Anyone know the proper way to do this statement?
$dlls | format-list -Property name, Versioninfo.Product
When I use the dot variable with -Property, it just generates a new property instead of giving me Product.
What I'm trying to do is get the source of whole lists of DLLs to see where they came from (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Company, etc ). If there is an easier way to do this, please tell.
You can't use that format. You can provide Format-List a [hashtable] that defines a new property name and an expression to generate the value though:
$newCol = #{
Name = 'Product'
Expression = {
$_.Versioninfo.Product
}
}
$dlls | format-list -Property name,$newCol
Related
When creating a custom object in powershell my properties are not ordering in the same precedence I type them in (top to bottom -> left to right).
I was told to use [ordered] on my table declaration as done below;
$AllMailData += New-Object PSObject -Property [ordered]#{
'Unique ID' = $sharedmail.PrimarySmtpAddress
'Display Name' = $sharedmail.DisplayName
}
However this gives me a syntax error. Can anyone suggest where I have gone wrong?
You will get rid of the error when you enclose everything you're passing to -Property in parenthesis ().
Also shorter way of writing this would be:
$AllMailData += [PSCustomObject]#{
'Unique ID' = $sharedmail.PrimarySmtpAddress
'Display Name' = $sharedmail.DisplayName
}
[PSCustomObject] guarantees preservation of property order, where [PSObject] does not. But it seems that using ordered hashtable in your example accomplishes that, too.
I have two array's, one contains multiple columns from a CSV file read in, and the other just contains server names, both type string. For this comparison, I plan on only using the name column from the CSV file. I don't want to use -compare because I want to still be able to use all CSV columns with the results. Here is an example of data from each array.
csvFile.Name:
linu40944
windo2094
windo4556
compareFile:
linu40944
windo2094
linu24455
As you can see, they contain similar server names, except $csvFile.Name contains 25,000+ records, and $compareFile contains only 3,500.
I've tried:
foreach ($server in $compareFile) {
if ($csvFile.Name -like $server) {
$count++
}
}
Every time I run this, it takes forever to run, and results in $count having a value in the millions when it should be roughly 3,000. I've tried different variations of -match, -eq, etc. where -like is. Also note that my end goal is to do something else where $count is, but for now I'm just trying to make sure it is outputting as much as it should, which it is not.
Am I doing something wrong here? Am I using the wrong formatting?
One possible thought given the size of your data.
Create a hashtable (dictionary) for every name in the first/larger file. Name is the Key. Value is 0 for each.
For each name in your second/smaller/compare file, add 1 to the value in your hashtable IF it exists. If it does not exist, what is your plan???
Afterwards, you can dump all keys and values and see which ones are 0, 1, or >1 which may or may not be of value to you.
If you need help with this code, I may be able to edit my answer. Since you are new, to StackOverflow, perhaps you want to try this first yourself.
Build custom objects from $compareFile (so that you can compare the same property), then use Compare-Object with the parameter -PassThru for the comparison. Discriminate the results using the SideIndicator.
$ref = $compareFile | ForEach-Object {
New-Object -Type PSObject -Property #{
'Name' = $_
}
}
Compare-Object $csvFile $ref -Property Name -PassThru | Where-Object {
$_.SideIndicator -eq '<='
} | Select-Object -Property * -Exclude SideIndicator
The trailing Select-Object removes the additional property SideIndicator that Compare-Object adds to the result.
I'm confused at how PowerShell treats Hashtable keys versus object properties.
Consider:
$list = #{
'one' = #{
name = 'one'
order = 80
};
'two' = #{
name = 'two'
order = 40
};
'twotwo' = #{
name = 'twotwo'
order = 40
};
'three' = #{
name = 'three'
order = 20
}
}
$list.Values|group-object { $_.order }
$list.Values|group-object -property order
The first Group-Object gives me what I expect (three groups), the second one does not (one big group). Clearly Hashtable keys are not object properties, but syntactically they are referenced in the same manner (var.name).
What is that second group-object actually doing?
What does it think the 'order' property is?
This is understandable confusion, but as you said, hashtable keys are not object properties.
It can be tempting to treat them the same (and sometimes that works), but this is a situation where it definitely won't.
And part of the reason is that you're using a different cmdlet, not the direct language semantics.
Hashtables can use dot notation for their keys but the keys are not properties, and when you use the -Property parameter of Group-Object, you are looking for properties specifically, not just "anything you can access with a dot".
The alternative form of that parameter that takes a scriptblock, as you saw, is code that will be executed and so it's whatever value that block returns that will be grouped on.
To more directly answer your questions:
What is that second group-object actually doing?
It's looking for a property (specifically) on the current object (which is a hashtable).
If you want to see what the properties on one of those objects looks like, try this:
$list.Values[0].PSObject.Properties | ft
What does it think the 'order' property is?
It doesn't think it's anything; it looks for a property with that name and if it finds one it uses that value; otherwise it uses $null.
You'll get the same result with:
$list.Values | group -Property FakeProp
or
$list.Values | group -Property { $null }
Addressing your question in the comment:
Is there any way to know "when you should" and "when you shouldn't",
Should I just defer to using script blocks, When is -Property usage
preferred over { ... }?
-Property (without a scriptblock) is preferred whenever the value you want to group is available as a direct property of the object being inspected. If it's a property of a property, or some calculated value, or a hashtable key/value, or anything else, use a scriptblock. I'll call those "complex values".
If the complex value is useful, you may want to add it as an actual property of the object itself to encapsulate it; then you can reference it directly. This example isn't really appropriate for your hashtable situation but consider objects that represent people. They have 2 properties: Name and DateOfBirth.
$people is an array of these objects, and you want to group people by age (please ignore my inaccurate age-determining code).
