Printing object properties in Powershell

Question

When working in the interactive console if I define a new object and assign some property values to it like this    obj   New-Object System String  obj   Add-Member NoteProperty SomeProperty  Test    Then when I type the name of my variable into the interactive window Powershell gives me a summary of the object properties and values   PS C  demo gt   obj SomeProperty                                                                                                                                                                                   ------------                                                                                                                                                                                   Test   I basically want to do just this but from within a function in a script  The function creates an object and sets some property values and I want it to print out a summary of the object values to the Powershell window before returning  I tried using Write-Host within the function   Write-Host  obj   But this just output the type of the object not the summary   System Object   How can I have my function output a summary of the object s property values to the Powershell window

User · Answer

My solution to this problem was to use the $() sub-expression block.

Add-Type -Language CSharp @"
public class Thing{
    public string Name;
}
"@;

$x = New-Object Thing

$x.Name = "Bill"

Write-Output "My name is $($x.Name)"
Write-Output "This won't work right: $x.Name"

Gives:

My name is Bill
This won't work right: Thing.Name

User · Answer

The below worked really good for me  I patched together all the above answers plus read about displaying object properties in the following link and came up with the below short read about printing objects  add the following text to a file named print object ps1    date   New-Object System DateTime Write-Output  date   Get-Member Write-Output  date   Select-Object -Property     open powershell command prompt  go to the directory where that file exists and type the following   powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File is port in use ps1 -Elevated   Just substitute  System DateTime  with whatever object you wanted to print  If the object is null  nothing will print out

User · Answer

Tip  1     Never use Write-Host    Tip  12     The correct way to output information from a PowerShell cmdlet or function is to create an object that contains your data  and then to write that object to the pipeline by using Write-Output    -Don Jones  PowerShell Master  Ideally your script would create your objects   obj   New-Object -TypeName psobject -Property    SomeProperty   Test    then just do a Write-Output  objects  You would pipe the output to Format-Table   PS C   gt  Run-MyScript ps1   Format-Table   They should really call PowerShell PowerObjectandPipingShell

User · Answer

To print out object s properties and values in Powershell  Below examples work well for me    pool   Get-Item  IIS  AppPools NET v4 5    pool   Get-Member     TypeName  Microsoft IIs PowerShell Framework ConfigurationElement system applicationHost applicationPools add  Name                        MemberType            Definition ----                        ----------            ---------- Recycle                     CodeMethod            void Recycle   Start                       CodeMethod            void Start   Stop                        CodeMethod            void Stop   applicationPoolSid          CodeProperty          Microsoft IIs PowerShell Framework CodeProperty state                       CodeProperty          Microsoft IIs PowerShell Framework CodeProperty ClearLocalData              Method                void ClearLocalData   Copy                        Method                void Copy Microsoft IIs PowerShell Framework ConfigurationElement     Delete                      Method                void Delete          pool   Select-Object -Property     You can omit -Property  name                           NET v4 5 queueLength                   1000 autoStart                     True enable32BitAppOnWin64         False managedRuntimeVersion         v4 0 managedRuntimeLoader          webengine4 dll enableConfigurationOverride   True managedPipelineMode           Integrated CLRConfigFile                 passAnonymousToken            True startMode                     OnDemand state                         Started applicationPoolSid            S-1-5-82-271721585-897601226-2024613209-625570482-296978595 processModel                  Microsoft IIs PowerShell Framework ConfigurationElement

User · Answer

Json to object  obj    obj   ConvertFrom-Json Write-host  obj PropertyName

User · Answer

Some general notes       obj   Select-Object    obj   Select-Object -Property     The latter will show all non-intrinsic  non-compiler-generated properties  The former does not appear to  always  show all Property types  in my tests  it does appear to show the CodeProperty MemberType consistently though -- no guarantees here      Some switches to be aware of for Get-Member   Get-Member does not get static members by default  You also cannot  directly  get them along with the non-static members  That is  using the switch causes only static members to be returned    PS Y  Power   obj   Get-Member -Static     TypeName  System IsFire TurnUpProtocol  Name        MemberType Definition ----        ---------- ---------- Equals      Method     static bool Equals System Object objA  System Object objB       Use the -Force      The Get-Member command uses the Force parameter to add the intrinsic members and compiler-generated members of the objects to the display  Get-Member gets these members  but it hides them by default    PS Y  Power   obj   Get-Member -Static     TypeName  System IsFire TurnUpProtocol  Name          MemberType     Definition ----          ----------     ----------     pstypenames   CodeProperty   System Collections ObjectModel Collection    psadapted     MemberSet      psadapted  AccessRightType  AccessRuleType              Use ConvertTo-Json for depth and readable  serialization   I do not necessary recommend saving objects using JSON  use Export-Clixml instead   However  you can get a more or less readable output from ConvertTo-Json  which also allows you to specify depth   Note that not specifying Depth implies -Depth 2  PS Y  Power gt  ConvertTo-Json  obj -Depth 1        AllowSystemOverload    true       AllowLifeToGetInTheWay    false       CantAnyMore   true       LastResortOnly   true        And if you aren t planning to read it you can -Compress it  i e  strip whitespace   PS Y  Power gt  ConvertTo-Json  obj -Depth 420 -Compress     Use -InputObject if you can  and are willing   99 9  of the time when using PowerShell  either the performance won t matter  or you don t care about the performance  However  it should be noted that avoiding the pipe when you don t need it can save some overhead and add some speed  piping  in general  is not super-efficient    That is  if you all you have is a single  obj handy for printing  and aren t too lazy like me sometimes to type out -InputObject      select is aliased  hardcoded  to Select-Object PS Y  Power gt  select -Property   -InputObject  obj     gm is aliased  hardcoded  to Get-Member PS Y  Power gt  gm -Force -InputObject  obj   Caveat for Get-Member -InputObject  If  obj is a collection  e g  System Object     You end up getting information about the collection object itself   PS Y  Power gt  gm -InputObject  obj  obj2    TypeName  System Object    Name        MemberType            Definition ----        ----------            ---------- Count       AliasProperty         Count   Length       If you want to Get-Member for each TypeName in the collection  N B  for each TypeName  not for each object--a collection of N objects with all the same TypeName will only print 1 table for that TypeName  not N tables for each object       just stick with piping it in directly

User · Answer

Try this   Write-Host   obj   Format-Table   Out-String    or   Write-Host   obj   Format-List   Out-String

[powershell] Printing object properties in Powershell

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