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PowerShell: How to Create and Use .Net Framework Classes

Introduction

PowerShell has the capability to create .Net Framework classes using the Add-Type cmdlet.  To create classes, the C# language can be used to define the classes. C# is part of Visual Studio, but having Visual Studio is not necessary to create classes for use in PowerShell. The C# class definitions can be part of the PowerShell script file. No DLL files to worry about installing. 

This article will explore how classes are defined in the C# language and used in PowerShell. The classes that will be explored in this article are a person, persons and a people class. These classes to be chosen to demonstrate complex relationships and to demonstrate various collection options.

In the example, all relationships are defined and relative to one person named Person using generic terms like mother, father, son and daughter. 

The source code is available in the gallery Person Classes and Functions for PowerShell.

Defining Classes

This is the basic structure of how to define classes in PowerShell (Note: there is a lot of code missing). The C# definition is stored in a PowerShell string and passed as a parameter to the Add-Type cmdlet.

$PeopleDefinition=@"
using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace People
{
public enum  Gender
{
Unknown,
Male,
Female
}
  public class  Person  {}
public class  Persons {}
public class  People {}
public static  class Factory {}
}
"@
Add-Type -TypeDefinition $PeopleDefinition
Remove-Variable PeopleDefinition
$People = [People.Factory]::BuildPeople()
$Person = $People["Person"]

The Remove-Variable statement removes the PeopleDefinition string variable from the session to free up resources as it is no longer needed once it has been used by the Add-Type cmdlet. Once an Add-Type has been defined, it cannot be removed from the PowerShell session. Quitting the PowerShell session (ISE or console) and starting again will remove the class types. 

Basically there are three types of classes in this example, which are represented by the person, persons and the factory class. There are other types of classes but those are beyond the scope of this article which is intended for a PowerShell audience.

What distinguishes these three classes? A person class is a single element class and holds the data or state of one person. The persons class is a collection type class and would contain one or more of the element class person in some kind of collection class, like an array or a list or a hashtable or a dictionary. A collection type class has an enumerator method so that it can be called by the ForEach statement and iterated through. The people class is similar to the persons class in that it is a collection type class but serves a different purpose than the persons class. The third type of class is the static class or in this case the static factory class. Static classes can not be instantiated with the New-Object cmdlet as the other two types of classes can be. 

PSObjects are instantiated with the New-Object cmdlet and it's properties are populated with a hashtable. Properties can be dynamically added to a PSObject with the Add-Member cmdlet. Whereas the .Net Framework type classes defined and added with the Add-Type cmdlet can not be changed, or in other words, the properties can not be dynamically added with Add-Member cmdlet. The structure or definition of the classes once added with the Add-Type cmdlet is set in stone until the end of the PowerShell session. It is possible to quit the session, modify the definition and do Add-Type statement and the new definition will be available until the end of that PowerShell session. 

PSObjects are containers to conveniently store or hold values and only have properties (note-properties). The .NET Framework classes have properties and methods including constructors that hold values but also are code driven which is probably why you want to define and use these types of classes / objects.

The next sections describes each of these classes, how they are implemented, how they relate to each other and how they can be used in PowerShell, for example;

$GrandParents = $Person.Parents.Parents

Person Class

The Person class represents one person. The properties define the attributes of a person such as the name, age and gender. The linked properties are for the mother, father and spouse and from the basis for the relationships. All other relationships can be derived from these three basic links such as siblings and children.

public class  Person
{
private People _people;
public String _motherID = "";
public String _fatherID = "";
public String _spouseID = "";
public People People { set { this._people = value; } }
public String ID { get { return this.Name; } }
public string  Name { get; set; }
public Gender Gender { get; set; }
public int  Age { get; set; }
public bool  IsMale { get  {return  (this.Gender == Gender.Male);} }
public bool  IsFemale { get  {return  (this.Gender == Gender.Female);} }
public Person Mother
{ get  {
return _people[this._motherID];
}
set {
if (value != null) { this._motherID = value.ID; }
}
}
public Person Father
{ get  {
return _people[this._fatherID];
}
set {
if (value != null) { this._fatherID = value.ID; }
}
}
public Person Spouse
{ get  {
return _people[this._spouseID];
}
set {
if (value != null) { this._spouseID = value.ID; }
}
}
public Persons Parents
{ get
{ Persons Parents = new  Persons();
Parents.Add(this.Mother);
Parents.Add(this.Father);
return Parents;
}
set
{ foreach  (Person Parent in  value)
{
if (Parent.Gender == Gender.Male)
{
this.Father = Parent;
}
else if  (Parent.Gender == Gender.Female)
{
this.Mother = Parent;
}
}
}
}
   
