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Add a file to existing ZIP file using PowerShell

One of the popular posts on this blog about managing ZIP/compressed/Archived Files is reading the contents from ZIP file. Several people asked how to add a file to existing ZIP file using PowerShell which I will cover in this blog post.

We will be using System.IO.Compression.FileSystem Assembly which contains the required classes to open an existing ZIP file and add new files to it. We have used the same assembly to read the contents of the ZIP file. To perform the add operation to existing zip file, we first need to open the ZIP file in Update mode and then add new file using CreateEntryFromFile method in System.IO.Compression.ZipFileExtension class. Don’t worry much about these classes and methods. I mentioned them for your understanding. You can explore further using these classes if you have any other requirements in managing the ZIP files.

Let us jump into the code now.

Code:


[CmdletBinding()]
Param(
[string]$ZIPFileName,
[string]$NewFileToAdd
)

try {
[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('System.IO.Compression.FileSystem') | Out-Null
$zip = [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::Open($ZIPFileName,"Update")
$FileName = [System.IO.Path]::GetFileName($NewFileToAdd)
[System.IO.Compression.ZipFileExtensions]::CreateEntryFromFile($zip,$NewFileToAdd,$FileName,"Optimal") | Out-Null
$Zip.Dispose()
Write-Host "Successfully added $NewFileToAdd to $ZIPFileName "
} catch {
Write-Warning "Failed to add $NewFileToAdd to $ZIPFileName . Details : $_"

}

Usage:

Now let us see how to use this script. Save the above code into a file(Add-ToZipFile.ps1) or download the script from GitHub(https://github.com/techibee/PowerShell/blob/master/Add-ToZIPFile.ps1) and start using it with below example.

Add c:\test.txt to c:\myzip.zip file


PS C:\> .\Add-ToZIPFile.ps1 -ZIPFileName C:\myzip.zip -NewFileToAdd C:\test.txt

Hope this helps. I will add more examples related to zip files and Powershell in upcoming days.

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Get current directory using Python

In today’s post we will see how to find current directory(or working directory) using python. Current directory is nothing but the folder from where your script is running. This is not the path where your py script is located, but we will explore how to find it as well.

Get the path of current working directory

To accomplish this task we will use os module in python. It has a method called getcwd() which will return current working directory. It is that simple. It returns full path(absolute) of the current working directory. If you want just the directory name then either you can split by “/” or use another function called basename from os.path module.

Below is the code that returns both absolute path of the current working directory and its name.


import os

dirpath = os.getcwd()
print("current directory is : " + dirpath)
foldername = os.path.basename(dirpath)
print("Directory name is : " + foldername)

Copy the above code into a file and save it as get_path.py and run it to see the results.

As you can see in the above screen, the script(get_path.py) is stored in python directory. When ran this script from same directory as script it returned the directory name as python. Same script when ran from another directory(Documents) using relative path, it returned the directory name as Documents. So it always returns the current working directory from where your script is triggerred.

Get the path of script file

Now let us see how to get the path of script it self irrespective of from where you are running it. For this purpose we will utilise the special variable called __file__ and pass it to realpath method of os.path module.


import os

dirpath = os.getcwd()
print("current directory is : " + dirpath)
foldername = os.path.basename(dirpath)
print("Directory name is : " + foldername)
scriptpath = os.path.realpath(__file__)
print("Script path is : " + scriptpath)

Copy the above code into a file and execute it to see the results. In the below demonstration, I have executed it from another directory using the relative path and you see that script location is being displayed properly.

As you can see in the screenshot, the script path is being displayed.

Hope this helps and stay tuned for more.

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Find version of python your script is running on

Sometimes your python scripts requires minimum version of python as a few things keeps changing from version to version. If your script is using any of such facilities it is important to ensure that the python version you are using is exactly same(or minimum version).

There are many ways to find this information. However, I will show you the basic one.


import sys

version = sys.version_info
print("Major version is : {0}".format(version.major))
print("Minor version is : {0}".format(version.minor))

Executing the above code will show the version number of python using which the script is running. For demonstration purpose, I have copied the above code into a file called test_pyversion.py file and executed with different versions of python.

In above screen my default version of python is 2.7 and python3 is pointing to python 3.5. When I ran the script using python 2.7 and python 3.5, it displayed the version numbers.

You can use a simple if condition inside the script to check the required version number and exit it if required version not found.

Hope you will find this useful.

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Find OS images inside WIM file using PowerShell

WIM(Windows Imaging Format) file can contain one or more images based on how it was prepared. The Operating System ISO file provided by Microsoft will have WIM file with several images init for different versions of operating system. The purpose of this post is to show you how to see the images inside it.

In this case ISO file is mounted to D: drive so the path of Install.wim file is D:\Sources\Install.wim

Get-WindowsImage -ImagePath D:\Sources\Install.wim

This will list images inside the ISO file. The output of above command gives output similar to below.

 

Hope this helps.

 

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Mount a image file(WIM) using Powershell

Sometimes you are required to Mount WIM (Windows Image Format) files to perform actions like reading the content or updating the image itself. DISM.exe is a very good utility to perform these from command line.  Starting Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 Microsoft added a new PowerShell module called DISM. Now we will see how to use that module to mount a WIM image.

