Question

Basically I have this code:

$file = $web.GetFile("Pages/default.aspx")
$file.CheckOut()

and I was wondering if there is anyway to use a pipe and the powershell equivalent of this to rewrite it as:

$web.GetFile("Pages/default.aspx") | $this.CheckOut()

When I try this I get the error:

Expressions are only allowed as the first element of a pipeline.

I also tried using $_ instead of $this but got the same error.

Answer 1

What you’re looking for is $_ and it represents the current object in the pipeline. However you can only access $_ in a scriptblock of a command that takes pipeline input e.g.:

$web.GetFile("Pages/default.aspx") | Foreach-Object -Process {$_.Checkout()}

However there are aliases for the Foreach-Object cmdlet {Foreach and %} and -Process is the default parameter so this can be simplified to:

$web.GetFile("Pages/default.aspx") | Foreach  {$_.Checkout()}

One other point, the GetFile call appears to return a single file so in this case, the following would be the easiest way to go:

$web.GetFile("Pages/default.aspx").Checkout()

Of course, at this point you no longer have a variable containing the file object.