Input and Output of foreach into columns in table - powershell

Question

I currently want to check if a list of processes are running, then display the result within a table such as:
Process Status
======= ======
Process 1 Running
Process 2 Not Running
Process 3 Running
I have the below code which produces an output showing each input and output as a string, but it looks messy depending on the length of the Process name.
$Node = Read-Host -Prompt 'Input Node name'
$Process = #("Process1", "Process2", "Process3")
$Process | foreach-object {if(!(Get-Process -Name $_ -ComputerName $Node - ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {"$_ - Not Running"} else {"$_ - Running"}}
I am at a loss. All help appreciated.

Answer 1

Better (faster) to make a single remoting call to get all the processes, than one per process, so do that and store all the results - at least the names of the processes.
The next part is non-trivial. The way PowerShell and the neatly formatted tables work, is by making one object (bundle of things all together) for each table row, with each object having properties for each column name.
# Processes to look for
$Process = #("Process1", "Process2", "Process3")
$Node = Read-Host -Prompt 'Input Node name'
# Get running processes, and only keep their names
$runningProcesses = Get-Process -ComputerName $Node -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name
$Process | ForEach-Object {
# For each process name to look for, generate a hashtable of
# columns and their values,
# then cast it into a PS Object
[PSCustomObject]#{
'ProcessName' = $_
'Status' = if ($runningProcesses -contains $_) { "Running" } else { "Not Running" }
}
}
This gives a neat formatted table output, and is also structured data so you can feed the output of this into | ForEach-Object { $_.Status } and pick out the individual parts by name, something you can't do as neatly with your string formatted approach.

Answer 2

Try this:
$node = Read-Host -Prompt 'Input Node name'
$processList = "Process1", "Process2", "Process3"
$processList |
ForEach-Object {
[PsCustomObject]#{
NodeName = $node
ProcessName = $_
IsRunning = (Get-Process -Name $_ -ComputerName $node -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object -First 1) -ne $null
}
}
Output will be like this:
NodeName ProcessName IsRunning
-------- ----------- ---------
Node1 Process1 True
Node1 Process2 True
Node1 Process3 False