Redirecting PowerShell Output to GridView

When you output data in PowerShell, it gets silently piped to Out-Default and ends up as text in the console. By overriding Out-Default, you can change this behavior and for example send all PowerShell output to a grid view window. You can in fact even separate regular output from error messages, and display both in separate windows.

Here are two functions: Enable-GridOutput and Disable-GridOutput. When you run Enable-GridOutput, it overrides Out-Default and sends regular output to a “Output” grid view window, and converts error messages into useful text which is output in a separate “Error” grid view window.

When you run Disable-GridOutput, the override is removed, and you return to default behavior:

function Enable-GridOutput
{
    function global:Out-Default
    {
        param
        (
            [Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true)][Object]
            $InputObject
        )

        begin
        {
            $cmd = $ExecutionContext.InvokeCommand.
                    GetCommand('Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility\Out-GridView',
                    [Management.Automation.CommandTypes]::Cmdlet)
                
            $p1 = {& $cmd -Title 'Output'  }.
                    GetSteppablePipeline($myInvocation.CommandOrigin)
            $p2 = {& $cmd -Title 'Error'  }.
                    GetSteppablePipeline($myInvocation.CommandOrigin)
            
            $p1.Begin($PSCmdlet)
            $p2.Begin($PSCmdlet)    
        }

        process
        {
            if ($_ -is [Management.Automation.ErrorRecord])
            {
                $info = $_ | ForEach-Object { [PSCustomObject]@{
                        Exception = $_.Exception.Message
                        Reason    = $_.CategoryInfo.Reason
                        Target    = $_.CategoryInfo.TargetName
                        Script    = $_.InvocationInfo.ScriptName
                        Line      = $_.InvocationInfo.ScriptLineNumber
                        Column    = $_.InvocationInfo.OffsetInLine
                    }
                }
                $p2.Process($info)
            }
            else
            {
                $p1.Process($_)
            }
        }

        end
        {
            $p1.End()
            $p2.End()
        }
    }
}

function Disable-GridOutput
{
    Remove-Item -Path function:Out-Default -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

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