C# Powershell host, capturing output of launched console apps

Question

I've written a custom powershell host that provides a winforms-based interactive shell. The examples MSDN were excellent and I was able to get something working in a few hours.

All of the standard built-in commands like dir, etc work as expected. However, when I try to launch another console app,like the FTP client, that app starts sending output to stdout. I can see this by changing the application type in VS from windows to console. As soon as I launch FTP from my interactive shell, FTP starts talking to the console window.

Anyone tackled this before? In C++ I could just redirect stdin and stdout and be done with it, but I don't see a way to do this in c#. Help!

update

Okay, anything I run that is not a built-in command immediately starts interacting with the console window.

Camilo Sanchez · Accepted Answer · 2010-08-06 13:02:10Z

1

Check this out, maybe it can help

    Process p = new Process();
    p.StartInfo.FileName = "netstat";
    p.StartInfo.Arguments = "-a";
    p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
    p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
    p.Start();
    System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd());

answered Aug 6, 2010 at 13:02

Camilo Sanchez

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2 Comments

3Dave Over a year ago

Thanks. That works well for cmd.exe and other executables, but not for PowerShell.

Camilo Sanchez Over a year ago

Sorry, I completely missed the Powershell part

Glorfindel · Accepted Answer · 2023-09-15 12:02:06Z

1

I have finally found a working example here! While it doesn't use the Powershell classes in the .NET framework, it does exactly what I need, including successfully capturing io from launched console apps.

edited Sep 15, 2023 at 12:02

Glorfindel

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answered Aug 6, 2010 at 20:16

3Dave

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Comments

William · Accepted Answer · 2024-08-06 18:56:43Z

For anyone trying to solve this problem 14 years later, this discussion has a solution based on digging through PowerShell code. You have to use reflection to set an undocumented property but otherwise it's simple:

// Use reflection to execute ConsoleVisibility.AlwaysCaptureApplicationIO = true;
        Type conVisibilityType = Type.GetType("System.Management.Automation.ConsoleVisibility, System.Management.Automation, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35");
        PropertyInfo propInfo =
            conVisibilityType.GetProperty(
                "AlwaysCaptureApplicationIO", BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public);

        propInfo.SetValue(null, true);

Once you set that, stdout and stderr from native applications will be sent to your PSHostUserInterface just like output from PowerShell commands.

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