Is vbscripting that difficult?

Question

I need to write some vbscripts in my new project. I was told by other people that vbscripting is easy, but seems to me, it is not. For example, in the following example (provided by microsoft), these functions: CreateObject, CreateShortcut, as well as these property names: TargetPath, WindowStyle, Hotkey, etc, are used, but I just cannot find the corresponding API documentation about how to use them. In other words, how do you know you need to call these functions in your vbscripts? Visual Studio 2008/2010 do not have templates for vbscript either. Could anybody tell me what I am missing, and what the best way is to do vbscripting?

set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strDesktop = WshShell.SpecialFolders("Desktop")
set oShellLink = WshShell.CreateShortcut(strDesktop _
  & "\MyExcel.lnk")
oShellLink.TargetPath = _
  "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE"
oShellLink.WindowStyle = 1
oShellLink.Hotkey = "CTRL+SHIFT+F"
oShellLink.IconLocation = _
  "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE, 0"
oShellLink.Description = "My Excel Shortcut"
oShellLink.WorkingDirectory = strDesktop
oShellLink.Save

Answer 1

Take a look here (MSDN).

The objects you are working with are documented there (of course, it's MSDN documentation so it's not ideal, but it's documented nevertheless).

Specifically the WshShortcut Object and the WshShell etc.

Answer 2

I don't think VBScript is a very easy language, especially if you need to write larger scripts.

If you don't specifically need to write a script but it would be ok with an executable I'd look at using VB.Net instead, where you have a good development environment that makes everything much easier since you have Intellisense and you can just press F1 for the documentation. And since it's a typed language with a large framework it gets easier to avoid mistakes and many operations you need you can just call a method in the framework rather than writing your own code.

However, if you do need to do it in VBScript, I'd suggest trying to find some kind of IDE for it. I haven't used any, but at least this one seems worth looking at.

Answer 3

The language of VBScript is relatively easy. It's a subset of Visual Basic and VBA and simplifies some things from those environments (eg you don't need to declare variable types).

What you are dealing with above is working with the methods and properties of a given object, WshShell. There are many many objects out there, each with their own set of methods and properties to know about, many with common usage conventions, and many more with "unique" (ie idiosyncratic) usage requirements. This is where the complexity comes in, but it's not part of VBScript itself. You will run into this with any other language (JScript, Python, Delphi) that works with the myriad objects and APIs that are out there for Windows system management.

The plus side is that once you get used to the language of VBScript and the process of looking up object API references and examples on MSDN and other sites, it does become very easy to put together complicated and powerful scripts.

Like I frequently tell users, computers often make things faster the second time you do something. The first time usually requires some learning.

A great set of resources for learning VBScript and how you need to approach things is the TechNet Script Center, their Hey, Scripting Guy! series, and the Script Repository.