Output from command is comma separated with no headers - how to format?

PowerShell Help
1

Hi,
I ran a curl statement and populated a variable named $output.
Inside the $output variable are values which are comma separated with no headers. I would like to create an html file showing the list of values.
$output contains something like the following, including the quotation marks:

“app.something.status”, “app.something2.pl”, “app.someapp.health”

I have tried everything. The only success I had in actually getting the data out was to export it to a txt file using:

$output | out-file c:\scripts\output\k.txt

Now I have a file which looks exactly like the content of $object, but I am unable to format it in any other way. If I had headers I suppose it might be easier.

Would someone please give me some ideas?
Thanks!

2

To me, it looks more like a list of values than a CSV object where headers would be appropriate. However, if you know what headers should be associated with those values, then you can use ConvertFrom-Csv:

$object = $output | ConvertFrom-Csv -Header Field1,Field2,Field3

If it’s just a list, then you can split it on the commas and remove the quotation marks to get a string array:

$array = $output -split '\s*,\s*' -replace '^"|"$'
3

You can try something like

$newoutput = ConvertFrom-Csv -InputObject $output -Header "header1","header2","header3"

you beat me :wink:

4

Thanks Both!
Dave’s worked because it listed the 30 or so values into a list. The last part of this is to export it to an html file… I just tried to pipe to format-list then convertto-html but the values show up as Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.RawTextFormatEntry.

Can you explain the current format after I execute the $array = $output -split ‘\s*,\s*’ -replace ‘^“|”$’ … What is convertto-html expecting?

Thanks!

5

Don’t use Format-List here; just pipe objects straight to ConvertTo-Html. In this case, you probably need to construct objects out of your strings, as well, or you will probably get weird results:

$array | ForEach-Object { [pscustomobject] @{ Value = $_ } } | ConvertTo-Html
6

Perfect!
I also sorted it using select-object * like this:

$array | ForEach-Object { [pscustomobject] @{ Value = $_ } } | Sort-Object * | ConvertTo-Html | out-file c:\scripts\output.output.html

Thanks! You saved me hours of work!