Working with the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (part 4) - Understanding Properties and Methods

1.2. Understanding Properties and Methods

Everything that SharePoint knows about an object is stored in data elements and values known as properties, which also describe the state of that object. For example, the SPContentDatabase object contains all the information about the content databases within the farm.

Objects not only have properties, they also contain actions that determine how they can be manipulated. In object-oriented terminology, these actions, or different ways of acting on an object, are called methods. To determine the properties and methods for the SPSite object, use the cmdlets in the following example, where a portion of the output is shown.

PS C:\Users\peter> Get-SPSite | Get-Member

   TypeName: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite
Name                                  MemberType Definition
----                                  ---------- ----------
AddWorkItem                           Method     System.Guid AddWorkItem(Sys...
BypassUseRemoteApis                   Method     System.Void BypassUseRemote...
CheckForPermissions                   Method     System.Void CheckForPermiss...
Close                                 Method     System.Void Close()
ConfirmUsage                          Method     bool ConfirmUsage()
Delete                                Method     System.Void Delete(), Syste...
Dispose                               Method     System.Void Dispose()
...
ToString                              Method     string ToString()
UpdateValidationKey                   Method     System.Void UpdateValidatio...
VisualUpgradeWebs                     Method     System.Void VisualUpgradeWe...
AdministrationSiteType                Property   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPAdmi...
AllowDesigner                         Property   System.Boolean AllowDesigne...
AllowMasterPageEditing                Property   System.Boolean AllowMasterP...
....(not all output shown)
WarningNotificationSent               Property   System.Boolean WarningNotif...
WebApplication                        Property   Microsoft.SharePoint.Admini...
WorkflowManager                       Property   Microsoft.SharePoint.Workfl...
WriteLocked                           Property   System.Boolean WriteLocked ...
Zone                                  Property   Microsoft.SharePoint.Admini...

					  

Note:

BEST PRACTICE Never miss an opportunity to pipe the Get-SP<noun> cmdlet to the Get-Member cmdlet. It is sometimes surprising what information an object is able to retrieve.

To display more than the default property, you can use the select Windows PowerShell cmdlet with the pipe (|) character. You also can use the wildcard character (*) with the select statement to list all the property values, as shown in the following example.

PS C:\Users\Peter> Get-SPSite "http://teams" | select *

ApplicationRightsMask                 : FullMask
ID                                    : cbf3290e-000e-4768-953c-99a983430283
SystemAccount                         : SHAREPOINT\system
Owner                                 : CONTOSO\spadmin
SecondaryContact                      : CONTOSO\peter
GlobalPermMask                        : FullMask
IISAllowsAnonymous                    : False
Protocol                              : http:
HostHeaderIsSiteName                  : False
HostName                              : teams
Port                                  : 80
...(not all output shown)
AllowDesigner                         : True
AllowRevertFromTemplate               : False
AllowMasterPageEditing                : False
ShowURLStructure                      : False

					  

To get a list of all site collections in your farm, together with the name of the content database where they are stored (output that gives only the URL of the site collection and the content database name), you would use the commands as shown in the following example, which also shows the sample output.

PS C:\Users\peter> Get-SPSite | select url, contentdatabase

Url                                     ContentDatabase
---                                     ---------------
http://MySite                           SPContentDatabase Name=Contoso_MySiteDB
http://MySite/personal/peter            SPContentDatabase Name=Contoso_PersonalDB
http://MySite/personal/erin             SPContentDatabase Name=Contoso_PersonalDB
http://intranet.contoso.msft            SPContentDatabase Name=Contoso_IntranetDB
http://teams                            SPContentDatabase Name=Contoso_TeamsDB
http://teams/sites/Finance              SPContentDatabase Name=Contoso_TeamsDB