Sort and export-CSV - powershell

Question

I have a csv file containing rows of the following extract:
"EmployeeID","FirstName","LastName","Location","Department","TelephoneNo","Email"
"000001 ","abc ","def ","Loc1"," "," ","name1#company.com "
"000023 ","ghi ","jkl ","Loc2"," "," ","name2#company.com "
"000089 ","mno ","pqr ","Loc2"," "," ","name3#company.com "
How do I keep the quotes and sort and save as a csv file?
I have the following powershell source script which works with csv files not having double quotes for the columns:
Get-Content $Source -ReadCount 1000 |
ConvertFrom-Csv -Delimiter $Delimiter |
Sort-Object -Property $NamesOfColumns -Unique |
ForEach-Object {
# Each of the values in $ColumnValueFormat must be executed to get the property from the loop variable ($_).
$values = foreach ($value in $ColumnValueFormat) {
Invoke-Expression $value
}
# Then the values can be passed in as an argument for the format operator.
$ShowColsByNumber -f $values
} |
Add-Content $Destination;
The $Source, $Delimiter, $NamesOfColumns and $ColumnValueFormat are given or built dynamically.
$ColumnValueFormat with a non quoted csv file contains:
$_.EmployeeID.Trim()
$_.FirstName.Trim()
$_.LastName.Trim()
$_.Location.Trim()
$_.Department.Trim()
$_.TelephoneNo.Trim()
$_.Email.Trim()
$ColumnValueFormat with a quoted csv file contains:
$_."EmployeeID".Trim()
$_."FirstName".Trim()
$_."LastName".Trim()
$_."Location".Trim()
$_."Department".Trim()
$_."TelephoneNo".Trim()
$_."Email".Trim()
The problem seems to be based around the $ColumnValueFormat that is placing the column headers with the double quotes. (If I remove them I am not sure the internals of the cmdlet will recognize the column headings when it is processing the rows)
I am having two problems:
The column heading surrounded by the double quotes. The problem seems to be based around the $ColumnValueFormat that is placing the column headers with the double quotes as it does not process the rows. (If I remove the double quotes then it does not recognize the column headings when it is processing the rows).
Another problem I came across last minute is if the last column is blank it thinks it's a null and when the Invoke-Expression $value executes (where $value holds the last column expression of $_.Email.Trim() - on a non quoted CSV file) it bombs. If I try to place the statement in a try/catch block it simply ignore it the last column is not added to the $values array and again bombs.

Answer 1

Quotes around property names are used syntactically to access names with spaces, not to write quotes to the output.
Export-Csv cmdlet doesn't have an option to force quotes so we'll have to export the CSV manually. And we'll have to process empty values that are $Null after ConvertFrom-Csv with an empty string. In case only some fields are needed we'll use Select cmdlet with -index parameter.
Get-Content $Source |
ConvertFrom-Csv |
%{ $header = $false } {
if (!$header) {
$header = $true
'"' + (
($csv[0].PSObject.Properties.Name.trim() |
select -index 1,6
) -join '","'
) + '"'
}
'"' + (
($_.PSObject.Properties.Value |
%{ if ($_) { $_.trim() } else { '' } } |
select -index 1,6
) -join '","'
) + '"'
} | Out-File $Destination
The above code is great for pass-through processing of large CSV files because it doesn't keep the entire file in memory. Otherwise it's possible to simplify the code a bit:
$csv = Get-Content $Source | ConvertFrom-Csv
$csv | %{
'"' + (
($csv[0].PSObject.Properties.Name.trim() |
select -index 1,6
) -join '","'
) + '"'
} {
'"' + (
($_.PSObject.Properties.Value |
%{ if ($_) { $_.trim() } else { '' } } |
select -index 1,6
) -join '","'
) + '"'
) | Out-File $Destination