Using WPF in PowerShell with PowerBoots

I got the bug to play with WPF a couple of weeks ago. I'm relatively familiar with Windows Forms, and thought I'd like to finally look at WPF. I downloaded VC# 2008 Express and messed around a little bit for a few days. I had the goal of writing a WPF program that would host powershell and act like a simple Matlab. Well, I ran across PowerBoots, written by Joel Bennet (http://huddledmasses.org/powerboots/). PowerBoots brings WPF to PowerShell with some extremely simple syntax. After playing with it for a day, I wrote this relatively simple preview-images function that provides an experience similar to the image "Preview" in XP. For a tutorial see http://huddledmasses.org/powerboots-tutorial-walkthrough/


I found a very nice online source code formatter to format the below code: http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/

The result looks like this:




And Here is the code:

function global:preview-images
{
 #by default  load all images supported by the WPF image control (System.Windows.Controls.Image)
 param($images = (ls *.bmp,*.gif,*.ico,*.jpg,*.png,*.wdp,*.tiff,*.tif  ))

 $count = $images.length
 $global:images = $images
 $global:i = 0
 $global:imindex = 1  #index of the image control in the dockpanel children array

 boots  -left 100 -top 100 -width 1024 -title "Preview - $pwd" {

     stackpanel{
         wrappanel  {
             #0
             button "<--" -FontSize 24 -width 50 -On_Click {
                 $global:i = 0
                 $this.parent.parent.children[1].children[$global:imindex].source = $images[$global:i].fullname
                  $block[0].Inlines.Clear();
                  $block[0].Inlines.Add($images[$global:i].name)
             }
             #1
             button "<" -FontSize 24 -width 50 -On_Click {
                 if ($global:i -gt 0) {
                     $global:i--
                 }
                 else {
                     $global:i = $images.length-1
                 }
                 $this.parent.parent.children[1].children[$global:imindex].source = $images[$global:i].fullname
                 $block[0].Inlines.Clear();
                 $block[0].Inlines.Add($images[$global:i].name)
             }
             #2
             button ">" -FontSize 24 -width 50 -On_Click {
                 if ($global:i -lt ($images.length-1)) {
                     $global:i++
                 }
                 else {
                     $global:i = 0
                 }
                 $this.parent.parent.children[1].children[$global:imindex].source = $images[$global:i].fullname
                 $block[0].Inlines.Clear();
                 $block[0].Inlines.Add($images[$global:i].name)
             }
             #3
             button "-->" -FontSize 24 -width 50 -On_Click {
                 $global:i = $count - 1
                 $this.parent.parent.children[1].children[$global:imindex].source = $images[$global:i].fullname
                 $block[0].Inlines.Clear();
                 $block[0].Inlines.Add($images[$global:i].name)
             }
             #4
             button "END" -FontSize 24 -width 75 -On_Click {
                 #$global:i = $count
                 $this.parent.parent.parent.close()
                 #$block[0].Inlines.Clear();
                 #$block[0].Inlines.Add( $images[$global:i].name)
             }
             #5
             button "Image List" -FontSize 20 -On_Click {
                 $images | foreach{write-host $_.name}
             }
             #6
             textblock "  " -FontSize 30 -FontWeight bold -Foreground "#0000FF"
             #7
             textblock $images[$global:i].name -OutVariable script:block -FontSize 30 -FontWeight bold -Foreground "#0000FF"
         }
         dockpanel -lastchildfill $true   {

             $images | %{$_.name} | listbox -SelectedIndex 0  -maxheight 900 -On_MouseDoubleClick{
                 $global:i = $this.selectedIndex
                 $this.parent.children[$global:imindex].source = $images[$global:i].fullname
                 $block[0].Inlines.Clear();
                 $block[0].Inlines.Add($images[$global:i].name)
             } | ForEach-Object { $_.SetValue(
                    [System.Windows.Controls.DockPanel]::DockProperty,
                    [System.Windows.Controls.Dock]::left)
                    $_
                 }
             image -source $images[$i].fullname
         }

     }

 } -Background (linearGradientBrush $(GradientStop -Offset 0 -Color "#ffffff";GradientStop -Offset 1 -Color "#222222"))
}