SharePoint Client Model from Powershell

I have seen a few people attempt to use the client access model from powershell, but they have mostly failed. The reason being, powershell does not allow extension methods. You can get most of the way, but when you try to call Load() or ExecuteQuery() it fails. I really like being able to do things in powershell scripts, as they are super easy to edit/change when you need. Surely i could get the client model to work from scripts.

I knew that powershell allows you compile and execute c# inline, hopefully i could use that feature. It was pretty easy to throw together a test, as it was just c# i was using.

The next problem i encountered; was powershell not loading the client access assemblies. No matter what i tried, i could only get powershell to load them IF the dlls were in the same directory as the powershell executable. Well for me that is not an ideal solution, i like to be able to copy a directory somewhere, and it just works.

What i found was a way you can override the powershell assembly loading
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2664028/how-can-i-get-powershell-added-types-to-use-added-types

Then it was just a matter of intergrating it with the rest of the script.

Add-Type -Language CSharpVersion3 -TypeDefinition @' 
using System; 
using System.Collections.Generic; 
using System.IO; 
using System.Reflection; 
namespace Internal.Powershell { 
    public static class AssemblyResolver { 
        private static Dictionary<string, string> _assemblies = new Dictionary<string,string>(StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);
        static AssemblyResolver() { 
            AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += new ResolveEventHandler(delegate(object sender,  ResolveEventArgs args) {
                var assemblyName = new AssemblyName(args.Name); 
                if (_assemblies.ContainsKey(assemblyName.Name)) { 
                    return Assembly.LoadFrom(_assemblies[assemblyName.Name]); 
                } 
                return null; 
            }); 
        } 
        public static void AddAssemblyLocation(string path) { 
            _assemblies.Add(Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(path), path); 
        } 
    } 
} 
'@ 
[Internal.Powershell.AssemblyResolver]::AddAssemblyLocation("..\..\lib\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll") 
[Internal.Powershell.AssemblyResolver]::AddAssemblyLocation("..\..\lib\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll") 

$ReferencedAssemblies = @( 
    "Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime",
    "Microsoft.SharePoint.Client"
) 
$TypeDefinition = @" 
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Net;
using System.Linq;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Client;
namespace Internal.Powershell {
    public static class SharePointClient {
        public static void Main() {
            using (ClientContext client = new ClientContext("http://url")) {
                client.AuthenticationMode = ClientAuthenticationMode.Default;
                client.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("username", "password", "domain");            
                var web = client.Web;
                client.Load(web,
                        item => item.Title,
                        item => item.Description);
                client.ExecuteQuery();
                Console.WriteLine(web.Title);
                Console.WriteLine(web.Description);
            }
        }
    }
} 
"@ 
Add-Type -ReferencedAssemblies $ReferencedAssemblies -TypeDefinition $TypeDefinition -Language CSharpVersion3
[Internal.Powershell.SharePointClient]::Main()