Creating A PSCustomObject

Creating custom objects is the most efficient way to work with data from different sources. If you need to collect info on a virtual server in a vCenter, being able to combine data from AD and from VMware is useful for reports and updating asset management. 

Real world example coming: At a previous position, I setup a process to track metadata for virtual machines and write those values to attributes in the AD object for that server. Every VM in a vCenter would have several custom attributes (POC, system, role, etc). When those values got filled, the values would get copied to the AD computer object. It was a good way to track what VMs belonged to who, and abandoned AD objects would be easily identifiable. I also scanned the VM attributes once a week and sent out a shame email to POCs that had VM attributes that were empty.

I would also generate a report to track progress, and to do that I would need to pull data from AD and vCenter. Using the New-Object cmdlet to create a PSCustomObject, I would create properties for that object, and assign any values necessary. To work with multiple objects, create an array of that object and iterate through your list.

Run the code below to create a list of all items on the C: drive. This doesn't pull info from various sources, but it shows that a custom object can be created with the properties you need. Once the object is instantiated, you can pull data from any source.

#create the new object

$objTemplateObject = New-Object -TypeName psobject

#make some properties for it

$objTemplateObject | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name Name -Value $null

$objTemplateObject | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name CreatedDate -Value $null

$objTemplateObject | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name ModifiedDate -Value $null

#create a new dynamic array

$objList = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList

#create a list of files

foreach($file in $(Get-ChildItem -Path C:\. -Depth 1))

{

    #instantiate 1 of those objects

    $objTemp = $objTemplateObject | Select-Object *

    #add values to the properties

    $objTemp.Name = $file.Name

    $objTemp.CreatedDate = $file.CreationTime

    $objTemp.ModifiedDate = $file.LastWriteTime

    #add the object to an array

    $objList.Add($objTemp) | Out-Null

}

There are any number of ways to create an object, but this has been my go-to for years. Very reader friendly, so I keep that exact code in an examples folder and copy it out whenever I need it. Should probably put that in a snippet…