#28 : Display Messagebox with Powershell

Sometimes we need to display a messagebox to user. Especially when user interaction is required and we want to warn user or inform that a process has completed or so. Powershell leverages all .NET features available to any .NET language such as C# or VB.NET. This gives a lot of freedom to developers and there are not console world and GUI world when you are programming with Powershell. Let's take a look how we can do it.

Below video is the complete demonstation:



Generating a Messagebox -

1. Load the Assembly

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")

Output-

GAC Version Location
--- ------- --------
True v2.0.50727 C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Windows.Forms\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Windows.Forms.dll

Note: If you don't want the output, you can simple redirect to Out-nul. This will skip displaying assembly loading statement.
You can also cast is with [void] such as below:
[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")


2. Display a simple Messagebox
[System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show("We are proceeding with next step.")

Now, the messagebox appears something like this -



If you see above message, you will find Title is missing. Let's add a title also by adding below piece of code -
[System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show("We are proceeding with next step." , "Status")



So, this was all about showing message with title. This was just OK message so, there is nothing to decide for user except pressing OK button.
Types of Messageboxes :
We have 6 types of Messageboxes in Powershell -

0:	OK
1:	OK Cancel
2:	Abort Retry Ignore
3:	Yes No Cancel
4:	Yes No
5:	Retry Cancel

Note: The number mentioned in left is the third parameter of Messagebox.

If you want to show Yes No, just add 4 as third parameter -

[System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show("We are proceeding with next step." , "Status" , 4)
Now, this will display a Messagebox like this -



How to get values from Messagebox?
As you know, when you press any button, you need to get the result and work upon the decision -
$OUTPUT= [System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show("We are proceeding with next step." , "Status" , 4)
if ($OUTPUT -eq "YES" )
{
..do something

}
else
{
..do something else
}

The value of button pressed is stored in $OUTPUT variable. This variable can then be used for your programming logic.

I have given just a primer how to use Messagebox class. But, if you want to go indepth of System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox class, you may look for the link below -

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.messageboxbuttons.aspx