Change property name when converting Powershell object to JSON using ConvertTo-Json?

Question

I have a dataset consisting of a two-dimensional array (flexData[5][2]). I have this defined in my Powershell script as follows:

class flexData {
    [DateTime]$dateTime
    [string]$firmwareVersion
    [string[][]]$flexData
}
$flexObj = [flexData]@{dateTime = $(Get-Date); firmwareVersion = 'u031C'; flexData = @(@(0, 1), @(320, 17), @(45, 36), @(0, 0))}

The problem with this is that the output object that ConvertTo-Json spits out is hard to read:

{
  "dateTime": "2021-10-11T13:58:25.0937842+02:00",
  "firmwareVersion": "u031C",
  "flexData": [
    [
      "0",
      "1"
    ],
    [
      "320",
      "17"
    ],
    [
      "45",
      "36"
    ],
    [
      "0",
      "0"
    ]
  ]
}

Is there a way to instead of using a single key name and two-dimensional arrays, to instead convert this to flexData0, flexData1 ... flexData4 and keep my actual data as single-dimensional arrays? I could obviously do this by manually defining my class as:

class flexData {
    [DateTime]$dateTime
    [string]$firmwareVersion
    [string[]]$flexData0
    [string[]]$flexData1
    [string[]]$flexData2
    [string[]]$flexData3
    [string[]]$flexData4
}

But is there a smarter way of doing this? Especially since I would also like to make a third-dimension of my array to store multiple iterations of flexData?

"the output object that ConvertTo-Json spits out is hard to read" - is that important? I assume you convert it to JSON because you want another computer/program to read it later - and computers don't care about how aesthetically pleasing the serialization format is :) — Mathias R. Jessen
– Mathias R. Jessen, Commented Oct 11, 2021 at 12:13
Indeed, perhaps I should have phrased it better. Of course this will be used elsewhere in order to visualize the data and the format will not be a problem. However, if I could implement the functionality of separating a property into multiple simpler properties, it would drastically increase human-readability which is a great thing to have. — martorad
– martorad, Commented Oct 11, 2021 at 12:15

Mathias R. Jessen · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-11 12:22:09Z

2

You could add a constructor to your flexData class that creates an object from the top-level array instead:

class flexData {
    [DateTime]$dateTime
    [string]$firmwareVersion
    [psobject]$flexData

    flexData([DateTime]$dateTime, [string]$firmwareVersion, [string[][]]$flexData){
        $this.dateTime = $dateTime
        $this.firmwareVersion = $firmwareVersion

        # Create object from nested array
        $dataProperties = [ordered]@{}
        for($i = 0; $i -lt $flexData.Length; $i++){
            $dataProperties["$i"] = $flexData[$i]
        }
        $this.flexData = [pscustomobject]$dataProperties
    }
}

Now, the individual outer array items will be listed as properties named 0 through (N-1):

PS ~> $data = [flexData]::new($(Get-Date), 'u031C', @(@(0, 1), @(320, 17), @(45, 36), @(0, 0)))
PS ~> $data |ConvertTo-Json
{
  "dateTime": "2021-10-11T14:21:48.4026882+02:00",
  "firmwareVersion": "u031C",
  "flexData": {
    "0": [
      "0",
      "1"
    ],
    "1": [
      "320",
      "17"
    ],
    "2": [
      "45",
      "36"
    ],
    "3": [
      "0",
      "0"
    ]
  }
}

answered Oct 11, 2021 at 12:22

Mathias R. Jessen

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1 Comment

martorad Over a year ago

This works great! I've also used a switch-case for the values of $i in order to get custom sub-object names. Thank you! :)

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