Powershell: Format-Table -Autosize loses the variable values - powershell

Using POSH 3.0, as a quick example, if I populate an array and try to display the results with FT -Autosize, I can't access the variable after that anymore. There are quite a few properties to display so -autosize is important to utilize the whole width.
$x | Select #{E={$_.AID};L="Action"},#{E={$_.ID};L="SSN"}... | `
FT -AutoSize
}
#Now the object is no longer accessible
$x | ForEach {
$_
}
So my goal is to view the results in a nicely formatted way, while also keeping the values accessible in the variable. I had tried to make a copy of the variable, one to view the results and the other to proceed with the values in the variable, but same thing.
Anyone have any good thoughts about this? Thanks!
Better example:
[array]$recs= Invoke-Sqlcmd -ServerInstance $server `
-Database $db `
-InputFile 'c:\sqlquery.sql'
$arrRecs = #()
ForEach ($record in $recs) {
$newObjectRecs = New-Object PSCustomObject -Property #{
"todaysDate" = $_.TodaysDate
"cats" = $record.cats
"dogs" = $record.dogs
"surname" = $record.surname
"givenName" = $record.givenName }
$arrRecs += $newObjectRecs
}
$arrRecs | `
Select #{E={$_.cats};L="cats"},#{E={$_.dogs};L="dogs"},#{E={$_.TodaysDate};L="Date"},surname,givenName | `
Format-Table -AutoSize
$arrRecs | ForEach {
$_
Write-Host "---------"
}
$arrRecs
As an update to a comment earlier, if I iterate through the ForEach statement below when trying to display to the screen, it won't display the current item in the pipe, but when it gets to the end of the array, it displays all the items that were in the array.
If I comment out Format-Table -Autosize, it displays the current item in the pipe as expected.

As a kind of hack-around (yes, I made up a hyphenated word, but I liked it so you have to live with it) you could try pumping $x through a ForEach and creating a custom object for each record in $x. Something like:
$x | %{[PSCustomObject][Ordered]#{
"Action"=$_.AID
"SSN"=$_.ID
"Taco"=$_.FishBeefOrChicken
"More"=$_.OtherProperties
}}| FT -Auto
While the script you show should not alter $x at all, and $x should be both intact and accessible afterwards, sometimes all it takes to work through a problem is a new perspective and a different method of doing things to find the error that's eluding us.

Related

PowerShell Export-CSV - Missing Columns [duplicate]

