As I’ve been demonstrating ways to build commands around the APICodePack assemblies, I’ve been forced to hard-code references to load the assemblies. Plus, many functions I’ve created use custom type and formatting extensions. These tools would be much easier to use in a module, so let’s do it.

I’ve written about modules before, and there’s no single best way to structure your module layout. I prefer to organize my module with a specific directory structure. Instead of manually creating the folder structure, here’s a function to do the work for me.

Function New-ModuleLayout {
    [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]
    Param(
        [Parameter(
             Position = 0, 
             Mandatory, 
             HelpMessage = 'Specify the module name'
        )]
        [string]$ModuleName,
        [ValidateScript({ Test-Path $_ })]
        [string]$ParentPath = '.'
    )

    #sub-folders to create
    $subs = 'docs', 'formats', 'types', 'functions', 'assemblies', 'tests',(Get-Culture).Name
    Write-Verbose "Creating $ModuleName root directory"
    $root = New-Item -Path $ParentPath -Name $ModuleName -ItemType Directory

    foreach ($sub in $subs) {
        if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess($sub,"Creating sub-folder")) {
            New-Item -Path $Root.FullName -Name $sub -ItemType Directory
        }
    }

    #create root module
    if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess("$ModuleName.psm1","Creating root module")) {
        $rootModule = (Join-Path $root.fullName -ChildPath "$ModuleName.psm1")

        $m = @'
Get-ChildItem -path $PSScriptRoot\functions\*.ps1 |
ForEach-Object { . $_.FullName}
'@

        $m | Out-File -FilePath $rootModule
    }

    if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess("$Module.pd1","Creating module manifest")) {
        #Add manifest parameters as you need
        $paramHash = @{
            Path = $rootModule -replace "(?<=\.ps)m1", "d1"
            RootModule = "$ModuleName.psm1"
            ModuleVersion = '0.0.1'
            CompatiblePSEditions = 'Core'
            Author = 'Jeff Hicks'
            Company = 'JHD Information Technology Solutions, Inc.'
            PowerShellVersion = "7.3"
        }

        New-ModuleManifest @paramHash
    }
}

The function will create the top-level module folder, the folder tree, the root module, and the module manifest.