Cmdlet Class

Deriving from this class means that your cmdlet is using the minimum set of dependencies on the Windows PowerShell runtime. This has two benefits. First, your cmdlet objects are smaller and you are less likely to be affected by changes to the Windows PowerShell runtime. Second, if you have to, you can create an instance of the cmdlet object and invoke it directly instead of invoking it through the Windows PowerShell runtime.

Classes that derive from Cmdlet must also declare the cmdlet attribute to identify themselves as a Windows PowerShell cmdlet class. For more information about the guidelines for writing cmdlets, see Cmdlet Development Guidelines.

This class provides the following virtual methods that are called by the runtime. Cmdlets must override at least one of these methods to process records. In this SDK, these methods are often referred to as the input processing methods.

• BeginProcessing

• ProcessRecord

• EndProcessing

Cmdlets can also be derived from the PSCmdlet class. Deriving from this class provides access to the Windows PowerShell runtime. For more information about the differences between cmdlets based on the two base cmdlet classes, see Windows PowerShell Cmdlets.

Target Platforms