This question already has an answer here:
Not all properties displayed
(1 answer)
Closed 1 year ago.
This is a follow-up question from PowerShell | EVTX | Compare Message with Array (Like)
I changed the tactic slightly, now I am collecting all the services installed,
$7045 = Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable #{ Path="1system.evtx"; Id = 7045 } | select
#{N=’Timestamp’; E={$_.TimeCreated.ToUniversalTime().ToString('yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ')}},
Id,
#{N=’Machine Name’; E={$_.MachineName}},
#{N=’Service Name’; E={$_.Properties[0].Value}},#{N=’Image Path’;E=$_.Properties[1].Value}},
#{N=’RunAsUser’; E={$_.Properties[4].Value}},#{N=’Installed By’; E={$_.UserId}}
Now I match each object for any suspicious traits and if found, I add a column 'Suspicious' with the value 'Yes'. This is because I want to leave the decision upto the analyst and pretty sure the bad guys might use something we've not seen before.
foreach ($Evt in $7045)
{
if ($Evt.'Image Path' -match $sus)
{
$Evt | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name 'Suspicious' -Value 'Yes'
}
}
Now, I'm unable to get PowerShell to display all columns unless I specifically Select them
$7045 | Format-Table
Same goes for CSV Export. The first two don't include the Suspicious Column but the third one does but that's because I'm explicitly asking it to.
$7045 | select * | Export-Csv -Path test.csv -NoTypeInformation
$7045 | Export-Csv -Path test.csv -NoTypeInformation
$7045 | Select-Object Timestamp, Id, 'Machine Name', 'Service Name', 'Image Path', 'RunAsUser', 'Installed By', Suspicious | Export-Csv -Path test.csv -NoTypeInformation
I read the Export-CSV documentation on MS. Searched StackOverFlow for some tips, I think it has something to do with PS checking the first Row and then compares if the property exists for the second row and so on.
Thank you
The issue you're experiencing is partially because of how objects are displayed to the console, the first object's Properties determines the displayed Properties (Columns) to the console.
The bigger problem though, is that Export-Csv will not export those properties that do not match with first object's properties unless they're explicitly added to the remaining objects or the objects are reconstructed, for this one easy way is to use Select-Object as you have pointed out in the question.
Given the following example:
$test = #(
[pscustomobject]#{
A = 'ValA'
}
[pscustomobject]#{
A = 'ValA'
B = 'ValB'
}
[pscustomobject]#{
C = 'ValC'
D = 'ValD'
E = 'ValE'
}
)
Format-Table will not display the properties B to E:
$test | Format-Table
A
-
ValA
ValA
Format-List can display the objects properly, this is because each property with it's corresponding value has it's own console line in the display:
PS /> $test | Format-List
A : ValA
A : ValA
B : ValB
C : ValC
D : ValD
E : ValE
Export-Csv and ConvertTo-Csv will also miss properties B to E:
$test | ConvertTo-Csv
"A"
"ValA"
"ValA"
You have different options as a workaround for this, you could either add the Suspicious property to all objects and for those events that are not suspicious you could add $null as Value.
Another workaround is to use Select-Object explicitly calling the Suspicious property (this works because you know the property is there and you know it's Name).
If you did not know how many properties your objects had, a dynamic way to solve this would be to discover their properties using the PSObject intrinsic member.
using namespace System.Collections.Generic
function ConvertTo-NormalizedObject {
[CmdletBinding()]
param(
[Parameter(ValueFromPipeline, Mandatory)]
[object[]] $InputObject
)
begin {
$list = [List[object]]::new()
$props = [HashSet[string]]::new([StringComparer]::InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)
}
process {
foreach($object in $InputObject) {
$list.Add($object)
foreach($property in $object.PSObject.Properties) {
$null = $props.Add($property.Name)
}
}
}
end {
$list | Select-Object ([object[]] $props)
}
}
Usage:
# From Pipeline
$test | ConvertTo-NormalizedObject | Format-Table
# From Positional / Named parameter binding
ConvertTo-NormalizedObject $test | Format-Table
Lastly, a pretty easy way of doing it thanks to Select-Object -Unique:
$prop = $test.ForEach{ $_.PSObject.Properties.Name } | Select-Object -Unique
$test | Select-Object $prop
Using $test for this example, the result would become:
A B C D E
- - - - -
ValA
ValA ValB
ValC ValD ValE
Continuing from my previous answer, you can add a column Suspicious straight away if you take out the Where-Object filter and simply add another calculated property to the Select-Object cmdlet:
# create a regex for the suspicious executables:
$sus = '(powershell|cmd|psexesvc)\.exe'
# alternatively you can join the array items like this:
# $sus = ('powershell.exe','cmd.exe','psexesvc.exe' | ForEach-Object {[regex]::Escape($_)}) -join '|'
$7045 = Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable #{ LogName = 'System';Id = 7045 } |
Select-Object Id,
#{N='Timestamp';E={$_.TimeCreated.ToUniversalTime().ToString('yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ')}},
#{N='Machine Name';E={$_.MachineName}},
#{N='Service Name'; E={$_.Properties[0].Value}},
#{N='Image Path'; E={$_.Properties[1].Value}},
#{N='RunAsUser'; E={$_.Properties[4].Value}},
#{N='Installed By'; E={$_.UserId}},
#{N='Suspicious'; E={
if ($_.Properties[1].Value -match $sus) { 'Yes' } else {'No'}
}}
$7045 | Export-Csv -Path 'X:\Services.csv' -UseCulture -NoTypeInformation
Because you have many columns, this will not fit the console width anymore if you do $7045 | Format-Table, but the CSV file will hold all columns you wanted.
I added switch -UseCulture to the Export-Csv cmdlet, which makes sure you can simply double-click the csv file so it opens correctly in your Excel.
As sidenote: Please do not use those curly so-called 'smart-quotes' in code as they may lead to unforeseen errors. Straighten these ’ thingies and use normal double or single quotes (" and ')

How to address table content like an object in PowerShell?

I want to address the table-formated output of my function like an object, i.e. the row [2] column 'Action' should be addressable like $r[2].Action. How can I do that?
I tried using 'ConvertFrom-SourceTable' from the powershellgallery, but that didn't work. And I'd rather have a simple solution without extra installs.
Function Get-NetFirewallRulesByPort {
Param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
[ValidateRange(1,65535)]
[int] $port )
Get-NetFirewallRule |
where { ($_ | Get-NetFirewallPortFilter).LocalPort -eq ${port} } |
select Enabled, Action, Direction, DisplayName | ft -AutoSize
}
# usage:
$r = (Get-NetFirewallRulesByPort 443)
$r
# required:
Write-Host $r[2].Action
Write-Host $r[1].DisplayName
# etc. ...
Because of this | ft -AutoSize in your function, you force it to output the gathered data formatted for display purposes only
Trying to decode that later to make it an array of objects again is definitively not the way to go.
Remove | ft -AutoSize from the function so your variable $r will receive a set of objects
If you must, display the result using that $r variable in several ways:
$r | Format-Table -AutoSize
or
$r | Out-GridView
By keeping it as objects, you can now do what you want, like $r[2].Action (provided you have at least 3 objects returned of course..)