public Persons Children
{ get  {
return _people.Person_Children(this);
}
}
   
public Persons Siblings
{ get  {
return _people.Person_Siblings(this);
}
}
   
public Persons GrandChildren
{ get
{ Persons grandChildren = new  Persons();
foreach (Person child in this.Children)
{
grandChildren.AddPersons(child.Children);
}
return grandChildren;
}
}
   
public Persons GrandParents
{ get  {
Persons grandParents = new  Persons();
foreach (Person parent in this.Parents)
{
grandParents.AddPersons(parent.Parents);
}
return grandParents;
}
}
   
// Constructor
public Person(People people, string Name, Gender Gender, int Age)
{
this._people = people;
this.Name = Name;
this.Gender = Gender;
this.Age = Age;
}
}

Persons Class

The Persons class is a collection type class. The Persons class inherits the IEnumerable interface. The IEnumerable interface is what gives the functionality to the ForEach looping mechanism. Within the Persons class, a private class is defined called PersonEnumerator and it is this class that is actually passed to the ForEach statement.  It is this private class that is returned when the GetEnumerator method is called by the ForEach mechanism.

The PersonEnumerator class needs a constructor that passes the list to it, so it has the list to iterate through. The other methods / properties are Current, MoveNext and Reset. In this case , a list is used, but it does not matter what collection data type is used as long as the constructor passes the collection data type that is used and the methods and properties implement the behavior of the collection data type that is being used.

The Persons purpose is not a fully implemented collection class, there is no remove method for example. But rather, it is a placeholder or read only collection to hold multiple person objects that are returned from various Person properties like Parents or Children.

public class  Persons : System.Collections.IEnumerable
{
private System.Collections.Generic.List<Person> _persons  
= new  System.Collections.Generic.List<Person>();
   
public int  Count { get  { return  _persons.Count; } }
public Person this[int index]
{
get { return (Person)_persons[index]; }
}
public void  Add(Person person)
{
if (person != null)
{
_persons.Add(person);
}
}
public void  AddPersons(Persons persons)
{
foreach (Person person in persons)
{
this.Add(person);
}
}
public System.Collections.IEnumerator GetEnumerator()
{
return new  PersonEnumerator(_persons);
}
private class  PersonEnumerator : System.Collections.IEnumerator
{
private System.Collections.Generic.List<Person> _persons;
private int  _position = -1;
public PersonEnumerator(System.Collections.Generic.List<Person> persons)
{
_persons = persons;
}
object System.Collections.IEnumerator.Current
{
 get
{
return _persons[_position];
}
}
bool System.Collections.IEnumerator.MoveNext()
{
_position++;
return (_position < _persons.Count);
}
void System.Collections.IEnumerator.Reset()
{
_position = -1;
}
}
}

People Class

People is a collection type class. It inherits the dictionary base class. The enumerator private class is not required as it is implemented in the dictionary base class. The methods that are required to implement are the add and remove methods and the this property. To access any element requires a key, similar to a hashtable.

The purpose of the People class is to hold all of the defined persons vs the purpose of the Persons class which just holds the persons there were returned by a property of the Person class. Since the People Class is a dictionary and is keyed, that allows for easy retrieval of elements or persons, for example, the Person class has a _FatherID property and that is used as the key to fetch the associated element or person. The Father property is a one-to-one relationship and since the key for the father and mother is stored with the person it is easy to get either or both of the parents directly. The children property however, is a one-to-many relationship and a derived property, (no direct link). In order to get the children of a person, all of the People in the dictionary has to be searched for those that have a MotherID or FatherID that is the same as the ID of the person that is being search for. There are techniques to optimize these searches but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Any derived property in the Person class that does not have a direct link, calls a corresponding method in the People class. This shields the implementation details of the People class from the Person class. The People class is based on a dictionary that needs to be rebuilt with each session and is stored in memory, but if the People class was persistent and based on a SQL Server table for example, the Person class would continue to function as is and would be oblivious to any implementation change.

