Powershell Pipeline - return a new Object, that was created within pipline-CodePudding

I keep running into the same problem again, and i have my default way of handling it, but it keeps bugging me.
Isn't there any better way?

So basicly i have a pipline running, do stuff within the pipline, and want to return a Key/Value Pair from within the pipline.
I want the whole pipline to return a object of type psobject (or pscustomobject).

Here is the way i do it everytime. I create a hashtable at the beginning of the pipline and add key/Value Pairs from within the pipline to this hashtable using the .Add() method.
Afterwards i create a psobject by passing the hashtbale to New-Object`s -Property Parameter.
This gives me the desired result.

Get-Process | Sort -Unique Name | ForEach-Object -Begin { $ht = @{} } -Process {
    
    # DO STUFF
    $key = $_.Name
    $val = $_.Id

    # Add Entry to Hashtable
    $ht.Add($key,$val)
}

# Create PSObject from Hashtable
$myAwesomeNewObject = New-Object psobject -Property $ht

# Done - returns System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject
$myAwesomeNewObject.GetType().FullName

But this seems a bit cluncky, isn't there a more elegant way of doing it?

Something like this:

[PSObject]$myAwesomeNewObject = Get-Process | Sort -Unique Name | ForEach-Object -Process {
    
    # DO STUFF
    $key = $_.Name
    $val = $_.Id

    # return Key/Val Pair
    @{$key=$val}
}

# Failed - returns System.Object[]
$myAwesomeNewObject.GetType().FullName

This unfortunally dosn't work, since the pipe returns an array of hashtables, but i hope you know now what iam trying to achieve.

Thanks

CodePudding user response：

Not sure if this is more elegant but just another way of doing it, this uses an anonymous function so $ht will no longer be available after execution, and casts to [pscustomobject] instead of using New-Object:

[pscustomobject] (Get-Process | Sort -Unique Name | & {
    begin { $ht = @{ } }
    process {
        # DO STUFF
        $key = $_.Name
        $val = $_.Id

        # Add Entry to Hashtable
        $ht.Add($key, $val)
    }
    end { $ht }
})

CodePudding user response：

You can also use the -End parameter to convert the final hash table to a pscustomobject as part of the pipeline, without needing to set the whole thing to a variable

$ht[$key]=$val is also a nice shorthand for $ht.Add($key,$val):

Get-Process | 
  Sort -Unique Name | 
    Foreach -Begin { $ht = @{} } -Process { 
      $ht[$_.Name] = $_.Id 
    } -End {[pscustomobject]$ht} |  
      ## continue pipeline with pscustomobject

CodePudding user response：

Thanks to @Santiago Squarzon and @Cpt.Whale answers, i were able to combine them to create a solution that pleases me:

$myAwesomeNewObject = `
Get-Process | Sort -Unique Name | & {
    begin { $ht = @{} }
    process {
        # DO STUFF
        $key = $_.Name
        $val = $_.Id

        # Add Entry to Hashtable
        $ht[$key]=$val
    }
    end {[pscustomobject]$ht}  
}

# Success - System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject
$myAwesomeNewObject.Gettype().FullName

# And helper Hashtable is NULL thanks to the
# anonym function
$null -eq $ht

Thanks alot Guys