Running Powershell Code From Inside Your Macros

A while back I wrote this blog post which shows you how you can have a PowerShell script run Macro Scheduler commands via the MacroScript SDK.

However, what if you want to do it the other way around and run PowerShell code from inside a Macro Scheduler macro instead?

One way would simply be to run a PowerShell script on the command line, like this:

Run>powershell.exe -file "c:\myfolder\myscript.ps1"

But what if you didn’t have a PowerShell script file?  Well, while you could always have your macro create one using the WriteLn command (and delete it after), you don’t need to as you can pass a sequence of commands to PowerShell on the command line:

powershell.exe -executionPolicy bypass -command "Write-Host 'Hello World'; exit 123;"

As you can see all we’re really doing is passing the content of the script instead of a file.

We can also return the exit code of the PowerShell script to a variable in your macro.  Here’s an example:

//This line ensures the powershell script finishes before the macro continues
Let>RP_WAIT=1
//Uncomment this line to HIDE the powershell window when ready to go live
//Let>RP_WINDOWMODE=0

Let>localVar=Hello World
LabelToVar>MyPowershellScript,theScript
Run>powershell.exe -executionPolicy bypass -command "%theScript%"

//display the exit code
MDL>RP_RESULT

/*
MyPowershellScript:

$var = '%localVar%';
Write-Host $var;
Start-Sleep -s 10;
exit 555;
*/

What we’ve done here is store our PowerShell code in a label. We get that code into a variable and then pass it to PowerShell on the command line.

Notice how we can embed Macro Scheduler variables in the code too. We use PowerShell’s exit statement to set a return value which Macro Scheduler gets in the RP_RESULT variable.

Setting RP_WAIT to 1 makes sure the macro waits for PowerShell to finish before proceeding with the rest of the script. You may also want to hide the PowerShell window by setting RP_WINDOWMODE to 0, but for testing purposes I’ve left that commented out so that you can actually see it working. That’s also the reason for the 10 second delay at the end of the PowerShell script – apart from showing how we can add multiple lines of code it also gives us a chance to see things happen!