Write to CSV (manually)

PowerShell Help
1

Hi Folks,

Maybe I’m stuck in my vbScript way of thinking but I can’t figure out a way to write a comma separated list of variables when one of variables is an array.

I’ve a couple of nested For loops in my script so I’ve tried to keep this simple and posted just a snippet from my code. The script identifies a collection of AD Groups and then enumerates their members.

            $arrRecord."groupName" = $securityGroup
            $arrRecord."groupMembers" = $samAccountName

            forEach ($element in $arrRecord){
                       Write-Host $element.groupName $element.groupMembers

This return the groupname username1 username2

For example . . .

Dept_Networks&IT JSMITH
Dept_HR LJONES MJACKSON

How can I write a comma between each value? I could cheat and do a find/replace after I gather the output but given how simple this would have been in vbScript I’m sure I’m missing a trick.

Thanks,

Michael

2

Are you wanting a comma between the group name and the group members like this

Dept_HR, LJONES MJACKSON

Or between the individual group members like this

Dept_HR LJONES, MJACKSON

Or between all the elements like this?

Dept_HR, LJONES, MJACKSON
3

Here is an example of doing it all three ways using the -join operator

$arrRecord = [pscustomobject]@{
    groupName = "Dept_HR";
    groupMembers = @("LJONES", "MJACKSON")
}

#$arrRecord

@($arrRecord.groupName, ($arrRecord.groupMembers -join " ")) -join ","
@($arrRecord.groupName, ($arrRecord.groupMembers -join ",")) -join " "
@($arrRecord.groupName, ($arrRecord.groupMembers -join ",")) -join ","

Results:

Dept_HR,LJONES MJACKSON
Dept_HR LJONES,MJACKSON
Dept_HR,LJONES,MJACKSON
4

You’re missing some fundamentals of Powershell. Let’s walk through you scenario. When you want to get the members of single group, we do something like this:

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity HelpDesk

This returns data in a PSObject, which is typically what cmdlets return in Powershell. If we wanted to send this data to a CSV, we could simply do:

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity HelpDesk | Export-CSV C:\mycsv.csv -NoTypeInformation

If we only wanted the Name and SamAccountName properties, we use Select-Object:

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity HelpDesk |
Select Name, SamAccountName | 
Export-CSV C:\mycsv.csv -NoTypeInformation

Now, from what you are posting, it sounds like you have an array of groups and are gathering the members.

#Array of groups
$groups = "HelpDesk", "DesktopSupport"

#Assign a variable to capture everything from our for loop
#Loop through each group
$results = foreach ($group in $groups) {
    #Pass the group variable to the Get-AdGroupMember
    Get-ADGroupMember -Identity $group |
    Select Name,
              SamAccountName,
              @{Name="GroupName"; Expression={$group}}
    #The last property is a calculated property, it's one method of appending to a new property to an existing property
}

#Export the results to a CSV
$results | Export-CSV C:\mycsv.csv -NoTypeInformation

I would recommend getting a Powershell book and getting some fundamentals down. There is a great deal of built-in functionality for working with data in Powershell whereas vbScript everything has to be done manually.

5

Thanks Gents,

Curtis, your solution worked. I just had to edit one line in my original script.

Rob, the flow of logic in your script was much superior to mine so I ditched my script.

Thanks,

Michael