Powershell loop through xml to create a jagged array

Question

I'm guessing this is pretty simple, I'm just starting with powershell and I can't seem to find a simple solution after a few hours searching the net.

Basically I have the following xml file

<Config>
<System>
<Server>
    <Name>host1</Name> 
    <Service>service1</Service>
    <Service>service2</Service>
</Server>
<Server>
    <Name>host2</Name> 
    <Service>service1</Service>
</Server>
</System>

<System2>
<Server>
    <Name>host1</Name> 
    <Service>service1</Service>
    <Service>service2</Service>
</Server>
<Server>
    <Name>host2</Name> 
    <Service>service1</Service>
     <Service>service2</Service>
     <Service>service3</Service>

</Server>
</System2>
</Config>

And I would like to get the contents into a jagged 2d array, so system would wind up as follows:

(host1),(service1,service2)
(host2),(service1)

Is it possible to iterate through each element and create such an array?

I'm hoping to store the data as above so that I can use [0][0] to reference the hostname and then [1][1..x] to reference all services for that host.

Does that make any sense?

Any help or better appraoch is greatly appreciated.

Keith Hill · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-17 18:36:09Z

3

You might think about using a hashtable for this instead. You can still iterate over the results and you can look up results by hostname e.g.:

$xml = [xml]@'
    <Config>
    <System>
    <Server>
        <Name>host1</Name> 
        <Service>service1</Service>
        <Service>service2</Service>
    </Server>
    <Server>
        <Name>host2</Name> 
        <Service>service1</Service>
    </Server>
    </System>

    <System2>
    <Server>
        <Name>host1</Name> 
        <Service>service1</Service>
        <Service>service2</Service>
    </Server>
    <Server>
        <Name>host2</Name> 
        <Service>service1</Service>
        <Service>service2</Service>
        <Service>service3</Service>
    </Server>
    </System2>
    </Config>
'@

$ht = @{}
$hostnameNodes = $xml | Select-Xml -XPath '//Name'
foreach ($node in @($xml | Select-Xml -XPath '//Name'))
{
    $hostname = $node.Node.InnerText.Trim()
    $services = @($node.Node.ParentNode.Service)
    foreach ($service in $services)
    {
        $ht["$hostname"] += @($service.Trim())
    }
}

$ht

Outputs:

Name                           Value                                    
----                           -----                                    
host1                          {service1, service2, service1, service2} 
host2                          {service1, service1, service2, service3}

edited Dec 17, 2012 at 18:36

answered Dec 17, 2012 at 18:12

Keith Hill

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6 Comments

user1910731 Over a year ago

Thanks for the swift response. Just to clarify as like I said i'm pretty new to all this, your solution will basically create a hash table but replace one of the key value pairs with an array of services?

Keith Hill Over a year ago

It creates an entry for each host name and the value for that entry will be an array of service names.

user1910731 Over a year ago

Brilliant, thank you very much, your help and advice is much appreciated. I will definitely have a go at this tomorrow. I just tested the code above and seems to assign nulls to the services, so i'm guessing i'll need to do a little playing around with it, but it's all part of learning :-)

user1910731 Over a year ago

Apologies for the follow up question, I have realised what I really want is the ability to extract all the data into a hash table for a specific system... so for example just the data within the <System> ....... </System> tags, so basically create a has table for each hostname and associated services that make up a "system"

user1910731 Over a year ago

if I amend the Select-Xml -XPath parts will I be able to achieve this? Thanks again for the help

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