How to combine and rename properties of arrays in powershell? - arrays

Question

I am pulling data from an API that ConnectWise offers. I am trying to pull a list of usernames and password and put them in to a format which I can either reference in another script (or combiner with this one), or that I can export to a CSV. I'd prefer the first if possible.
The code:
Function Get-CWConfiguration
{
[string]$BaseUri = "$CWServerRoot"
[string]$Accept = "application/vnd.connectwise.com+json; version=v2015_3"
[string]$ContentType = "application/json"
[string]$Authstring = $CWInfo + '+' + $CWCredentials1 + ':' + $CWCredentials2
$encodedAuth = [Convert]::ToBase64String([Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(($Authstring)));
$Headers=#{"Authorization"="Basic $encodedAuth"}
Invoke-RestMethod -URI $BaseURI -Headers $Headers -ContentType $ContentType -Method Get
}
$username = (Get-CWConfiguration).questions | Where-Object {($_.questionid -eq 419)} | Sort-Object -Property questionid | select answer
$password = (Get-CWConfiguration).questions | Where-Object {($_.questionid -eq 420)} | Sort-Object -Property questionid | select answer
Everything above the $username variable is the stuff connecting to the API and I did not modify that. The code below is the best way I found to pull the info that I need. This is returning each variable as an array, which is fine but if that happens I need to have an array with 2 columns. 1 named Username and the other named Password. if I do a $username | Get-Member it returns:
Name MemberType Definition
---- ---------- ----------
Equals Method bool Equals(System.Object obj)
GetHashCode Method int GetHashCode()
GetType Method type GetType()
ToString Method string ToString()
answer NoteProperty string answer=admin#admin.com
My end goal is to have a variable like $credentials output something that displays like:
Username Password
-------- ----------
admin1#admin.com Password1
admin2#admin.com Password2
admin3#admin.com Password3
Most methods I have tried have resulted in everything put output to 1 line or 1 column. I'm not sure if I should be combining the arrays and renaming the $username.answer and $password.answer fields or creating a PSObject? My main difficulty has been that both variables have that same answer NoteProperty

Answer 1

You'd want to create new objects with the expanded properties of the current objects. This could all look something like this (note that I'm manually creating analogs for what you're all dealing with and ignoring the string manipulation you'll likely have to do)
$Username = New-Object -TypeName pscustomobject -Property #{Answer = "Answer:Hithisispatrick"}
$Password = New-Object -TypeName pscustomobject -Property #{Answer = "Answer:HelloThisisSquidward"}
$UsernameAnswer = $Username | Select -ExpandProperty Answer
$PasswordAnswer = $Password | Select -ExpandProperty Answer
$Final = New-Object -TypeName pscustomobject -Property #{UserName= $UsernameAnswer ; Password = $PAsswordAnswer}
This should give you output something like this:
UserName Password
-------- --------
Answer:Hithisispatrick Answer:HelloThisisSquidward
Then if you want to parameterize it/Expand it, you should be able then to toss it in to a foreach loop and have it output the Custom Object, setting that equal to an array that then builds out of those objects, like so(I'll use while to make it simpler to show):
$Count = 0
$Username = New-Object -TypeName pscustomobject -Property #{Answer = "Answer:Hithisispatrick"}
$Password = New-Object -TypeName pscustomobject -Property #{Answer = "Answer:HelloThisisSquidward"}
$Array = While ($Count -lt 5){
$UsernameAnswer = $Username | Select -ExpandProperty Answer
$PAsswordAnswer = $Password | Select -ExpandProperty Answer
$Final = New-Object -TypeName pscustomobject -Property #{UserName= $UsernameAnswer ; Password = $PAsswordAnswer}
$Final
$Count += 1
}
$Array
This produces something like this:
Password UserName
-------- --------
Answer:HelloThisisSquidward Answer:Hithisispatrick
Answer:HelloThisisSquidward Answer:Hithisispatrick
Answer:HelloThisisSquidward Answer:Hithisispatrick
Answer:HelloThisisSquidward Answer:Hithisispatrick
Answer:HelloThisisSquidward Answer:Hithisispatrick