Powershell - convert text fields into objects

Question

I am trying to find an elegant way of transforming data below into collection of Powershell objects but unfortunately I am unable to find a simple way of doing it. Would someone be able to help me here?

Name: ENC1
IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.101
Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbit, Full Duplex
Name: ENC2
IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.103
Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbit, Full Duplex
Name: ENC3
IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.103
Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbps, Full Duplex
Name: ENC4
IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.104
Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbps, Full Duplex

This is what I came up with.

$out = @()
$text = Get-Content input.txt
$count = 0
do {
$line = ($text | select -Skip $count -first 3)
$obj = "" | Select Name,IP,Settings
$obj.Name = $line[0].split(":")[1]
$obj.IP = $line[1].split(":")[1]
$obj.Settings = $line[2].split(":")[1]
$out += $obj
$count = $count+3
} until ($count -eq $text.count)
$out

Is there simplier way of doing it?

That data has probably been transformed from something else - is there any way you can get access to that and possibly skip the parsing altogether? — alroc
– alroc, Commented May 13, 2014 at 13:10
the data is generated as a part of the script output. I would have to parse it one way or another.However it this case this is not relevant - the question was for any data that was presented this way. — Sergei
– Sergei, Commented May 13, 2014 at 14:21

mjolinor · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-17 21:49:50Z

7

Using a Switch:

$data = (@'
Name: ENC1
 IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.101
 Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbit, Full Duplex
 Name: ENC2
 IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.103
 Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbit, Full Duplex
 Name: ENC3
 IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.103
 Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbps, Full Duplex
 Name: ENC4
 IPv4 Address: 172.16.2.104
 Link Settings: Forced, 100 Mbps, Full Duplex
'@).split("`n") |
foreach {$_.trim()}

Switch -Regex ($data) 
{
 '^Name: (.+)' {$obj = [PSCustomObject]@{Name=$Matches[1];IP=$null;Settings=$null}}
 '^IPv4 Address: (.+)' {$obj.IP = $matches[1]}
 '^Link Settings: (.+)' {$obj.Settings = $Matches[1];$obj}
}



Name                                 IP                                   Settings                            
----                                 --                                   --------                            
ENC1                                 172.16.2.101                         Forced, 100 Mbit, Full Duplex       
ENC2                                 172.16.2.103                         Forced, 100 Mbit, Full Duplex       
ENC3                                 172.16.2.103                         Forced, 100 Mbps, Full Duplex       
ENC4                                 172.16.2.104                         Forced, 100 Mbps, Full Duplex

Edit: after some consideration, I think I like this pattern better:

$DefValue = 'Parse error. Check input.'
Switch -Regex ($data) 
{
 '^Name: (.+)' {$obj;$obj = [PSCustomObject]@{Name=$Matches[1];IP=$DefValue;Settings=$DefValue}}
 '^IPv4 Address: (.+)' {$obj.IP = $matches[1]}
 '^Link Settings: (.+)' {$obj.Settings = $Matches[1]}
}

edited May 17, 2014 at 21:49

answered May 13, 2014 at 13:07

mjolinor

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6 Comments

Loïc MICHEL Over a year ago

i dont undertand the last line. Why do we have to append ";$obj" to make it works ?

mjolinor Over a year ago

@Kayasax - That puts the finished object onto the pipeline. Without that, it just gets destroyed when $obj gets created as a new object when it hits then next Name line.

Frode F. Over a year ago

+1 Cool solution. Learned something new today. I would have tried to split at Name: and done it the hard way :)

Michael Sorens Over a year ago

I was previously impressed by your Powershell multiline regex matching post that demonstrated a solution with, in a sense, only two lines of code (not counting the code to prepare the data). But this is yet another elegant solution!

mjolinor Over a year ago

Thanks! I added an alternate solution that does a better job (IMHO) of detecting possible missing entries in the input data.

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