How to output a PS object as a custom formatted string

Question

I have an object with a set of properties (depth: 1). How to output the object as a string in a format like this:

{property1_name:property1_value} {property2_name:property2_value} {property3_name...

(the above is a single line, but property values can of course have newlines/carriage returns etc)

Let's assume I do not know the property names, they can change.

Thank you!

G42 · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-27 06:50:06Z

4

It'll actually depend on what object you're looking through. I tested this out on a csv, and it works decently, although you may want to do some minor formatting for a different type of object.

$csv |
    Get-Member |
    Where-Object {$_.MemberType -eq "NoteProperty"} |
    Select-Object -Property Name | 
    ForEach-Object {
        "{" + $_.Name + " : " + $csv.($_.Name) + "}"
    }

For example, depending on what you see when you do $csv | Get-Member, you may want to change NoteProperty to Property or something else. This should probably work though.

Note that you also have to change the name of the variable (currently $csv) in two places.

edited Jul 27, 2017 at 6:50

G42

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answered Jul 27, 2017 at 3:21

Maxime Franchot

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5 Comments

Maxime Franchot Over a year ago

Can I also just comment on how meta powershell is. I love how you can do $csv.$_ to retrieve a property by the property's name through a variable so casually.

G42 Over a year ago

If you replace -Property Name with -ExpandProperty Name, you can use $_ instead of $_.Name in the ForEach-Object.

Alex Over a year ago

@MaximeFranchot I've got a simple "flat" object mostly with string properties. Using your code example and changing NoteProperty to Property I'm able to get property names but not values. I obviously changed $csv to the right variable name.

Alex Over a year ago

@gms0ulman thank you, I will try that, perhaps it will fix the issue where I can see property names but not property values. Does it mean the code should become "{" + $_ + " : " + $csv.($_) + "}" ?

Maxime Franchot Over a year ago

@Alex By if you can get the property, then once pipelined you should be able to use $_ as the reference to the property. Try without .Name first, then try with if the previous didn't work. I played around until everything worked, for example, by commenting out the last pipeline until the output of the previous looked exactly how I wanted.

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