How to capture process output asynchronously in powershell?

Question

I want to capture stdout and stderr from a process that I start in a Powershell script and display it asynchronously to the console. I\'ve found some documentation on doing

Answer 1

Unfortunately asynchronous reading is not that easy if you want to do it properly. If you call WaitForExit() without timeout you could use something like this function I wrote (based on C# code):

function Invoke-Executable {
    # Runs the specified executable and captures its exit code, stdout
    # and stderr.
    # Returns: custom object.
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
        [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
        [String]$sExeFile,
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
        [String[]]$cArgs,
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
        [String]$sVerb
    )

    # Setting process invocation parameters.
    $oPsi = New-Object -TypeName System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
    $oPsi.CreateNoWindow = $true
    $oPsi.UseShellExecute = $false
    $oPsi.RedirectStandardOutput = $true
    $oPsi.RedirectStandardError = $true
    $oPsi.FileName = $sExeFile
    if (! [String]::IsNullOrEmpty($cArgs)) {
        $oPsi.Arguments = $cArgs
    }
    if (! [String]::IsNullOrEmpty($sVerb)) {
        $oPsi.Verb = $sVerb
    }

    # Creating process object.
    $oProcess = New-Object -TypeName System.Diagnostics.Process
    $oProcess.StartInfo = $oPsi

    # Creating string builders to store stdout and stderr.
    $oStdOutBuilder = New-Object -TypeName System.Text.StringBuilder
    $oStdErrBuilder = New-Object -TypeName System.Text.StringBuilder

    # Adding event handers for stdout and stderr.
    $sScripBlock = {
        if (! [String]::IsNullOrEmpty($EventArgs.Data)) {
            $Event.MessageData.AppendLine($EventArgs.Data)
        }
    }
    $oStdOutEvent = Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject $oProcess `
        -Action $sScripBlock -EventName 'OutputDataReceived' `
        -MessageData $oStdOutBuilder
    $oStdErrEvent = Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject $oProcess `
        -Action $sScripBlock -EventName 'ErrorDataReceived' `
        -MessageData $oStdErrBuilder

    # Starting process.
    [Void]$oProcess.Start()
    $oProcess.BeginOutputReadLine()
    $oProcess.BeginErrorReadLine()
    [Void]$oProcess.WaitForExit()

    # Unregistering events to retrieve process output.
    Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier $oStdOutEvent.Name
    Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier $oStdErrEvent.Name

    $oResult = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property ([Ordered]@{
        "ExeFile"  = $sExeFile;
        "Args"     = $cArgs -join " ";
        "ExitCode" = $oProcess.ExitCode;
        "StdOut"   = $oStdOutBuilder.ToString().Trim();
        "StdErr"   = $oStdErrBuilder.ToString().Trim()
    })

    return $oResult
}

It captures stdout, stderr and exit code. Example usage:

$oResult = Invoke-Executable -sExeFile 'ping.exe' -cArgs @('8.8.8.8', '-a')
$oResult | Format-List -Force 

For more info and alternative implementations (in C#) read this blog post.