PowerShell ErrorView

A module to help customize your view of Errors in PowerShell

This is a very simple module. It exports one important command: Format-Error and a handful of formatting commands:

• ConvertTo-CategoryErrorView
• ConvertTo-NormalErrorView
• ConvertTo-SimpleErrorView
• ConvertTo-FullErrorView

Install it from PSGallery

Install-Module ErrorView

When it's imported, it sets PowerShell's global $ErrorView variable to "Simple" and provides an implementation as ConvertTo-SimpleErrorView. More importantly, it allows you to write your own ErrorView! For example you could write a function or script ConvertTo-SingleLineErrorView and then set the preference variable $ErrorView = "SingleLine", or even set it as you import the ErrorView module:

Import-Module ErrorView -Args SingleLine

NOTE: by default, there is no "SingleLine" view in the ErrorView module. The default after importing the module is the "Simple" error view, which is currently a 2-line view.

Format-Error

The Format-Error command lets you change the view temporarily to look at more details of errors, and even has a -Recurse switch to let error views show details of inner exceptions. If you have set your view to Simple (which is the default after importing the module), you can see the Normal view for the previous error by just running Format-Error. To see more than one error, you can look at the previous 5 errors like: $error[0..4] | Format-Error

Custom Error Views

As stated above, the ErrorView module allows you to write your own formats. Here's an example, and a few pointers:

function ConvertTo-SingleLineErrorView {
    param( [System.Management.Automation.ErrorRecord]$InputObject )
    -join @(
        $originInfo = &{ Set-StrictMode -Version 1; $InputObject.OriginInfo }
        if (($null -ne $originInfo) -and ($null -ne $originInfo.PSComputerName)) {
            "[" + $originInfo.PSComputerName + "]: "
        }

        $errorDetails = &{ Set-StrictMode -Version 1; $InputObject.ErrorDetails }
        if (($null -ne $errorDetails) -and ($null -ne $errorDetails.Message) -and ($InputObject.FullyQualifiedErrorId -ne "NativeCommandErrorMessage")) {
            $errorDetails.Message
        } else {
            $InputObject.Exception.Message
        }

        if ($ErrorViewRecurse) {
            $Prefix = "`n         Exception: "
            $Exception = &{ Set-StrictMode -Version 1; $InputObject.Exception }
            do {
                $Prefix + $Exception.GetType().FullName
                $Prefix = "`n    InnerException: "
            } while ($Exception = $Exception.InnerException)
        }
    )
}

1. The function must use the ConvertTo verb and "ErrorView" noun, with your view name as the prefix.
2. The function must have an InputObject parameter of type System.Management.Automation.ErrorRecord
3. There is a new global variable: $ErrorViewRecurse which is set by Format-Error -Recurse