PowerShell Brickset Module – Part 3: Working with the Inventory
Update 18/01/2021: See this post for details on an updated version of this module, parts of the below may now be out of date.
In part 1 of this series, we looked at how to get started with the Brickset module. In part 2 we examined how to easily download sets of instructions. Now in part 3 I’ll show you how to use the inventory features of Brickset.
When you are logged into the Brickset website you can use the inventory features to help keep track of your collection. For example if you look at a particular set, you can mark the number of copies of that set you own, or if you don’t own it, mark it down as a set that you want:
Also at the top of the page you’ll see a summary of the number of sets owned and wanted. Each is a clickable hyperlink which will provide you with a nice view of what you own or are looking to get hold of.
Included in the PowerShell Brickset module are a set of functions for working with this functionality. First of all Get-BricksetCollectionTotals will give an overview on existing totals:
Get-BricksetSetOwned will give details on owned sets:
Get-BricksetSetWanted will give details on sets wanted:
Of course these are only useful if you have already populated your Brickset Inventory via the website. While it’s a pretty simple experience in the website to do that for individual sets, there could be a lot of clicking to do if you have a large amount of sets to upload. Step forward Set-BricksetSetOwned. In it’s simplest form, to add one set:
Before:
After:
(Note: I don’t think the ‘xxx people own this set’ stat updates instantly whether you update your set ownership via the website or the API)
Let’s say we now want to do a bulk upload of everything we own and we have a data set of our Lego sets contained in Excel. We could take that data and fire it at Set-BricksetSetOwned to do the bulk update. Here’s an example CSV file with a small amount of data to illustrate the process:
and the following code will mark each of those sets as owned, with the number owned as the quantity:
and now our collection is starting to look a bit more respectable:
All that’s left for me to do is get a list of all of my owned sets into that CSV file and uploading to Brickset will take just a few seconds :-)