PushOver and PowerShell

Pushover is an exceptional method for integrating notifications into our PowerShell scripts and workflows. Pushover gives us a simple method to send notifications to devices. I discovered Pushover in 2012, and have been maintaining a PowerShell module ever since.

The purpose of my PowerShell module is to allow you to:

• Send Pushover notifications,
• Test API, user, group and device tokens; and,
• Retrieve the details of a notification receipts.

I have kept the module and the CMDLets as simple as possible. Sending a notification is a simple as specifying an API token, a user token, and a message. Pushover supports a whole lot of other functionality, and the Send-Pushover CMDLet supports:

• Users and Group tokens,
• Device names,
• Priority levels (including lowest, low, normal, high and emergency),
• Message titles,
• A URL,
• Custom date and time stamps; and,
• Custom sounds.

When submitting a notification, we get the following back:

• A response code,
• A request identifier; and,
• A Boolean request response code. I recommend in your scripts validating against this success property.

Most of the time, Pushover notifications are pretty straight forward. It is important to note that emergency messages, are different. Pushover will continue to notify a user until they acknowledge it. If you are sending something that is this important, you want to know if someone actually cares about it.

When a user accepts the notification, Pushover records the who, when and where. We can make use of this information either through a callback URL in a request, or through the receipt ID returned.

Now we have a variety of tokens, API, user groups and devices. How do we know if they are all valid? You can verify these are all valid using the Test-Pushover CMDLet.

Right now I haven’t included any support for Pushover’s subscription, group or licensing features. This isn’t due to any difficulties, but more that I haven’t needed these. Of course, I am always happy to have a pull request submitted for this!

You can get module from GitHub or via the PowerShell Gallery.

Kieran Jacobsen