I am referencing the following two articles:

http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2006/04/25/583254.aspx

http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/HowDoIEasilyLoadAssembliesWhenLoadWithPartialNameHasBeenDeprecated.aspx 

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089")

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a")

[appdomain]::currentdomain.getassemblies() |ft fullname

Where can I find a list of assemblies I can load using the above mehtod?

Or what is the method preferred as we move into the future?

Windows Explorer actually can provide some help here. If you navigate to C:\Windows\Assembly, it will provide a listing of all the .NET assemblies stored there (this is not an exclusive list, especially if you have other .NET software installed), but it can help you find the assemblies and namespaces you are looking for.

That, combined with the MSDN documention will be a starting place.

I'll post more, including some examples, this weekend.

So, as I was looking at various ways to get at assemblies and the types contained, I found that the Powershell Community Extensions has two cmdlets, in addition to a provider for the GAC (Global Assembly Cache). One of the cmdlets (Resolve-Assembly) allows you to search for a partial name and returns any assembly objects that match. You can pipe the result into the Load static method of System.Reflection.Assembly:



If you want to find the types in that assembly you could pipe it to:



If you don't have access to the Community Extensions, you can enumerate the types in assemblies by using the
by loading them by their file name by using [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile() and then calling the GetTypes method on the returned Assembly object. As I mentioned in the previous post, a large number of .NET assemblies are stored under the C:\Windows\Assembly folder, other .NET assemblies and applications can be found in other locations (usually the application install directory).

Hope this helps.

Wow, Thank you very much. I'm multi-tasking right now, so this is going to take a while to digest. That Windows explorer thing is kewl. I'll have to find some spare time to think that second post of your through though.

I'm using PowerShell 1.0 without the Community Extenstions. I don't think I have a resolve-assembly CMDlet.

I tried the following:

but I can't seem get-a-hold-of System.Windows.Forms to do a Get-Member it comes back as a System.RunTime.Type. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do some cool things once I figure out what I am doing wrong.

Kevin,

Try $a.GetTypes() instead of GetType(). GetType returns a System.RuntimeType, like you mentioned. GetTypes returns a list of all the types that are available in that assembly.

Thanks the $A.GetTypes() is much better than $A.GetType().

The following code snippet produces a messagebox widget. I can figure out how to see the "MESSAGEBOX" name but what I can't figure out is how to drill into "MESSAGEBOX" to see the things like "SHOW". I am wanting something like GET-MEMBER on "MESSAGEBOX".

You could call the GetMembers() method on [System.Windows.Forms.Messagebox].



This will return a collection of all the members, properties and methods, that the object has.

As usual /\/\o\/\/  "The PowerShellGuy" has an excellent writeup titled "PowerShell GUI ScripBlock Monitor Script" using  .Net, and Widgets.

 http://thepowershellguy.com/blogs/posh/archive/2007/01/21/powershell-gui-scripblock-monitor-script.aspx