How to Run C# Code from PowerShell

Some time back, I wrote C# code for SharePoint Administration Governance purpose: Find Large Lists & Generate Report in SharePoint , which actually scans all lists in all sites and creates a report in CSV format.

I feel PowerShell is more convenient than C# for couple of reasons:

• Because, PowerShell is quite powerful and more flexible administration and automation tool
• Although C# is good for typical Software development, for such small tasks C# project is overkill!
• Its faster to write, deploy and change it in PowerShell than creating a project in Visual Studio, compiling it, deploying it to the target, correcting the code, compiling it again, deploying it again!

So, I wanted to leverage the existing C# code. While the code is relatively simpler to rewrite in PowerShell, Found another interesting way to run C# code in PowerShell. Here is an example:

?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

#Assemblies to Reference $Assembly = (     "Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" ,     "Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"     );   # C# Source Code $SourceCode = @" using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using System.IO;    namespace SPGovernance {     public class AdminReports     {         public static void GenerateLargeListsReport(string siteCollURL)         {          SPSite site = new SPSite(siteCollURL);    StreamWriter SW;         //Enumerate through each sub-site             foreach (SPWeb web in site.AllWebs)                 {                     foreach (SPList list in web.Lists)                     {                         if (list.ItemCount > 2000)                         {                             //Log the details to a file                             SW = File.AppendText("c:\\LargeListsInfo.csv");                             SW.WriteLine(list.Title + "," + web.Url  + list.DefaultViewUrl + "," + list.ItemCount);                             SW.Close();                         }                     }                                  }     Console.WriteLine("Large Lists Reports has been Generated!");         }     } } "@   #Add the Assembly Add-Type -ReferencedAssemblies $Assembly -TypeDefinition $SourceCode -Language CSharp   #Call the function from Assembly [SPGovernance.AdminReports]::GenerateLargeListsReport("http://sharepoint.crescent.com/sites/Sales")

One limitation is: You may get "Add-Type : Cannot add type. The type name 'SPGovernance.AdminReports' already exists" error message if you try to execute the code more than once. This is a known limitation and you have to launch a new PowerShell window and execute the code.

Reference:
http://www.sharepointdiary.com/2013/07/how-to-run-csharp-code-from-powershell.html