$people | Group-Object -Property { ([DateTime]::Now - $_.DateOfBirth).Days / 365 -as [int] }
That's ok if you never need to know the age again; of course that's unlikely and also this looks a bit messy. It should be more immediately clear that you want to "group by age".
Instead, you can add your own (calculated) Age property to the existing objects with Add-Member:
$people |
Add-Member -MemberType ScriptProperty -Name Age -Value {
([DateTime]::Now - $this.DateOfBirth).Days / 365 -as [int]
} -Force
From here on out, each object in the $people array has an Age property that is calculated based on the value of the DateOfBirth property.
Now you can make your code clearer:
$people | Group-Object -Property Age
Again this doesn't really address your hashtable issue; the truth is they don't work that well for grouping. If you're going to do a lot of grouping with them, and you don't really need hashtables, make them into objects:
$objs = $list.Values |
ForEach-Object -Process {
New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $_ # takes a hashtable
}
or
$objs = $list.Values |
ForEach-Object -Process {
[PSCustomObject]$_ # converts a hashtable to PSObject
}
Then:
$objs | Group-Object -Property Order
I am trying to find a way to save the properties for a select statement in PowerShell but it isn't working. I haven't found a way to make an entire statement a literal so that it isn't reviewed until the variable is opened.
Here is what works:
$wsus.GetSummariesPercomputerTarget($CurrentMonthUpdateScope, $ComputerScope) |
Select-Object #{L="WSUSServer";E={$Server}},
#{L="FromDate";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.FromCreationDate).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")}},
#{L="ToDate";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.ToCreationDate).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")}},
#{L='Computer';E={($wsus.GetComputerTarget([guid]$_.ComputerTargetID)).FullDomainName}},
DownloadedCount,
NotInstalledCount,
InstalledPendingRebootCount,
FailedCount,
Installedcount |
Sort-Object -Property "Computer"
and I am trying to get the properties mentioned (starting just after the Select-Object statement and ending just before the last pipe) placed in a variable so that I can use the same properties multiple times with different scopes.
I have tried this:
$Properties = '#{L="WSUSServer";E={$Server}},
#{L="FromDate";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.FromCreationDate).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")}},
#{L="ToDate";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.ToCreationDate).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")}},
#{L="Computer";E={($wsus.GetComputerTarget([guid]$_.ComputerTargetID)).FullDomainName}},
DownloadedCount,
NotInstalledCount,
InstalledPendingRebootCount,
FailedCount,
Installedcount'
$wsus.GetSummariesPercomputerTarget($CurrentMonthUpdateScope, $ComputerScope) |
Select-Object $Properties |
Sort-Object -Property "Computer"
While this runs it doesn't give any data and I think it confuses PowerShell.
This gives the same response:
$Properties = "#{L=`"WSUSServer`";E={$Server}},
#{L=`"FromDate`";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.FromCreationDate).ToString(`"MM/dd/yyyy`")}},
#{L=`"ToDate`";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.ToCreationDate).ToString(`"MM/dd/yyyy`")}},
#{L=`"Computer`";E={($wsus.GetComputerTarget([guid]$_.ComputerTargetID)).FullDomainName}},
DownloadedCount,
NotInstalledCount,
InstalledPendingRebootCount,
FailedCount,
Installedcount"
Any options, thoughts, etc.?
The -Property argument of Select-Object expects an array, not a string. So something like this:
$Properties = #(#{L="WSUSServer";E={$Server}},
#{L="FromDate";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.FromCreationDate).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")}},
#{L="ToDate";E={$($CurrentMonthUpdateScope.ToCreationDate).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")}},
#{L="Computer";E={($wsus.GetComputerTarget([guid]$_.ComputerTargetID)).FullDomainName}},
"DownloadedCount",
"NotInstalledCount",
"InstalledPendingRebootCount",
"FailedCount",
"Installedcount")
Note, you will need to turn the simple property names into strings within your array.
I want to collect data remotely and adapt the table headers later with the help of an xml-file. This should happen in a loop, looking like that:
foreach($tableheader in $table) {
$table.$tableheader = $xmlFile.$tableheader
}
Amongst others I tried the following:
$x = 0
$sitesonfig = Get-ConfigSite -AdminAddress localhost
foreach($Prop in ($siteconfig |get-member -MemberType Property | select -Property name))
{
$x += 1;
$siteconfig = $siteconfig | Select-Object * | format-table #{l="Smile$x";e={$_.$Prop}}
}
Yes, I know this looks silly, but I've got really no idea, how to change the headers one by one without listing each time all the other headers, too.
One possibility is to use a loop to create the header map that you pass into Format-Table.
Here is your second example modified to demonstrate this concept. You should be able to adapt this to grab the header info from your XML file.
$x = 0
$siteconfig = Get-ConfigSite -AdminAddress localhost
$headerMap = #()
foreach($Prop in ($siteconfig |get-member -MemberType Property | select -ExpandProperty name))
{
$x += 1;
$headerMap += #{
l="Smile$x";
e={ $_.$Prop }.GetNewClosure()
}
}
$siteconfig | Format-Table $headerMap
Important Points
Select -Property name needed to be changed to Select -ExpandProperty name. The reason for this is that Select-Object in PowerShell will return an object filtered down to the selected member but you need a string for grabbing the property value by name. The -ExpandProperty parameter will expand this to be the string value instead.
The expression block needs GetNewClosure() called on it to capture the value of $Prop at the time of script block creation versus at the time of calling. This will probably be a little confusing if you are new to the concept of closures and PowerShell's scoping rules. Without this, due to PowerShell's scoping rules, $Prop will evaluate to the value of $Prop at the time it is used by Format-Table. By calling GetNewClosure(), the value of $Prop is captured when GetNewClosure() is called which is what we want in this case.