API Programming

Have you ever run a long PowerShell script, minimized it, only to realize much later that an error caused it to stop? Rather than just using a color syntax red to display the error,  I wanted to hear it so I could switch back to the PowerShell window and see the error.

So how easy is it to make PowerShell speak? It’s almost identical to the .NET code I have in VB.net and C# on Make Your Computer Talk with VB.NET Application (and Source Code) using the SAPI.SpVoice class.

Here’s the one-liner:

1

(new-object -com SAPI.SpVoice).speak("Welcome to brangle dot com")

Now, if we want to write a function to generate to use whenever needed we could do so just like below. You might notice we used a global:functionName, this will allow the function to be in the global scope. If you don’t know what the global scope is, then just use, you’ll probably want it rather than not.

1
2
3
4
5
6

function global:talk ($message)  {
   (new-object -com SAPI.SpVoice).speak($message)
}
 
$error = "There was an error pinging the webserver"
talk($error)