public class  People : DictionaryBase
{
public void  Add(string  key, Person person)
{
if (person != null)
{
Dictionary.Add(key, person);
}
}
public void  Remove(string  key)
{
Dictionary.Remove(key);
}
public Person this[string key]
{
get { return (Person)Dictionary[key]; }
set { Dictionary[key] = value; }
}
public Persons Person_Children(Person person)
{
Persons children = new  Persons();
if (person != null)
{
foreach (DictionaryEntry PersonEntry in Dictionary)
{
Person child = PersonEntry.Value as  Person;
if (child._motherID == person.ID)
{
children.Add(child);
}
else if  (child._fatherID == person.ID)
{
children.Add(child);
}
}
}
return children;
}
public Persons Person_Siblings(Person person)
{
Persons siblings = new  Persons();
if (person != null)
{
foreach (DictionaryEntry PersonEntry in Dictionary)
{
Person sibling = PersonEntry.Value as  Person;
if (sibling.ID != person.ID)
{
if (sibling._motherID != "" &&
sibling._motherID == person._motherID)
{
siblings.Add(sibling);
}
else if  (sibling._fatherID != ""  &&
 sibling._fatherID == person._fatherID)
{
siblings.Add(sibling);
}
}
}
}
return siblings;
}
}

Factory Class

The Factory class is a static class and has static members. Static classes can not be instantiated with the New-Object cmdlet. The members are called with a syntax like this

$People=[People.Factory]::BuildPeople()

The purpose of static classes is to provide common utilities or helper functions for classes that can be instantiated. In this case, functions are available to create person objects and to link those person objects together in some meaningful way. It can be quite complicated to link them all together, so these helper functions are a convenient way to help manage that complexity. 

public static  class Factory
{
public static  Person NewPerson(People people, string Name,
 Gender Gender, int  Age)
{
Person Person = new  Person(people, Name, Gender, Age);
people.Add(Person.ID, Person);
return Person;
}
public static  Person NewMan(People people, string Name, int Age)
{
return NewPerson(people, Name, Gender.Male, Age);
}
public static  Person NewWoman(People people, string Name, int Age)
{
return NewPerson(people, Name, Gender.Female, Age);
}
public static  Persons AsCouple(Person man, Person woman)
{
Persons couple = new  Persons();
if (man != null)
{
man.Spouse = woman;
couple.Add(man);
}
if (woman != null)
{
woman.Spouse = man;
couple.Add(woman);
}
return couple;
}
public static  void AsFamily(Person father,  Person mother, Person person,
Person brother, Person sister)
{
Persons parents = AsCouple(father, mother);
if (person != null) { person.Parents = parents; }
if (sister != null) { sister.Parents = parents; }
if (brother != null) { brother.Parents = parents; }
}
public static  People BuildPeople()
{
People People = new  People();
Person Father, Mother;
Person Person, Brother, Sister;
Father = Factory.NewMan(People, "Father", 79);
Mother = Factory.NewWoman(People, "Mother", 77);
Person = Factory.NewMan(People, "Person", 60);
Brother = Factory.NewMan(People, "Brother", 59);
Sister = Factory.NewWoman(People, "Sister", 58);
Factory.AsFamily(Father, Mother, Person, Brother, Sister);
Father = Person;
Mother = Factory.NewWoman(People, "Spouse", 57);
Person = null;
Brother = Factory.NewMan(People, "Son", 40);
Sister = Factory.NewWoman(People, "Daughter", 39);
Factory.AsFamily(Father, Mother, Person, Brother, Sister);
return People;
}
}

People Namespace

Namespaces is a way of grouping common classes into some kind of organizational unit that can be packaged and made available to other applications.

In PowerShell to instantiate an object from this namespace using the New-Object cmdlet, it would have the following syntax;

$Person = New-Object People.Person  # Person is  a class  within the People namespace.
$People = New-Object People.People  # People is  a class  within the People namespace.

The using statements are a way to add other namespaces that are referenced to the C# environment. The equivalent statement in PowerShell is the Add-Type cmdlet, For example, this Add-Type statement is required when creating GUI forms in PowerShell.

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms

People.Gender is an enum, for more info on enums see the WIKI article  How to Create and Use Enums in Powershell.

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace People
{
public enum  Gender
{
Unknown,
Male,
Female
}
public class  Person {}   
public class  Persons {}   
public class  People {}   
public static  class Factory {}
}

Using the Classes in PowerShell

This is where the fun begins, using the defined classes as objects in PowerShell.

