checking if Compress-Archive can produce a true/false based on success of the archival of a file

Question

I have the following code:

$items = Get-ChildItem -Path 'D:\Myoutput\'
$items | ForEach-Object 
{
  $lastWrite = ($_).LastWriteTime
  $timespan = New-Timespan -days 3 -hours 0 -Minutes 0
  if(((get-date) - $lastWrite) -gt $timespan) {
    $name = $_.Name
    $isDir = $_.PSIsContainer
    if(!$isDir) {
      $_ | Compress-Archive -DestinationPath "D:\Myoutput\Archive\$name.zip"
      if (**above_line** is success) {
       echo "$name is zipped"
       $_ | Remove-Item
      }
    }
  }
}

Please help, how I can find out if '$_ | Compress-Archive -DestinationPath "D:\Myoutput\Archive$name.zip"' is success or not.

Answer 1

Compress-Archive will throw exceptions if something goes wrong, and it will delete partially created archives (source). So, you can do two things to make sure, it was successful:

1. Catch exceptions
2. Test if the archive exists

Example:

$items = Get-ChildItem -Path 'D:\Myoutput\'
$items | ForEach-Object 
{
  $lastWrite = ($_).LastWriteTime
  $timespan = New-Timespan -days 3 -hours 0 -Minutes 0
  if(((get-date) - $lastWrite) -gt $timespan) {
    $name = $_.Name
    $isDir = $_.PSIsContainer
    if(!$isDir) {
      try {
        $_ | Compress-Archive -DestinationPath "D:\Myoutput\Archive\$name.zip"
        if (Test-Path -Path "D:\Myoutput\Archive\$name.zip") {
          Write-Host "$name is zipped"
          $_ | Remove-Item
        } else {
          Write-Host "$name is NOT zipped" -ForegroundColor Red
        }
      } catch {
        Write-Host "$name is NOT zipped" -ForegroundColor Red
      }
    }
  }
}

Answer 2

Compress-Archive already throws an error if it failed, you can just catch it before deleting your original file. For example, I use continue to skip the rest of the commands. You can also skip checking for folders by using Get-ChildItem -File:

Foreach ($file in (Get-Item C:\temp\ -File)) {
  Try { $file | Compress-Archive -DestinationPath C:\BadPath\test.zip }
  Catch { Write-Warning ("Skipping file due to error: " + $file.FullName); continue }
  Remove-Item $file
}

Here's what the output looks like when I use the Bad path above:

WARNING: Skipping file due to error: C:\temp\test1.txt
WARNING: Skipping file due to error: C:\temp\test2.txt

And those files don't get deleted.