Mount-WindowsImage cmdlet in DISM module has the functionality to mount a WIM file to one of the directory on the file system.  You can run below command to mount install.wim file from installation media to c:\installsource folder.

Mount-WindowsImage -ImagePath D:\Sources\Install.WIM -Index 2 -Path C:\InstallSource -ReadOnly

 

Here, D:\Sources\Install.WIM is the image file, Index is used to identify the OS from the list you have in image file. Path is to specify the mount directory on the file system. -ReadOnly specifies that no changes should be saved or committed to the WIM file.

 

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Hide Acrobat Reader Tool bar in Mac/Windows

Side bar(Tool bar) that appears with Adobe Acrobat Reader with options like Export PDF, Create PDF, Edit PDF, etc, is frustrating sometimes as you don’t find a way to close/minimise it. When reading any PDF files, it is taking at least 30% of the screen space.

Acrobat Reader RC disable Tool pane

There is an option to disable this tools pane but it is not working as expected. If you want you can try it as well by following the below instructions.

  1. Go to Edit > Preferences (or press Ctrl+K in Windows and Command+K in Mac)
  2. Go inside “Documents” section
  3. uncheck “Open tools pane for each document”.

There are some forums which are advising to edit a XML file to get rid of this tool bar pane, but for a normal user they are little complex.

One quick and easy way that I came across is a key combination. See below based on your operating system.

Windows : SHIFT + F4

MAC : SHIFT+Fn+F4

Pressing above key combination toggles the tool bar pane in acrobat reader. So you can easily enable or disable as you need.

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PowerShell: How to query date time without seconds

How many times you got a need for querying the date time variable using Get-Date or [DateTime]:Now but without seconds value in it or making it as 00 seconds? Let us find out what are the options to achieve this using PowerShell.

By default Get-Date cmdlet gives seconds as well. In some cases we feel reading till minutes is sufficient or we want to round off to 00 seconds. This is possible if you decide to convert time value to a string as shown below.

$datetime = Get-Date -Format “yyyyMMddHHmm”

[datetime]::ParseExact($datetime,“yyyyMMddHHmm”,$null)

While this is good, I was looking for better approaches to do this without actually converting it to a string. Lucky I came across one.

This approach is simple which deducts seconds from current date time value to make it zero.

$datetime = Get-Date

$datetime.AddSeconds($datetime.Second)

date-time-without-seconds

Hope you liked it.

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How do we know if a variable of type [DateTime] is in UTC or Local time zone? Let us see how to achieve this using PowerShell.

First you need to ensure that date time information is stored in proper DateTime variable. To check you can invoke GetType() method on the variable that is containing the date time information and it tells us whether it is of date time type or not.

$Date = Get-Date

$Date.GetType()

get-date-time-type

 

Once it is confirmed then you can check if the time in the variable is a local time or in UTC timezone by reading the Kind property value. This property has 3 possible values.

  1. Local : The time represented is local time.
  2. UTC : The time represented is UTC.
  3. Unspecified: The time represented is not specified as either local time or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Let us see a quick example:

$Date = Get-Date

$Date.Kind

$UTCDate = $Date.ToUniversalTime()

$UTCDate.kind

A sample screenshot of output is below:

date-time-kind

Hope you liked it. Do you know how to find the exact time zone of a date time variable? I will come up with another post for it.

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There are several complains around internet that browser links(especially from Google search results) are not working after upgrading iOS to 9.3. This is noticed on my iPhone today with following symptoms.

Problem

  1. Right click on results from Google search results in Safari browser not working and hanging the Safari browser
  2. Selecting a link in Google search results not working. The page is not going anywhere.
  3. Same problem is noticed with Google Chrome on iPhone
  4. I have not tested with firefox but there are people complaining similar things with it in forums

If you are also facing similar issues and looking for a fix, then you might want to try disabling Java scripts in Safari browser. This worked for me. One thing I noticed is the richness of google search is lost after disabling the Java scripts. This seems expected since Google runs a lot of Java scripts to provide better user experience.

Solution

  • Go to Settings
  • Scroll down to Safari and select it
Safari Advanced Settings
  • Again scroll down till you see Advanced and select it

 

Safari Settings
  • Now slide the bar again Java Scripts to disable the functionality.
Settings

Hope this helps. From the threads in Apple forums I read that Apple is aware of this problem and working on addressing it. Till they come up with a fix, you may want to start using above work around.

Do you know any other better solution or tips for making links in Google search work for Safari browser? Please write in comments section, I am happy to append here.

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How to cancel Netflix India subscription

A bit out of topic for this blog, but useful for people who look for unsubscribe option like me. Last month I subscribed to Netflix subscription in INDIA with an excitement But after a month I decided to end the subscription due to some reasons. Personally, I am very happy to see Netflix in INDIA with access to lot of US based movies and TV shows. I am looking forward to see more content coming in.

Initially I was not clear how to unsubscribe. After exploring a bit, I found the easy way.

You just need to visit https://www.netflix.com/CancelPlan and login with your Netflix account. And then you will see a Finish cancellation button like shown in the picture. Click on it and you will see a confirmation message.

NetFlix-unsubscribe-india

The message is clear that my subscription will be active for the current billing cycle as I already paid for it. You can visit http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/how-to-cancel-your-netflix-subscription-797974 for more options to unsubscribe from Netflix.

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