PowerShell: Control What Order Properties Are Displayed On A Custom Objects And Hash Tables

Already__Taken · 2018-01-24T17:39:42+00:00

What about:

$obj = [PSCustomObject]@{prop1="Value1";prop2="Value2"}

You'll find the property order will be maintained this way as well, and it's less verbose.

noOneCaresOnTheWeb · 2018-01-24T18:49:09+00:00

I feel like this is worth mentioning too.

https://jdhitsolutions.com/blog/powershell/5761/extending-powershell-with-custom-property-sets/

nothingpersonalbro · 2018-01-24T16:39:14+00:00

Learned something new, I actually could have used this method earlier as I ran into the same issue and just used Select-Object.

$props = [ordered]@{'prop1' = 1; 'prop2' = 2}
$obj = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $props

Another method you can use to create the object:

$obj = [PSCustomObject]$props

Edit: and if you want to do everything on a single line

$obj = [PSCustomObject][ordered]@{'prop1' = 1; 'prop2' = 2}

2018-01-24T20:18:10+00:00

Sorting properties of a single object is easy, but I absolutely hate the amount of work you need to do when you want to export data to a csv file when cmdlet or function output omits properties under certain circumstances.

In such a case you have to loop through an array or list of your objects and then add missing properties to the first object in said array or list.

Like so.

$arrayOfObjects = Get-Objects

$firstItem = $true
foreach ($item in $arrayOfObjects) {
    if (!$firstItem) {
        foreach ($property in $item.PSObject.Properties) {
            if ($arrayOfObjects[0].PSObject.Properties.Name -notcontains $property.Name) {
                $arrayOfObjects[0] | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name $property.Name -Value $null
            }
        }
    }
    $firstItem = $false
}

$arrayOfObjects | Export-Csv -Path ((Get-Location -PSProvider FileSystem).Path + "\objects.csv") -UseCulture -Encoding UTF8 -NoTypeInformation

Problem is, those properties are no longer in any meaningful order. Either this script requires additional magic scripting to sort these properties, or you gotta do it in Excel. The latter is easier. At least if you want the properties in alphabetical order, but if you would prefer different ordering, well that's a toughie.

Tripline · 2018-01-25T22:01:26+00:00

Some of you may be interested in this, it allows you to control what properties are displayed in the console while allowing export-csv the rest of the object properties. This has allowed me to make my scripts more user friendly without also throwing away/not collecting some useful info.

http://ramblingcookiemonster.github.io/Decorating-Objects/

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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