How to load variable from one PowerShell script to another?

Question

I have a main script that is calling on several others scripts and I need to load the variables from the other scripts into the main script so that I can dump them into a html file. I tried dot sourcing the scripts I am calling on but that did not work or I am doing something wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

Example section of script:

.\get-cluster.ps1

$MyReport += Get-CustomHeader "Clusters not in compliance : $($CapacityInfo.count) ($MyReport += Get-HTMLTable $capacityinfo
$MyReport += Get-CustomHeaderClose

The variable $capacityinfo exists in the get-cluster.ps1 script

Answer 1

Unless your get-cluster.ps1 file is in your root dir, dot source would look more like this:

. .\Get-Cluster.ps1

This will execute the Get-Cluster.ps1 script in the same scope as the caller making its script level variables available in the caller.

Answer 2

Dot sourcing will accomplish your goal. However, this is an ambiguous design and conflicts with the PowerShell CmdLet Development Guidelines. Granted you are authoring a script and not a Cmdlet but it appears you're trying to follow PowerShell conventions given the script file name you have chosen.

Using the verb Get implies that you are retrieving a resource. So if you have a script called Get-Cluster.ps1 then it should retrieve one or more Cluster instances. Consider the following instead:

$clusters = .\Get-Cluster.ps1 -NonCompliantOnly

This will still enable you to set a variable in your current scope without all the magic and ambiguity of dot sourcing. I'm not trying to be preachy but the PowerShell team has done a good job creating creating consistency and I think there is a lot of value in attempting to perpetuate that when we extend PowerShell with our own scripts/modules/cmdlets. If you're dead set on setting a new or existing variable in the current scope using dot sourcing then I'd encourage you to find a new verb.

See Cmdlet Verbs on MSDN for more info.