I have a text file with multiple users (in the exact format):
username:t-Hancock
phoneNumber: 555555555
username:a-smith
PhoneNumber: 987654321
username:r-Byer
phonenumber: 123456789
I am trying to get all these users into an object with two properties (name and phone number). I tried Get-Content, tried some regex from other posts, but I couldn't modify them because I didn't understand it.
How could this be done?
It's not that clear entirely what you want here - what kind of object and for what purpose?
I'll go with an example of what you could do...
Say you want to convert that text file into a CSV file for easy import into Excel, start with reading the file content:
$input = Get-Content C:\TextFile.txt
Now, create an array into which you will store each object you create:
$array = @()
Now, we will go into a loop, parsing the file contents. If the line starts with "username", split the line using colon as delimiter, grab the second item (0-relative so the second item is number one) into a variable.
If the line starts with "PhoneNumber" then set the $writeobj variable to true (reset to false at the start of each iteration of the loop) and store the "PhoneNumber" value in $PhoneNumber using split again.
Then check if $writeobj is true and, if so, create a new object, add a NoteProperty with name of Username and username value stored from a previous line in the file.
Then add a NoteProperty with name PhoneNumber and value of $PhoneNumber. Then, add the object to the array.
This repeats all the way through the file contents:
$input | foreach-object {
$writeobj = $false
$obj = New-Object System.Object
If ($_ -match 'username*') {
$Username = ($_ -split ':')[1]
}
If ($_ -match 'PhoneNumber*') {
$PhoneNumber = ($_ -split ':')[1]
$writeobj = $true
}
If ($writeobj){
$obj | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name Username -value $Username
$obj | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name PhoneNumber -value $PhoneNumber
$array += $obj
}
}
Once we're out of the loop, export the array to a CSV file:
$array | Export-Csv -path C:\test.csv -NoTypeInformation
So, the full script is:
$input = Get-Content C:\TextFile.txt
$array = @()
$input | foreach-object {
$writeobj = $false
$obj = New-Object System.Object
If ($_ -match 'username*') {
$Username = ($_ -split ':')[1]
}
If ($_ -match 'PhoneNumber*') {
$PhoneNumber = ($_ -split ':')[1]
$writeobj = $true
}
If ($writeobj){
$obj | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name Username -value $Username
$obj | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name PhoneNumber -value $PhoneNumber
$array += $obj
}
}
$array | Export-Csv -path C:\test.csv -NoTypeInformation
See the screenshot below of a CSV file opened in Excel.
-match instead of .Startswith as it wasn't giving good results, showing only the middle user, a-smith, in the final CSV file. Also amended loop logic to be more robust, and added screenshot of the CSV that the script creates, in excel.
-match operator is not case-sensitive by default" or something (I haven't checked if that is actually the case (no pun intended) or not))?-cmatch operator instead which is explicitly case sensitive.I suggest you to change your format to CSV instead, and then it's very trivial. Just use Import-Csv.
Right now you could do something a long of the lines, it assumes valid text file, no empty lines:
$content = Get-Content "C:\Users\You\Documents\test.txt"
$readUsername = $true
$data = @()
foreach ($line in $content)
{
if($readUsername -eq $true) {
$username = .. # Match the line against regex.
$readUsername = $false
} else {
$phone = .. # Match the line against regex
$readUsername = $true
# We have grabbed username & phone
$props = @{Name: $username, Phone: $phone}
$obj = New-Object PSObject –Property $props
$data += $obj
}
}
# You now have access to $data.
I would use regexes to get at the data (example below), and you may need to tweak the regexs to extract the names and numbers, because I only had your small sample to go on and I have made some assumptions like no spaces in the names and numbers.
((Get-Content file.txt -Raw) -split '\n(?=username)') | % {
$x = $_ -split '\r'
New-Object PSOBJECT -Property @{
name = [regex]::Match($x[0],'(?<=username:\s*)\b.*\b')
phone = [regex]::Match($x[1],'(?<=[Pp]hone[Nn]umber:\s*)\b.*\b')
}
}
