en-us/about_MyTickle.help.txt
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about_mytickle SHORT DESCRIPTION The MyTickle module is designed to provide a reminder system of upcoming events. All events are stored in a SQL database. You will need to provide a SQL Server instance to use this module. Since this module is designed for personal use, SQL Server Express should be sufficient. Once the database is initialized, you can easily add and display tickle events. The module also includes commands for managing the database itself. LONG DESCRIPTION The module consists of these commands: Add-TickleEvent Export-TickleDatabase Get-TickleEvent Import-TickleDatabase Initialize-TickleDatabase Remove-TickleEvent Set-TickleEvent Show-TickleEvent Initialization You will need access to a SQL Server instance. A local installation of SQL Server Express edition will be ideal. Installation and configuration of SQL Server is outside the scope of this module and is a pre-requisite you will need to handle on your own. The module does not rely on any commands from the SQLPS PowerShell module. To initialize your tickle database all you need to do is specify a location for the database file. The location must already exist. Initialize-TickleDatabase -DatabasePath D:\db\myTickle The command will default to a server instance of .\SQLExpress so if you have a different instance name, or using a remote computer you will need to include a value for the ServerInstance parameter. You might also want to change the global variable, $TickleServerInstance. The module includes .sql files that you or a database administrator can use to set up the database. Variables The module uses several global variables with these default values: Name Value ---- ----- TickleDB TickleEventDB TickleDefaultDays 7 TickleServerInstance .\SqlExpress TickleTable EventData It is recommended that you leave the TickleTable variable alone unless you have database experience. If you change any values, you should include new variable assignments in your PowerShell profile script. Adding Events To add an event all you need to do is specify an event name and a datetime. Add-TickleEvent "Azure exam" -date "2/3/2023 9:00AM" You also have the option of adding a comment. Displaying Events To display events you can either use Get-TickleEvent or Show-TickleEvent. The former provides several options for limiting what is displayed. The default behavior of Get-TickleEvent is to display all future events that have not been archived. Show-TickleEvent will use Write-Host to display a coded list of events set to occur within the next number of days specified by the $TickleDefaultDays variable, although you can certainly specify a different number of days. Events due in 24 hours or less will be displayed in red. Events due in 48 hours or less will be displayed in yellow. Otherwise, the event is displayed in green. Managing Events When an event's datetime has passed, it will be marked as expired. Expired events can still be accessed with Get-TickleEvent. You also have the option of archiving events. Currently, all events are stored in a single database table but this might change in a future release. To mark an event as archived you will typically run a command like this: Get-TickleEvent -expired | Set-TickleEvent -Archive You can also completely delete an event from the database: Remove-TickleEvent -ID 123 The module does not include any SQL-related management tasks like backing up a database. You can use whatever means you wish. Although there is a command to export the database. The database table contents will be exported to a cliXML formatted file. Export-TickleDatabase -path c:\users\jeff\dropbox\backups\tickledb.xml You could then import the database file: Import-TickleDatabase -path c:\users\jeff\dropbox\backups\tickledb.xml Offline Use The module commands are intended to be used with a SQL Server instance. However, a few commands can act in an offline-mode by reading events from a CSV file. You might want to do this if you want to access your tickle database on a laptop that doesn't have a copy of the database. You will need to export the database to a CSV file. Get-TickleEvent | Export-CSV -path c:\users\jeff\dropbox\work\tickledb.csv On the "disconnected" system, you can still access the tickle events in what is essentially read-only mode. Get-TickleEvent -Offline C:\users\jeff\dropbox\work\tickledb.csv The offline mode will only display events that have not expired and will use the value of $TickleDefaultDays. There are no provisions for adding or modifying the event from an offline state. Although, you can always pipe a data source to Add-TickleEvent. NOTE Limited testing of this module has been done on PowerShell 7.x running on non-Windows platforms. TROUBLESHOOTING NOTE Avoid using any special characters, especially apostrophes, in event names. Please report any bugs, problems, questions, or feature requests to the module's GitHub repository at: https://github.com/jdhitsolutions/myTickle/issues. SEE ALSO This module was first described and originally published at: http://jdhitsolutions.com/blog/2013/05/friday-fun-a-powershell-tickler/ KEYWORDS - Reminder - Tickle |