Powershell Array to export-csv shows System.Object[] - powershell

Question

Having a simple issue that's only affecting export-csv output, out-gridview and results to the console are fine. Looking to capture the top 5 processes by "handles" on a set of servers.
Code is as follows:
$Servers = "Server1", "Server2", "Server3"
$OutArray = #()
ForEach ($Item in $Servers)
$Top5 = Get-Process -Computer $Item | Sort Handles -descending |Select -First 5
$OutArray += New-Object PSObject -property # {
Server = $Item
Top5 = $Top5
} #OutArray
} #ForEach
$OutArray | Export-csv Test.csv
The results of which come out looking fine via console as follows
Server Top5
------ ----
SERVER1 {#{ProcessName=svchost.exe; PercentCpuLoad=13.79}, #{ProcessName=services.exe; PercentCpuLoad=11.4}, #{ProcessName=WmiPrvSE.exe; PercentCpuLoad=10.03}, #{ProcessName=irfilcol.exe; PercentCpuLoad=9.79}...}
...However, in the csv they show as follows:
Server Top5
Server1 System.Object[]
Server2 System.Object[]
Server3 System.Object[]
I'm thinking it's because the $Top5 variable is an variable with multiple properties (5 each) for one server. How would do I correct the code so that export-csv shows the actual values?
any help appreciated!
I would like the csv results to look like the following that's shown in GRIDVIEW
Using the suggestion from BenH to review the post from Powershell legend Boe Prox, I now have the following working:
$Top5 = Get-Process -Computer $Item | Sort Handles -descending |Select -expand Handles | |Select -First 5
$new = [pscustomobject]#{ Top5 = (#($Top5) -join ',')
}
Just about got this working now:
i'd like to add more piece of formatting, where the Top5Processes have the actual CPU % used in (brackets) right now, I've got the following for output
Top2Proc Top2CPU
services.exe,BESClient.exe 32.76,16.6
However, it would be nicer output-wise, if i could combine the above two values into one, so it looks like this:
Top2Proc
Services(32.76), BesClient.exe(16.6)
Any idea how that would be done?

Answer 1

Use Select-Object to turn your process objects into strings before piping them to Export-Csv:
$OutArray |Select-Object Server,#{Expression={$_.Top5.Name -join ';'}} |Export-Csv test.csv

Answer 2

If you want that table to appear in your csv file then you would need to format the string Top5 property as such. Using Out-String will do just that
Sends objects to the host as a series of strings.
So a simple change should get you what you want.
$Top5 = Get-Process -Computer $Item |
Sort Handles -descending |
Select -First 5 |
Out-String
It will look a little ugly when not displayed with a mono-space font much like you see in Out-GridView. Also consider using .Trim() to remove the leading and trailing whitespace on your $top5.
There are other ways to tackle this. You could use the above in conjunction with Format-Table / Format-List depending what you want. In general if you want the output to be saved as it is displayed in host Out-String is something to test with.
I would have tried to add one row for each process with a the first column being the computer name. That way you would have better structured output that can be sorted or queried as needed.
ComputerName ProcessName Handles
------------ ----------- -------
Computer1 avp 54639
Computer1 OUTLOOK 7708
Computer1 RDTabs 6108
Computer1 svchost 3160
Computer1 chrome 2530
Keep in mind that you can use other methods to export this data while keeping the objects entact. Really depends the data recipeint but remeber there are other cmdlets like Export-CLIMXL and ConvertTo-JSON | Set-Content.