The static class People.Factory provides a static method named BuildPeople().  To conserve space in the the listings above, it shows a BuildPeople() method to build the minimal number of persons necessary to demonstrate the functionality of the relational properties defined for the Person class. The source code available in the gallery and has a larger pool of persons for the People class and a another method named BuildExtendedPeople().  All the persons that are defined in the People dictionary are named relative to a Person named Person. It spans the generations from the Person's grandparents to the Person's grandchildren. The names of the persons are generic relational terms and unique for the pool of persons defined. For example, the person's father is named 'Father'. The person's grandfathers would be named 'Father's Father' and 'Mother's Father'. Similarly, the Person's grandsons, would be named 'Son's Son' and 'Daughter's Son'

Using the Classes at the PowerShell Command Prompt

To get started, this is a sample session that creates a People object with a call to the BuildExtendedPeople() method. It then gets the person object for the person named Person and displays it's properties.

PS C:\> Add-Type -TypeDefinition $PeopleDefinition
PS C:\> $People = [People.Factory]::BuildExtendedPeople()
PS C:\> $Person = $People["Person"]
PS C:\> $Person
People  : 
ID  : Person
Name  : Person
Gender  : Male
Age : 60
Mother  : People.Person
Father  : People.Person
Spouse  : People.Person
Parents : {Mother, Father}
Children  : {Son, Daughter}
Siblings  : {Sister, Brother}
GrandChildren : {Son's Daughter, Son's Son, Daughter's Daughter, Daughter's Son}
GrandParents  : {Mother's Mother, Mother's Father, Father's Mother, Father's Father}
_motherID : Mother
_fatherID : Father
_spouseID : Spouse

To conserve space, the output can be piped to Select Name. Each name is unique to the pool of persons defined.

PS C:\> $Person | Select Name
Name   
----   
Person   
PS C:\> $Person.Parents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother   
Father  
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Parents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father

 

This is where the beauty of PowerShell starts to come into focus. The $Person object is of the [People.Person] type. The $Person.Parents is the Parents property being called on the $Person object and returns a collection object of the [People.Persons] type.

But what about $Person.Parents.Parents? The [People.Persons] class does not have a method or property named Parents. This is the boundary of where the activity of the classes ends and the beginning of the activity of PowerShell starts. It's an implied Pipe where each member that was returned from the Person.Parents call, is applied with a call to it's Parents property. This can be verified by the type that was returned.

PS C:\> $Person.GetType()
IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType  
-------- -------- ---- --------  
True False  Person System.Object   
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.GetType()
IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType  
-------- -------- ---- --------  
True False  Persons  System.Object   
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Parents.GetType()
IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType  
-------- -------- ---- --------  
True True Object[] System.Array

The $Person and $Person.Parents returned the expected types. The $Person.Parent.Parents returns Object[], an array of objects. The Persons class is a strictly typed collection class. It's PowerShell that returns the object array. The classes do not use arrays.

Also included in the Person class was a GrandParents property. The GrandParents property was included to demonstrate how to apply the Parents property call to a Parents property call.

PS C:\> $Person.GrandParents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father  
PS C:\> $Person.GrandParents.GetType()
IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType  
-------- -------- ---- --------  
True False  Persons  System.Object

The GrandParent property returns a People.Persons object and not an object array. Which is better, the Persons object or the Object array? There are two metrics to consider, performance and functionality. Performance-wise, the classes will perform faster because they are compiled.  In terms of functionality, both are the same relative to a pipe or a ForEach loop.

The person class has three one-to-one directly linked properties; Father, Mother and Spouse. The two one-to-many properties Children and Siblings are expensive operations relative to the Father or Mother properties as the entire People dictionary has to be searched  to find those that meet the criteria of the property. In the sample there are only 70 persons defined ($People.Count=70) so the Children and Siblings operations do not take that too long. If the number of persons defined were to increase, then the times to to perform these operations would increase as well, unless some sort of search optimization techniques were employed. To define any relationships efficiently, the Children and Siblings calls should be minimized.

In terms of  these five properties Father,Mother, Spouse, Children and Siblings, almost every relationship can be obtained. For example, in the case of the children, the Person is one of the children of the Person's father. The other children would be Person's siblings.

