How to save a JSON object to a file using Powershell?

Question

I have converted the following JSON file to powershell representation object.

{
"computer": [
    {
        "children": [   
            {   
                "children": [ {
                   "children": [ {
                        "path": "T:\Dropbox\kvaki.html",
                        "name": "kvaki",
                        "type": "url",
                        "url": "http://example.com"
                   } ],
                    "path": "T:\Dropbox\",
                    "name": "Njusha",
                    "type": "folder"
                }, {
                    "path": "T:\Dropbox\Europa.html",
                    "name": "Europa",
                    "type": "url",
                    "url": "http://example.com"
                }, {
                    "path": "T:\Dropbox\math.html",
                    "name": "math",
                    "type": "url",
                    "url": "http://example.com"
                } ],
                "path": "T:\Dropbox\",
                "name": "Money",
                "type": "folder"
            }
        ],
        "full_path_on_file_sys": "T:\Dropbox\"
    }
]

}

After doing some computations with powershell representation I would like to save it to file as JSON. But command $jsonRepresentation | ConvertTo-Json | Out-File "D:\dummy_path\file.json" saves it in this way

{
    "computer":  [
                     {
                         "children":  " ",
                         "full_path_on_file_sys":  "T:\Dropbox\"
                     }
                 ]
}

Question: how to achieve correct saving of complex powershell JSON representation?

Dan Sinclair · Accepted Answer · 2024-03-09 13:15:20Z

107

-depth argument for ConvertTo-Json solves the issue.

$jsonRepresentation | ConvertTo-Json -depth 100 | Out-File "D:\dummy_path\file.json"

edited Mar 9, 2024 at 13:15

Dan Sinclair

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answered Mar 9, 2014 at 12:27

Puzik

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4 Comments

LeeM Over a year ago

Just a quick note for anyone wondering - the default depth is 2, if it's not specified in ConvertTo-Json -depth x

Simon Over a year ago

I tried this out today and noticed that the default Out-File produced an unusable file (encoded in UTF-16) that failed on a subsequent programmatic import in a gulp task. Looking at a Hex editor made this clear (and the JSON file also did not highlight properly with Intellisense in VSCode). I took my following failing code $constants | ConvertTo-Json -depth 100 | Out-File $outFilePath and replaced it with $constants | ConvertTo-Json -depth 100 | Set-Content $outFilePath

lit Over a year ago

The character encoding from Out-File is specified with the -Encoding parameter.

hyperupcall Over a year ago

Since Powershell Core 6.0, the default encoding is UTF-8 w/ BOM (rather than UTF-16). See more here: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/whats-new/…

mjolinor · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-08 22:43:08Z

15

Just pipe it to Set-Content, or Out-File:

Get-Process powershell |
 ConvertTo-Json | 
 Set-Content json.txt

answered Mar 8, 2014 at 22:43

mjolinor

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1 Comment

Simon Over a year ago

Set-Content did it for me.

Jim Wolff · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-06 20:00:18Z

4

If you want to both view the output and save it to file, you can pipe the tee command.

Get-Process powershell | ConvertTo-Json |  Tee-Object json.txt

answered Nov 6, 2017 at 20:00

Jim Wolff

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Comments

Pang · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-03 05:07:03Z

2

$json.properties.metadata | ConvertTo-Json -Compress

edited Apr 3, 2019 at 5:07

Pang

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answered Feb 14, 2019 at 18:36

Peter

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Comments

user4531 · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-10 16:08:07Z

1

if you are stuck with PowerShell Version 2, the JSON module of Joel Bennett from the 'PowerShell Code Repository' might help.

answered Nov 10, 2014 at 16:08

user4531

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2 Comments

Norcino Over a year ago

The code is not available anymore at the specified url

user4531 Over a year ago

it is available at archive.org: web.archive.org/web/20170327100006/http://poshcode.org/2930

sameervsarma · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-15 10:21:34Z

1) The below command can be used to convert a json to CSV

Get-Content: This is like "cat" command in linux which will get all data of file "package.json" and converts from Json (Using ConvertFrom-Json function) extracting the details of only required parameters and then converting them into CSV using "ConvertTo-Csv" function without any unwanted Type Headers and formatting them into Table.

2) The above result can also be formatted into proper csv to view it as Excel format without any duplicates and also having Text-To-Column conversion using below command:

Import-Csv "C:\Result.csv" -delimiter "," | Sort-Object _from -Unique | Export-csv "C:\FINAL_REPORT_$date.csv"

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