Changed behaviour in New-UDTab between 5.6.9 and 5.6.10

PowerShell Universal
1 
Product: PowerShell Universal
Version: 5.6.10 ->

Recently updated from 5.6.8 to 5.6.13, and had to revert due to a change in behaviour. Backtracked it and found it changed between 5.6.9 and 5.6.10, and this behaviour is the same in later releases as well.

We have a folder structure that we use to “build” tabs in an app. The app code itself is as follows:

New-UDApp -Content {
    New-UDTabs -Tabs {
        Get-ChildItem ".\dashboards\<folder>" -Filter *.ps1 -File | ForEach-Object {
            $fullName = $_.FullName
            $baseName = $_.BaseName
            $tabName = $_.BaseName.Replace('_',' ') -replace '^[0-9.]*',''
            Show-UDToast -Message "fullName: '$fullName' ----" -Duration 10000000
            New-UDTab -Text "$tabName" -Id "$baseName" -Content {. "$fullName"}
        }
    }
}

It traverses a folder, reads the files and contents, and creates a tab per file. Show-UDToast added just to verify the contents of the variable.

In and up to 5.6.9 this rendered as follows (contents changed, if that’s not obvious)

image
image454×223 5.93 KB

After upgrade to 5.6.10 onwards it instead results in an “error”

image
image1009×113 3.43 KB

The tab still renders, but there is no content.

The output in Show-UDToastpoints to the correct path, and if I replace the variable to the actual path it renders ok even in 5.6.10 onwards.

New-UDTab -Text "$tabName" -Id "$baseName" -Content {. "C:\ProgramData\UniversalAutomation\Repository\dashboards\<folder>\1.<filename>.ps1"}

This feels like a bug as it changes behaviour.. But can I get it confirmed?

2

I cant speak to the change in behaviour, but this looks to be a scoping issue.
Your show UDToast is not an accurate representation of $fullname in the udtab because it’s in a different scope being outside the scriptblock of -content.
And content is obviously not currently inheriting from the parent scope.
You can possibly workaround this by doing the following (if $using:fullname doesnt work):

New-UDApp -Content {
    New-UDTabs -Tabs {
        Get-ChildItem ".\dashboards\<folder>" -Filter *.ps1 -File | ForEach-Object {
            $fullName = $_.FullName
            $baseName = $_.BaseName
            $tabName = $_.BaseName.Replace('_',' ') -replace '^[0-9.]*',''
            Show-UDToast -Message "fullName: '$fullName' ----" -Duration 10000000
            $ScriptBlock = [ScriptBlock]::Create(". '$FullName'")
            New-UDTab -Text "$tabName" -Id "$baseName" -Content $ScriptBlock
        }
    }
}

Havent tested, but give it a go, let me know if that works for you!

1 Like
3

Thank you! Manually casting as a scriptblock and using that one seems to work.

It most definitely is a scoping issue. I dug some more and behind the scenes how scriptblocks are created seems to have changed between 5.6.9 and 5.6.10. In 5.6.9 the pipeline variable _ is included in the scriptblock which is what made the ForEach-Object work, but in 5.6.10 the _ is missing.

I can’t find any obvious reason why this changed in the 5.6.10 changelog - But I am curious to know what and why if possible?

4

We are tracking this here: Strange issue passing variable to New-UDTab · Issue #5430 · ironmansoftware/powershell-universal

1 Like
5

Thank you, Adam! I did search the GitHub bugs, but apparently my GitHub-Search-Fu failed me :slight_smile: