An all too common pattern I see get used in some more advanced scripts is the use of dynamicparam where it isn't needed. Unfortunately, dynamicparam can be complicated, quirky, and frustrating to work with, and is really best avoided in a majority of cases when creating advanced functions or script cmdlets, as I've occasionally heard them called. Thankfully, there are a few alternatives that are often a good bit easier.

If you're writing for Windows PowerShell, I think a much more effective alternative is to combine [ArgumentCompleter()] and [ValidateScript()] in order to mimic the effect of a [ValidateSet()] but give you the ability to run PowerShell script in order to determine the available values.

Let's See an Example

The most effective and simple way to do this is to use a helper function in order to get the valid values you want to use. This will be called when the initial function is being called, in order to both supply values for tab completion and to validate the final value, in case the user opts to enter a value outside of what you're looking for.

function Get-ValidValues { [ CmdletBinding ()] param ( $Path ) ( Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -File ) . Name } function Clear-FileInCurrentLocation { [ CmdletBinding ( SupportsShouldProcess , ConfirmImpact = 'High' )] param ( [ Parameter ( Position = 0 , Mandatory )] [ ArgumentCompleter ( { param ( $Command , $Parameter , $WordToComplete , $CommandAst , $FakeBoundParams ) Get -ValidValues -Path ( Get -Location ) } )] [ ValidateScript ( { $_ -in ( Get -ValidValues -Path ( Get -Location )) } )] [ string ] $Path ) Clear-Content -Path $Path }

Note how the ArgumentCompleter attribute actually passes in parameters. For those of you who want or need to use this, you can work with those attributes to dynamically set completion results based on the other parameters and their values, should you need to, or based on the command that it is being applied to.

For more information on those parameters, what they give you, and how to utilise them, see the MSDN Docs Page for the underlying method and what the values passed in will correspond to.

Register-ArgumentCompleter

Sometimes you'll come across a function you wish had an ArgumentCompleter, but doesn't. For those times, there's Register-ArgumentCompleter — you can apply an ArgumentCompleter to literally anything you want.

For example, let's say we want Invoke-Command to autocomplete the presently listed machines in our current domain.

Register-ArgumentCompleter -CommandName Invoke-Command -ParameterName ComputerName -ScriptBlock { Get-ADComputer -Filter * | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name | ForEach-Object { $Text = $_ if ( $Text -match '\s' ) { $Text = $Text -replace '^|$' , '"' } [ System.Management.Automation. CompletionResult ]:: new ( $Text , $_ , 'ParameterValue' , " $_ " ) } }

This isn't advisable in general, as it would be quite slow, but a more sophisticated completion script could be devised to do something similar to this.

This is fantastic for those cases where a module you didn't create, or a compiled module you'd like to include a completer for, would otherwise lack desired completion.

This class is only available in PowerShell Core, but it simplifies things quite a bit. Essentially what you need to do is create a class that inherits from the interface, and then implements a method to provide the valid input values. This can all be done rather simply with PowerShell classes. Once you have the class defined, you pass in the type name of the class as a [type] object to the standard [ValidateSet()] attribute.

Let's see the first example with this method instead:

using namespace System.Management.Automation class ValidFilesGenerator : IValidateSetValuesGenerator { [ string []] GetValidValues () { $Values = ( Get-ChildItem -File ) . Name return $Values } } function Clear-FileInCurrentLocation { [ CmdletBinding ( SupportsShouldProcess , ConfirmImpact = 'High' )] param ( [ Parameter ( Position = 0 , Mandatory )] [ ValidateSet ( [ ValidFilesGenerator ] )] [ string ] $Path ) Clear-Content -Path $Path }

As you can see, it is significantly more easy to implement, looks cleaner, and is overall a more robust solution. Naturally, this is constrained by the usual limitations of a PowerShell class, but for this particular use case, this will be much more effective and maintainable than the available alternatives.