Is it possible to reevalute here strings after I declare them?

Question

I'm trying to use PowerShell for a small code generation task. I want the script to generate some java classes and interfaces.

In the script I want to declare a here string variable. For example:

$controllerContent = @"
package controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;

@Controller
@EnableWebMvc
public class $completeName {

}
"@

After the declaration I want to pass it to function where I calculate the variable $completeName. But I don't what is the proper way to replace the variable in my string. Do I have to use -replace? Or is there some other way?

Answer 1

I usually use a format string for such tasks. All you need to do is to replace $completeName with {0}and you can format the string any time:

$controllerContent = @"
package controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;

@Controller
@EnableWebMvc
public class {0} {{

}}
"@

Now you can rename the class using:

$controllerContent -f 'MyController'

Note: The only downsite to this is, that you need to escape the curly brackets as shown in my example. So its your choice whether you use a format string or -replace.