PS C:\> $Person.Father.Children | Select Name
Name   
----   
Sister   
Brother  
Person   
PS C:\> $Person.Siblings | Select Name
Name   
----   
Sister   
Brother

In this perfect world little scenario, the mother and father has the same children. A call to the $Person.Parents.Children returns twice the children as the both Parents' Children property is called and the results are merged together. The Persons collection object and an object array are not keyed so the same object can be present more than once.

To overcome this, use the -Unique parameter on the select.

 

PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Children | Select Name
Name   
----   
Sister   
Brother  
Person   
Sister   
Brother  
Person   
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Children | Select Name -Unique
Name   
----   
Sister   
Brother  
Person

The Children relationships comes in two flavors based on gender; sons and daughters. Similarly with siblings, there are brothers and sisters. The Person class has a gender field and two querying properties IsMale and IsFemale. The querying properties IsMale and IsFemale can be used with the Where clause to derive the gender based relationships.

For example, to get the sons and daughters of the Person.Parents of which the Person would be a son, the IsMale and IsFemale property is used with the Where clause.

PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Children | Where { $_.IsMale} | Select Name -Unique
Name   
----   
Brother  
Person   
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Children | Where { $_.IsFemale} | Select Name -Unique
Name   
----   
Sister
The relationships in  the extended family can also be obtained, for example like aunts, uncles and cousins.
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Siblings | Where { $_.IsFemale} | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Sister  
Father's Sister  
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Siblings | Where { $_.IsMale} | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Brother   
Father's Brother   
PS C:\> $Person.Parents.Siblings.Children | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Brother's Daughter  
Mother's Brother's Son   
Mother's Sister's Son  
Mother's Sister's Daughter   
Father's Brother's Daughter  
Father's Brother's Son   
Father's Sister's Daughter   
Father's Sister's Son     
Also in  the extended family are nieces and nephews. 
PS C:\> $Person.Siblings.Children | Where { $_.IsFemale} | Select Name
Name   
----   
Sister's Daughter  
Brother's Daughter   
PS C:\> $Person.Siblings.Children | Where { $_.IsMale} | Select Name
Name   
----   
Sister's Son   
Brother's Son  
And then there are the inlaws, the spouse's family.
PS C:\> $Person.Spouse.Parents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother-Inlaw   
Father-Inlaw   
PS C:\> $Person.Spouse.Siblings | select Name
Name   
----   
Spouse's Sister  
Spouse's Brother   
PS C:\> $Person.Spouse.Siblings.Children | select Name
Name   
----   
Spouse's Sister's Daughter   
Spouse's Sister's Son  
Spouse's Brother's Son   
Spouse's Brother's Daughter

So far all the commands have started with the $Person variable, but it will work for any Person object in the People dictionary. It is just that the terms or names are relative to the Person, so it can be confusing for other persons.

So in this example, the grandson of the Person will be used and will be assigned to the variable $GrandSon. For the grandson all the ancestors will be shown or in other words, all of the generations of parents will be shown.  The Person's grandparents would be the Person's grandson's Great-Great-GrandParents.

PS C:\> $Person.Children.Children | Select Name
Name   
----   
Son's Daughter   
Son's Son  
Daughter's Daughter  
Daughter's Son   
PS C:\> $GrandSon = ($Person.Children.Children)[1]
PS C:\> $GrandSon.Name
Son's Son
PS C:\> $GrandSon.Parents | select Name
Name   
----   
Son's Spouse   
Son  
PS C:\> $GrandSon.Parents.Parents | select Name
Name   
----   
Spouse   
Person   
PS C:\> $GrandSon.Parents.Parents.Parents | select Name
Name   
----   
Mother-Inlaw   
Father-Inlaw   
Mother   
Father   
PS C:\> $GrandSon.Parents.Parents.Parents.Parents | select Name
Name   
----   
Mother-Inlaw's Mother  
Mother-Inlaw's Father  
Father-Inlaw's Mother  
Father-Inlaw's Father  
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father

There are persons missing, the Son`s Spouse`s family and ancestors have not been defined in the People dictionary.

Using the Classes in PowerShell Functions

So far, all the examples have been at the command prompt, and while that might be fun and interesting, it`s not very practical. To be more practical, functions should be employed that implement these relationships. To obtain the more complex relationships would require calling a combination of functions.

The functions should be as robust as possible and work with the pipeline. The first function will that will be examined is a wrapper function for the Parents property.

