European Sharepoint 2013 Hosting Blog

How are the modules loaded?

When you first run any PnP PowerShell cmdlet (obviously Connect-PnPOnline), the PnP PowerShell module is automatically loaded based on the modules path. Though most of the cmdlets work the same in all versions of SharePoint, there are significant changes in how the authentication is handled and SharePoint Online always has few more cmdlets compared to the On-premise versions. So, we need to load the specific PnP Module depending on the SharePoint version we are using.

Which module (2013, 2016, 2019, Online) is loaded?

When you have different modules installed, PowerShell picks the modules to load from the default modules path (in environment variables). As this appears to be alphabetical, 2013 module is loaded by default in my case.

PowerShell by changing the PSModulePath in environment variables, and using Import-Module whenever we need to target for a different version of SharePoint. This is quick workaround is helpful, but we have to run the Import-Module cmdlet every time we need to use a different version of the PnP SharePoint module.

Another approach to do this

Isn’t it cool to have different icons like this to target the PnP PowerShell module for the specific SharePoint version? This way, you don’t have to manually run any Import-Module cmdlets. These are desktop shortcuts for PowerShell specifying which module to load using the shortcut parameters. And when we open any shortcut, PowerShell is opened with the respective PnP Module already loaded.

This way, I can easily open a PowerShell session for the respective SharePoint version without the hassle of typing Import-Module cmdlets always.

How to do this?

• Right click on your desktop to create a new shortcut
• In the create shortcut window, in the location of the item text box, type the following command.

  C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoExit -Command “Import-Module -Name ‘C:\Users\ram\AppData\Local\Apps\SharePointPnPPowerShell2016\Modules\SharePointPnPPowerShell2016\SharePointPnPPowerShell2016.psd1’ -DisableNameChecking;”

•  And click Next. This basically specifies that we open PowerShell and load the module targeted for SharePoint 2016.
  
• Type the name (target version of SharePoint) and click Finish.
  

Now, whenever I open PowerShell with this shortcut, I am ready to write cmdlets for SharePoint 2016. Similarly I keep 4 different shortcuts for 2013, 2016, 2019 and SharePoint Online which is handy, as I dont have to run the Import-Module cmdlet whenever I need to target a different version of SharePoint.

Summary

This shows a simple solution using the windows shortcuts and the -Command parameter to start the powershell, and to load a specific PowerShell module, enabling us to create quick shortcuts for opening the right PnP module.

1. Loading all lists available in the site.
2. Check available of list “XYZ”
3. Employee list whose department is “IT”
4. Retrieving regional settings information.

1. By default, we need to create SharePoint Web object (for any kind of GET operations we need to have this is a basic object)
   
   let webObject = pnp.sp.web;

   1	let �= pnp.sp.web;

2. With the help above web object, our next goal to access lists property which will return an object Lists class, so I have used this is my first string in the array.
   
   let batchLoadQueries = [“lists"];

   1	let �= [“lists"];

3. Based on above Lists class, it has method getByTitle() which accepts list name as a parameter and returns selected list, so it needs two parameters under one array index so we can use this as key-value pair and push it to our above batchLoadQueries array and our array will be as below.
   
   ["lists", { "getByTitle": "Employee" }]

   1	["lists", { "getByTitle": "Employee" }]

4. Based on the above query, we are navigated up to lists, so we need to retrieve the items of the list. It is the single property that doesn’t need any kind of key-value pair. So array will be like below
   
   ["lists", { "getByTitle": "Employee" },"items"]

   1	["lists", { "getByTitle": "Employee" },"items"]

   
   Up to the above object, it will return items, If it has any kind query/select and these two are key-value pairs so we need to form array as below
   
   ["lists", { "getByTitle": "Employee" }, "items", { "filter": "Dept eq IT" }]

   1	["lists", { "getByTitle": "Employee" }, "items", { "filter": "Dept eq IT" }]