execute powershell commands from ruby

Question

I was trying to execute a powershell command from ruby code. Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product -ComputerName . -Filter "Name='Qlik Sense Client'" |Select-Object -Property version

It gives me the version of the product perefectly. But the same thing when i try to execute from ruby like(entire command in backticks) : find = powershell.exe Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product -ComputerName . -Filter "Name=''"|Select-Object -Property version

The command breaks, it cant interpret the quotes, pipes etc in ruby. I tried to escape those quotes but it still it breaks. I dont know how to escape that pipe as well. Kindly help me here or refer me to something relevant. Many thanks.

Answer 1

I have tested this now:

require 'base64'
cmd = %{Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product -ComputerName . -Filter "Name='Qlik Sense Client'"|Select-Object -Property version}
encoded_cmd = Base64.strict_encode64(cmd.encode('utf-16le'))
find = `powershell.exe -encodedCommand #{encoded_cmd}`

Powershell expects UTF-16LE-encoded strings, so you have to convert from Ruby's encoding (UTF-8) before the base64 conversion.

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Alternatively you could try using shellescape from shellwords to escape the command so the shell interprets it as a single string.

Another alternative is to use powershell.exe -Command - with popen3. That will let you write your commands and read their results using a file stream.