Unable to show export-csv in PoweSshell

I have been researching the web to see what am I missing and can't find out, I run the command it goes thru the list of computers but the export doc is always empty.
Here is the code
foreach ($computer in Get-Content "\\NETWORK PATH\user-computers.txt") {
Write-host $computer
$colDrives = Get-WmiObject Win32_MappedLogicalDisk -ComputerName $computer
$Report = #()
# Set our filename based on the execution time
$filenamestring = "$computer-$(get-date -UFormat "%y-%b-%a-%H%M").csv"
foreach ($objDrive in $colDrives) {
# For each mapped drive – build a hash containing information
$hash = #{
ComputerName = $computer
MappedLocation = $objDrive.ProviderName
DriveLetter = $objDrive.DeviceId
}
# Add the hash to a new object
$objDriveInfo = new-object PSObject -Property $hash
# Store our new object within the report array
$Report += $objDriveInfo
}}
# Export our report array to CSV and store as our dynamic file name
$Report | Export-Csv -LiteralPath "\\NETWORK PATH\Drive-Maps.csv" -NoTypeInformation
I want to know what each computer currently got mapped network drives, thanks for all your help and guidance.
I'm not sure why you're not getting output. I've rewritten your script for a few reasons I'd like to point out. First, your variable naming is not very clear. I'm guessing you come from a VBScripting background. Next, you're creating an array and then adding to it - this is simply not needed. You can capture the output of any loop/scriptblock/etc directly by assigning like tihs.
$Report = foreach($thing in $manythings){Do lots of stuff and everything in stdout will be captured}
If you write your script in a way that takes advantage of the pipeline, you can do even more. Next, creating the object with New-Object is slow compared to using the [PSCustomObject] type accelerator introduced in V3. Finally, it seems you create a custom csv for each computer but in the end you just export everything to one file. I'm going to assume you are wanting to collect all this info and put in one CSV.
My recommendation for you to help troubleshoot, run this against your machines and confirm the output on the screen. Whatever you see on the screen should be captured in the report variable. (Except write-host, it's special and just goes to the console)
$computerList = "\\NETWORK PATH\user-computers.txt"
$reportFile = "\\NETWORK PATH\Drive-Maps.csv"
Get-Content $computerList | ForEach-Object {
Write-host $_
$mappedDrives = Get-WmiObject Win32_MappedLogicalDisk -ComputerName $_
foreach ($drive in $mappedDrives)
{
# For each mapped drive – build a hash containing information
[PSCustomObject]#{
ComputerName = $_
MappedLocation = $drive.ProviderName
DriveLetter = $drive.DeviceId
}
}
} -OutVariable Report
Once you know you have all the correct info, run this to export it.
$Report | Export-Csv -LiteralPath $reportFile -NoTypeInformation

Issue with Powershell custom table

I'm trying to create a custom table based on two other tables (csv-imported) - some kind of a VLOOKUP, but I can't seem to find a solution. I've come up with the following (failing) code:
$DrawPlaces | select Module, Workplace, #{ Name = "IPaddress"; Expression = {$Workstations.workstation.where($_.WorkPlace -eq $Workstations.Workplace)}} -First 15
Both Drawplaces and $Workplaces are PSCustomObject. The result of this would then go to another variable.
I'm not even sure the logic or syntax is correct, but the result table has the IPaddress column empty. I've also tried with -match instead of -eq.
This doesn't make sense: $Workstations.workstation.where($_.WorkPlace -eq $Workstations.Workplace)
.where() requires a scriptblock parameter like .where({}).
Keeping in mind that inside the where-statement $_ is refering to the current object in the $workstations.workstation-loop, your where-statement is testing ex. $workstations.workstation[0].workplace -eq $workstations.workplace. Is that really what you want?
Are you trying to achieve this?
$DrawPlaces |
Select-Object -First 15 -Property #(
"Module",
"Workplace",
#{ Name = "IPaddress"; Expression = {
#Save the Workspace-value for the current object from $DrawPlaces
$wp = $_.WorkPlace;
#Find the workstation with the same workplace as $wp
$Workstations | Where-Object { $_.WorkPlace -eq $wp} | ForEach-Object { $_.Workstation }
}
}
)

PowerShell: How to change table headers in loop?

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.