
||
|
## |
## |
C |
FileSystem |
C: |
|
|
Cert |
Certificate |
|
X509 Certificate Provider |
||
|
## |
## |
D |
FileSystem |
D: |
External_SSD |
|
E |
FileSystem |
E: |
|||
|
Env |
Environment |
|
Drive that contains a view of the environment variables for the process |
||
|
Function |
Function |
|
Drive that contains a view of the functions stored in a session state |
||
|
HKCU |
Registry |
HKEY_CURRENT_USER |
The software settings for the current user |
||
|
HKLM |
Registry |
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE |
The configuration settings for the local computer |
||
|
Variable |
Variable |
|
Drive that contains a view of those variables stored in a session state |
||
|
WSMan |
WSMan |
|
Root of WSMan config storage |
This standardization will help you a lot. With each of these PSDrives, you will have the following cmdlets available. Therefore, you should get familiar with them, as you will need them more frequently:
- ChildItem cmdlets:
- Get-ChildItem
- Content cmdlets:
- Add-Content
- Clear-Content
- Get-Content
- Set-Content
- Item cmdlets:
- Clear-Item
- Copy-Item
- Get-Item
- Invoke-Item
- Move-Item
- New-Item
- Remove-Item
- Rename-Item
- Set-Item
- ItemProperty cmdlets:
- Clear-ItemProperty
- Copy-ItemProperty
- Get-ItemProperty
- Move-ItemProperty
- New-ItemProperty
- Remove-ItemProperty
- Rename-ItemProperty
- Set-ItemProperty
- Location cmdlets:
- Get-Location
- Pop-Location
- Push-Location
- Set-Location
- Path cmdlets:
- Join-Path
- Convert-Path
- Split-Path
- Resolve-Path
- Test-Path
- PSDrive cmdlets:
- Get-PSDrive
- New-PSDrive
- Remove-PSDrive
- PSProvider cmdlets:
- Get-PSProvider
We will use some of them in examples in the book, so you will also see some use cases in detail. For now, we will stop here, and you can use these lists as a glossary if you need to search for or remember any cmdlets.