How to Build an Interactive Menu Inside a PowerShell Script

How to build an interactive menu in a PowerShell script

There are a few ways to create an interactive menu in PowerShell. For example, you can use a .NET object System.Management.Automation.Host.ChoiceDescription and the PromptForChoice method. While this method works, designing your own interactive menu gives you more control over your messaging. 

We’ll show you how to design a custom interactive menu using a single function called Show-Menu and a do/until PowerShell loop. You’ll include a few choices and an option to quit the menu anytime. The goal is to present users with several options and let them run those options, and then present the menu again so they can run other options.

1. Build a PowerShell function. 

To get started, you need a way to build this menu in a PowerShell function. You must build the menu in a function because whenever the user selects an option – and the script runs that option – we must show the menu again.

Here is a very simple Show-Menu function. You’ll notice that, essentially, it does two things: 

• Clears the host screen 
• Writes text to the screen

It doesn’t need to do anything more. If you’d like, you could make this better by moving up the options as a parameter, making it more reusable, but that’s up to you.

function Show-Menu
{
     param (
           [string]$Title = ‘My Menu’
     )
     cls
     Write-Host “================ $Title ================”
    
     Write-Host “1: Press ‘1’ for this option.”
     Write-Host “2: Press ‘2’ for this option.”
     Write-Host “3: Press ‘3’ for this option.”
     Write-Host “Q: Press ‘Q’ to quit.”
}

2. Create a loop.

Once the PowerShell function is built, you need a way to display the menu, provide user input, execute the task and display the menu again. A do/until loop can handle all these elements. 

A do/until loop executes code immediately. In this case, it shows the menu and then uses Read-Host to prompt for a selection.

do
{
     Show-Menu
     $input = Read-Host “Please make a selection”
     switch ($input)
     {
           ‘1’ {
                cls
                ‘You chose option #1’
           } ‘2’ {
                cls
                ‘You chose option #2’
           } ‘3’ {
                cls
                ‘You chose option #3’
           } ‘q’ {
                return
           }
     }
     pause
}
until ($input -eq ‘q’)

3. Finalize your menu. 

You’re using a switch statement to make a decision on what code to execute based on the option selected. This is where you might run another script, reboot a server, set a registry key, delete a file, etc.

Also, always be sure to include a “Q” option. This is a way for the user to break out of the loop if they’re done with the menu. And notice the pause keyword; this is to prevent the menu from displaying extremely quickly again when it isn’t necessarily required.

Finally, the do loop – similar to loops you might use in programming when syncing folders in PowerShell – will continuously loop until the “Q” option is selected. Once the “Q” option is selected, the “until” construct will be satisfied, ending the loop.

The benefits of interactive menus inside PowerShell scripts

Not everyone is comfortable with programming or PowerShell. However, creating interactive menus for co-workers can help them take advantage of the scripts you create.

In addition to reducing complexity, interactive menus make it easy for users to:

• Navigate a system without requiring you to build a full GUI interface
• Choose from the range of options available more quickly
• Get more work done, because a series of choices minimizes the need for code input

For devs, interactive menus also simplify adding or deleting links to particular scripts and functions as you upload them to or remove them from the system.

Mark Fairlie contributed to this article.