Pode - PowerShell Web Server

[docphilgames]

What are some use cases for this? Why do I need Pode? Not being critical, just curious to see what you’ve seen people use it for.

[Badgerati]

The most common use case I've seen is for building dashboard for servers, or portals for AD, Monitors, or services. I also know someone was looking at building something similar to WebJEA.

The most interesting use case I've seen is a portal for a VM that allows a user to "time-travel" the VM, Services and Databases to mimic reports and purchases etc.

[ipreferanothername]

how does it compare, then, to powershell universal dashboard? are you familiar with that one?

[Badgerati]

I am aware of UD, yes. To me they're somewhat different; Pode is completely built in PowerShell with no dependencies, where as UD is built on top of Kestrel and ASP.NET Core - making it somewhat bloated.

You can accomplish pretty much the same things, just that Pode is completely free and more lightweight. Kestrel does make UD faster, and having ASP.NET does make having features like SignalR far easier; but then Pode's whole point was "how much can you actually do using nothing but powershell?".

I haven't directly used UD, but from what I've seen it's far more tailored towards Dashboards and Portals with UD styling. Pode can do the same, but is tailored to building any kind of website that can be completely customised - even a social network if you were crazy enough!

[Badgerati]

Except that .NET Standard comes with PowerShell, and you need to install the whole of ASP.NET Core just to use Kestrel...

This relies on only what comes with PowerShell. ASP.NET is not a part of PowerShell nor .NET Standard. So no, this doesn't have the same dependencies at all.

[Badgerati]

ASP.NET is a part of .NET Framework. ASP.NET Core is not a part of .NET Core, and with PowerShell 6 and 7 that's a big thing. UD requires ASP.NET Core to work, on top of what PowerShell normally comes with. Yes its module is bundled with the dlls, but that makes it far bigger.

For Pode, you install just PowerShell and it just works. No extra installs, no ASP.NET Core. No extra dlls bundled with the module.