how to access patches programatically

Question

I know I can access the SharePoint-buildversion using (Get-SPFarm).buildversion in PowerShell.

I also know that by accessing /_admin/PatchStatus.aspx from central administration I can view each installed hotfix (among other things).

Is there a way to programatically check (via server object model or PowerShell) whether a given hotfix (i.e. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687339) is installed or not?

Answer 1

The information displayed on the Patch Status page uses a GridView control that is populated by the Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.PatchStatusDataSourceView object in the Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.Administration assembly (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG\ADMINBIN\Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.Administration.dll). This object is instantiated by the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.AdministrationDataSourceControl object in Microsoft.SharePoint.dll.

You could use that same data source to get your data. For example:

var adminDataSourceControl = new AdministrationDataSourceControl() { ViewName = "PatchStatus" };
gridview.AutoGenerateColumns = true;
gridview.DataSource = adminDataSourceControl;
gridview.DataBind();

This does get the data, however the only caveat I found is that it needs to run under the Central Administration site. You could dig further to figure out what resources you need to make it load elsewhere.