This blog does a fairly straight-forward job on explaining the basics. For me, I learn best in an interactive 1:1 or well-constructed video, so ChatGPT was priceless. I could ask it stupid questions all day long, and after throwing some different ideas around I started to see the essential parts and just let my prior knowledge of PS, .NET, and C# WPF take it from there.
At the end of the day, all that really matters is using the PresentationFramework assembly and creating a window:
- Add-Type -AssemblyName PresentationFramework
- Either use Visual Studio > WPF Project and make the UI you want. Take the XAML file and use PowerShell to get the raw content:
- $Xaml = Get-Content -Path MainWindow.xaml -Raw
- $SanitizedXaml = $Xaml -replace “bad syntax e.g. Foreground={x:Null}” "Foreground=“Transparent” # Certain XAML syntax is incompatible with PS XML
- [xml]$XmlReader = [System.Xml.XmlNodeReader]::new($SanitizedXaml)
- $Window = [Windows.Markup.XamlReader]::Load($XmlReader)
- Or, use .NET-style syntax in PS directly:
- $Window = [System.Windows.Window]::new()
- Then show the window:
- $Window.ShowDialog() | Out-Null
So true 🤣