How to use a variable that was set on a remote machine, on a local machine

Question

I am writing a script that gets the location of a folder on a remote machine from an XML document stored on said remote machine. I want to then copy the folder over to the local PC. Here is the code I currently have:

Invoke-Command -Session $TargetSession -ScriptBlock {
    if (Test-Path "$env:USERPROFILE\pathto\XML") {
        [xml]$xml = Get-Content $env:USERPROFILE\pathto\XML
        $XMLNode = $xml.node.containing.file.path.src
        foreach ($Log in $XMLNode) {
            $LogsP = Split-Path -Path $Log -Parent
            $LogsL = Split-Path -Path $Log -Leaf
        }
    } else {
        Write-Host "There is no XML file!"
    }
    Copy-Item -Path "$LogsP" -FromSession $TargetSession -Destination "$env:TEMP" -Force -Recurse -Container

$logsP is never populated outside of the Invoke-Command scriptblock. I have tried using return, I have tried setting it as a global variable, and I have tried using the Copy-Item command from within the script block (it kept giving me an access denied error no matter what I changed with Winrm/PSRemoting). Does anyone know how I can populate $logsP outside of the script block?

Answer 1

Don't collect the parent path in a variable inside the script block. Just let it be echoed to the Success output stream and collect the output of Invoke-Command in a variable on your local computer.

$LogsP = Invoke-Command -Session $TargetSession -ScriptBlock {
    if (Test-Path "$env:USERPROFILE\pathto\XML") {
        [xml]$xml = Get-Content $env:USERPROFILE\pathto\XML
        foreach ($Log in $xml.node.containing.file.path.src) {
            Split-Path -Path $Log -Parent
        }
    }
}

$LogsP | Copy-Item -FromSession $TargetSession -Destination "$env:TEMP" -Force -Recurse -Container