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powershellpipelining

Pipelining between two SEPARATE Powershell processes


Let's say I have two PowerShell programs running: Producer.ps1 and Consumer.ps1.

Is there any way to establish a client-server relationship between the two .ps1 files I have?

Specifically, Producer.ps1 outputs a PSObject containing login info. Is there any way I can establish a listener and named pipe between the two objects to pass this PSObject from Producer.ps1 directly into Consumer.ps1?


(Note: the two files cannot be combined, because they each need to run as different Windows users. I know one possible solution for communicating is to write the PSObject to a text/xml file, then have the client read and erase the file, but I'd rather not do this since it exposes the credentials. I'm open to whatever suggestions you have)


Solution

  • I found this link that describes how to do what you're requesting: https://gbegerow.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/interprocess-communication-in-powershell/

    I tested it and I was able to pass data between two separate Powershell sessions.

    Server Side:

    $pipe=new-object System.IO.Pipes.NamedPipeServerStream("\\.\pipe\Wulf");
    'Created server side of "\\.\pipe\Wulf"'
    $pipe.WaitForConnection(); 
    
    $sr = new-object System.IO.StreamReader($pipe); 
    while (($cmd= $sr.ReadLine()) -ne 'exit') 
    {
     $cmd
    }; 
    
    $sr.Dispose();
    $pipe.Dispose();
    

    Client Side:

    $pipe = new-object System.IO.Pipes.NamedPipeClientStream("\\.\pipe\Wulf");
     $pipe.Connect(); 
    
    $sw = new-object System.IO.StreamWriter($pipe);
    $sw.WriteLine("Go"); 
    $sw.WriteLine("start abc 123"); 
    $sw.WriteLine('exit'); 
    
    $sw.Dispose(); 
    $pipe.Dispose();