Powershell pscustomobject format-table new row instead of one line

Question

I have a very large JSON response for employees that I am trying to get into table format, export to CSV and eventually insert into SQL Server. I was able to determine how to get all of my variables from the json file, however now I am getting all of my values inserted on one row for each column instead of a new row for each employee. Also, when I export to CSV the value turns into System.Object[].

$json1 = Invoke-webRequest -Uri $Workeruri -Certificate $cert -Headers $WorkerHeader | convertfrom-json

$table = [PSCustomObject] @{
 associateOID = $json1.workers.associateOID
 workerID = $json1.workers.workerID.idValue 
 GivenName = $json1.workers.person.legalName.givenName
 MiddleName = $json1.workers.person.legalName.middleName
 FamilyName1 = $json.workers.person.legalName.familyName1 

 } |format-table -autosize
 $table | export-csv $filepath -NoTypeInformation

The columns are a small sample, there are actually probably 100 columns. However, my response returns like this:

associateOID     workerID        givenName                                          
------------     --------        ---------                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
{1,2,3,4,5...}  {a,b,c,d,e...}   {Lebron James, Micheal Jordan, Steph Curry...}

I would like it to return:

associateOID     workerID        givenName                                          
------------     --------        --------- 
1                 A              Lebron James
2                 B              Micheal Jordan
3                 C              Steph Curry

Also, when exporting to CSV the response has the correct columns, but all columns return with: System.Object[]. Also, my fields that have ints and dates are not returning data. How can I fix that as well?

I have tried using sort-object, group-object, for-each loops. Nothing has worked.

Answer 1

you can try like this:

$json1 = Invoke-webRequest -Uri $Workeruri -Certificate $cert -Headers $WorkerHeader | ConvertFrom-Json

$table = $json1 | ForEach-Object {
    [PSCustomObject] @{
        associateOID = $_.workers.associateOID
        workerID = $_.workers.workerID.idValue 
        GivenName = $_.workers.person.legalName.givenName
        MiddleName = $_.workers.person.legalName.middleName
        FamilyName1 = $_.workers.person.legalName.familyName1
    }
}

$table | Export-Csv $filepath -NoTypeInformation

$table | Format-Table -AutoSize

Your snippet takes all the values for each column and stores them in a single object instead of iterating on the object collection converted from JSON.

Also, once you use Format-Table, data is formatted for display but not usable in the pipeline anymore. That's why I've separated display on screen and CSV export.