Why is Powershell & AD returning newlines? - powershell

Question

I have this Powershell code:
$strFilter = "(&(objectCategory=User)(Description=*MD))"
$objDomain = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry
$objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher
$objSearcher.SearchRoot = $objDomain
$objSearcher.PageSize = 1000
$objSearcher.Filter = $strFilter
$objSearcher.SearchScope = "Subtree"
$colProplist = "name", "department", "description"
foreach ($i in $colPropList){$objSearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add($i)}
$colResults = $objSearcher.FindAll()
foreach ($objResult in $colResults)
{$objItem = $objResult.Properties
$objItem.name + "|" + $objItem.department + "|" + $objItem.description
}
For some reason it's returning new lines. How can I stop this?
The output looks like:
Bob Dole
|
SOME DEPT
|
Bob description
Rick James
|
ANOTHER DEPT
|
Rick description
Changing the last block to:
foreach ($objResult in $colResults)
{$objItem = $objResult.Properties
$colResults.Properties|%{($_.name,$_.department,$_.description) -join "|"}
}
Doesn't give me anything, just a bunch of:
||
||
||
||
||
||
I also tried just:
$colResults.Properties|%{($_.name,$_.department,$_.description) -join "|"}
And only got:
||

Answer 1

You have to be aware that $objItem.attribute is always a collection. I suspect that this is root cause of the problems you are seeing. Try this:
foreach ($objResult in $colResults)
{$objItem = $objResult.Properties
$objItem.name[0] + "|" + $objItem.department[0] + "|" + $objItem.description[0]
}
The problem is that this can give your errors if any of these attributes is empty. To avoid it (and get the same experience) you can use unary -join (with -f to make it easier to read):
foreach ($objResult in $colResults)
{$objItem = $objResult.Properties
'{0}|{1}|{2}' -f #(
(-join $objItem.name)
(-join $objItem.department)
(-join $objItem.description)
)
}

Answer 2

You could just join them instead:
($objItem.Name,$objItem.Department,$objItem.Description) -join "|"
That should give you your desired output.
Alternatively you could use string formatting like this:
"{0}|{1}|{2}" -f $objItem.Name, $objItem.Department, $objItem.Description
Edit: Ok, this runs on my machine and returns the results you wanted:
$strFilter = "(&(objectCategory=User)(Description=*MD))"
$objDomain = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry
$objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher
$objSearcher.SearchRoot = $objDomain
$objSearcher.PageSize = 1000
$objSearcher.Filter = $strFilter
$objSearcher.SearchScope = "Subtree"
$colProplist = "name", "department", "description"
foreach ($i in $colPropList){$objSearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add($i)}
$colResults = $objSearcher.FindAll()
$colResults.Properties|%{($($_['name']),$($_['department']),$($_['description'])) -join "|"}