Function Get-Parents
{
[CmdletBinding()]
Param ([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, 
ValueFromPipeline=$true,
ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
 [Object]$Person
)
Process
{  
 $Person | % { $_.Parents}
}
 }  
Using the function Get-Parents with a parameter and with the pipeline for  a person.
PS C:\> Get-Parents $Person | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother   
Father   
PS C:\> $Person | Get-Parents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother   
Father

Using the function Get-Parents with a parameter that has multiple objects and with the pipeline with multiple objects.

PS C:\> Get-Parents $Person.Parents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father  
PS C:\> $Person.Parents | Get-Parents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father

When the process directive is declared within the function, it will process each object coming in from the pipeline and allows for the cascading of the functions in the pipeline.

PS C:\> $Person | Get-Parents | Get-Parents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father

The cascading of Get-Parents | Get-Parents is returning the grandparents of the person. This can be incorporated into a Get-GrandParents function.

Function Get-GrandParents
{
[CmdletBinding()]
Param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, 
 ValueFromPipeline=$true,
 ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[Object]$Person
)
Process 
{ 
 $Person | Get-Parents | Get-Parents
}
 }
PS C:\> Get-GrandParents $Person | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father  
PS C:\> $Person | Get-GrandParents | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father

Similar wrapper functions can be built for Get-Children, and Get-Siblings. A Get-GrandChildren function can use cascading Get-Children functions.

Then there are the gender filtering functions Get-Males and Get-Females which can be used in the gender specific functions like the Get-Brothers and the Get-Sisters functions.

Function Get-Males
{
[CmdletBinding()]
Param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, 
 ValueFromPipeline=$true,
 ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[Object]$Person
)
Process 
{ 
 $Person | Where { $_.IsMale} 
}
 }  
Function Get-Brothers
{
[CmdletBinding()]
Param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, 
 ValueFromPipeline=$true,
 ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[Object]$Person
)
Process 
{ 
 $Person | Get-Siblings | Get-Males
}
 }  
Testing the Get-Siblings and Get-Bothers functions.
PS C:\> $Person | Get-Siblings | Select Name
Name   
----   
Sister   
Brother  
PS C:\> $Person | Get-Brothers | Select Name
Name   
----   
Brother

There are many options or ways of getting the same result. For example, to get the person's uncles;

$Person.Parents.Siblings | Where { $_.IsMale}
$Person.Parents.Siblings | Get-Males
$Person.Parents | Get-Brothers
$Person | Get-Parents | Get-Brothers
Get-Uncles $Person

That is complex filtering but it's intuitive and easy to understand and maintain. 

The last functions to consider would be the ancestors and descendants functions.

The Get-Ancestors function is like a Get-Parents function with the recurse switch set to true.

Function Get-Ancestors
{
[CmdletBinding()]
Param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, 
 ValueFromPipeline=$true,
 ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[Object]$Person
)
Process 
{ 
 $Parents = $Person | Get-Parents
 IF ($Parents -NE $Null)
 {
$Parents
Get-Ancestors $Parents
 }
}
 }

The Get-Descendants function is like a Get-Children function with the recurse switch set to true.

Function Get-Descendants 
{
[CmdletBinding()]
Param([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, 
 ValueFromPipeline=$true,
 ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]
[Object]$Person
)
Process 
{ 
 $Children = $Person | Get-Children
 IF ($Children -NE $Null)
 {
$Children
Get-Descendants $Children
 }
}
 }

 

Using the Get-Ancestors and the Get-Descendants Function on $Person.

PS C:\> $Person | Get-Ancestors | Select Name
Name   
----   
Mother   
Father   
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father  
PS C:\> $Person | Get-Descendants | select Name
Name   
----   
Son  
Daughter   
Son's Daughter   
Son's Son  
Daughter's Daughter  
Daughter's Son

Using the Get-Ancestors function on the person`s grandson.

PS C:\> $GrandSon = ($Person | Get-GrandChildren)[1]
PS C:\> $GrandSon.Name
Son's Son
PS C:\> $GrandSon | Get-Ancestors | Select Name
Name   
----   
Son's Spouse   
Son  
Spouse   
Person   
Mother-Inlaw   
Father-Inlaw   
Mother   
Father   
Mother-Inlaw's Mother  
Mother-Inlaw's Father  
Father-Inlaw's Mother  
Father-Inlaw's Father  
Mother's Mother  
Mother's Father  
Father's Mother  
Father's Father

See also

PowerShell 5.0 Writing Class Using PowerShell