Required. The type of object to query. To search on all object types, use the value *
QueryObject
Required. The query or group generated using the or cmdlet
DereferenceAttribute
Optional. Specifies a reference-type attribute to query. See the example section for more information.
WrapFilterXml
Optional. Specifies that the resulting XPath expression should be wrapped in the filter XML element used when setting the Filter attribute on sets and groups.
Examples
Creating a basic expression
# Creates an expression that searches for users with the account name 'ryan'
$query = New-XPathQuery -AttributeName "AccountName" -Operator Equals -Value "ryan"
$expression = New-XPathExpression -ObjectType "Person" -QueryObject $query
$expression.ToString()
This returns an expression containing the query
/Person[(AccountName = 'ryan')]
Passing the expression to the Search-Resources cmdlet
# Creates an expression that searches for users with the account name 'ryan'
$query = New-XPathQuery -AttributeName "AccountName" -Operator Equals -Value "ryan"
$expression = New-XPathExpression -ObjectType "Person" -QueryObject $query
Search-Resources $expression
Building an expression to dereference an object
# Creates an expression that returns the manager of a user who has the account name 'ryan'
$query = New-XPathQuery -AttributeName "AccountName" -Operator Equals -Value "ryan"
$expression = New-XPathExpression -ObjectType "Person" -QueryObject $query -DereferenceAttribute "Manager"
$expression.ToString()
This returns the following expression
/Person[(AccountName = 'ryan')]/Manager
You can also use a nested expression to find all users who have the person with the account name of 'ryan' as their manager
# Build an expression to find a user by its account name
$query = New-XpathQuery -AttributeName "AccountName" -Operator Equals -Value "ryan"
$expression = New-XpathExpression -ObjectType "Person" -Query $query
# Build a query to find all users with a manager who has the account name 'ryan'
$derefQuery = New-XpathQuery -AttributEName "Manager" -Operator Equals -Value $expression
$derefExpression = New-XpathExpression Person $derefQuery
$derefExpression.ToString()
When using the expression builder to create an value to use in a Filter attribute in a set or group, you can specify that the resulting expression should be wrapped in the XML filter element.
The expression can be passed directly to the cmdlet to search for objects
The expression builder supports dereferencing expressions, as supported by the . The following example finds the manager of a user with the account name 'ryan'
