How to search a collection with an array in Powershell

Question

I have an array of MailItems from Outlook. I want to search each mail item and return the Subject and a Category based on a list of search terms contained in an array - in the example called $searchArray.

For example:

$mailbox = "[email protected]"

$outlook = New-Object -com Outlook.Application
$ns = $outlook.GetNamespace("MAPI")
$inbox = $ns.Folders.Item($mailbox).Folders.Item("Inbox")
$searchItems = $inbox.Folders.Item("MySubFolder").Folders.Item("MyNestedSubFolder").Items

$searchArray = (
    "Category1", ("searchTerm1","searchTerm2","searchTerm3"),
    "Category2", ("searchTerm4","searchTerm5"),
    "Category3", ("searchTerm6")
)

foreach ($msg in $searchItems) {
    $msg | select Subject, # <Category where email address contains one of the search terms>
}

I want to return the Subject, and then a column called Category which will look at the $msg.SenderEmailAddress and if any of the searchTerms in the $searchArray is contained within the address, return the category that had that search term in it.

For example if one of the SenderEmailAddress values was "[email protected]" then return Category1 as the Category.

In your output: to ensure that all items return the correct data they have to return the same number of properties. So you either need to return all categories and highlight the one you want or have a custom field that shows the category matched. Can an email match more than one category? What happens when it does? Are you partial to the structure you have now for $searchArray? Some changes to it would make the process easier — Matt
– Matt, Commented Apr 8, 2016 at 10:45
@Matt I don't care about the structure of the search array. Just that I will have one or more search terms for each category. Consider the search terms to be unique for all categories. The output will be for each email address assign one category. — Mark Allison
– Mark Allison, Commented Apr 8, 2016 at 11:12

Mathias R. Jessen · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-08 11:35:29Z

2

I would flip that array on its head and create a hashtable from it. Then use the first matching search term as a lookup key for the category:

$searchArray = (
    "Category1", ("searchTerm1","searchTerm2","searchTerm3"),
    "Category2", ("searchTerm4","searchTerm5"),
    "Category3", ("searchTerm6")
)

# Create hashtable
$searchTable = @{}

# Populate hash table with values from array
for($i=0;$i-lt$searchArray.Count;$i+=2){ 
    foreach($term in $searchArray[$i+1])
    {
        $searchTable[$term] = $searchArray[$i]
    }
}

# Select Category based on first matching search term
$msg |Select-Object Subject,@{Name="Category";Expression={
        $sender = $_.SenderEmailAddress
        $searchTable[$($searchTable.Keys |Where-Object{$sender -like "*$_*"} |Select -First 1)]
    }
}

answered Apr 8, 2016 at 11:35

Mathias R. Jessen

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Comments

Matt · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-08 13:04:29Z

Still need to use a calculated expression just as Mathias did (It's really the simple way). However I wanted to show an approach where you had a custom object array for the $searchArray. If you were to tailor it from scratch it would look like this. I also converted the terms into regex pattern matches since you say they are unique. Only caveat there is you need to be sure that there are no regex meta-characters in your search terms.

$searchArray = (
    [pscustomobject]@{
        Category = "1"
        Pattern = "searchTerm1|searchTerm2|searchTerm3"
    },  
    [pscustomobject]@{
        Category = "2"
        Pattern = "searchTerm4|searchTerm5"
    },
    [pscustomobject]@{
        Category = "3"
        Pattern = "searchTerm6"}
)

foreach ($msg in $searchItems) {
    $msg | select Subject, @{
        Name="Category";
        Expression={$searchArray | Where-Object{$msg.SenderEmailAddress -match $_.pattern } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Category}
    } 
}

Solution is dependant on PowerShell 3.0 from the type accelerator [pscustomobject]. Could easily bring it back to 2.0 if need be.

To showcase similar structure using 2.0 and automatic conversion of you array to one that works with my code.

$newSearchArray = for($categoryIndex=0;$categoryIndex-lt$searchArray.Count;$categoryIndex+=2){ 
    New-Object -TypeName pscustomobject -Property @{
        Category = $searchArray[$categoryIndex]
        Pattern = ($searchArray[$categoryIndex+1] | ForEach-Object{[regex]::Escape($_)}) -join "|"
    }
}

Now the search terms are automatically escaped and joined into a search pattern.

mjolinor · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-08 14:35:42Z

Using a switch:

$mailbox = "[email protected]"

$outlook = New-Object -com Outlook.Application
$ns = $outlook.GetNamespace("MAPI")
$inbox = $ns.Folders.Item($mailbox).Folders.Item("Inbox")
$searchItems = $inbox.Folders.Item("MySubFolder").Folders.Item("MyNestedSubFolder").Items

foreach ($msg in $searchItems) {
    $object = $msg | select Subject,Category # <Category where email address contains one of the search terms>
    Switch -Regex ($msg.SenderEmailAddress)
    {
      'searchTerm1|searchTerm2|searchTerm3' { $object.Catetory = 'Category1' ; break }
      'searchTerm4|searchTerm5'             { $object.Catetory = 'Category2' ; break }
      'searchTerm6'                         { $object.Catetory = 'Category3' ; break }
    }
    $object
}

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