Use child-item result object in array - arrays

I encountered a problem in PowerShell in listing its child items.
$file = Get-ChildItem \\compname\c$\folder\ -Recurse -Filter *filename.txt* |
Select-Object -Property DirectoryName, FullName
When I try this to get its objects it was empty:
$file.FullName
or
$file.DirectoryName
If there is a many files in that directory with the same file name, how can I backup up those files in the same folder by by adding .bak on its file extension.

You're still using PowerShell v2 or earlier. These early versions don't support member enumeration on arrays, which would allow you to access properties of array elements via the array object itself. Instead you get an empty result, because the array object does not have a property DirectoryName or FullName.
If you can't upgrade to at least PowerShell v3 you can work around this issue with a loop:
$file | ForEach-Object { $_.FullName }
or by expanding the property:
$file | Select-Object -Expand FullName

Related

Trying to output a custom powershell object where I can align each line of two different variables containing Category:Description

I'm trying to do an network access control audit by grabbing a user's AD groups, their descriptions and then output them in a way shown by this example:
[User]
#[1]Groups : #[1]GroupDescription
#[2]...
#[3]...
Below is what I have at the moment.
$UserGroups = #{
User = Read-Host -Prompt "What user do You want to look up Access for?"
Groups = (Get-ADUser $User -Properties MemberOf).MemberOf
GroupsDescriptions = (Get-ADUser $User -Properties MemberOf).MemberOf | % {(Get-ADGroup $_ -Properties *).description}
}
$Object = New-Object psobject -Property $UserGroups
$Object | format-table | Export-Csv c:\tmp\test.csv
Though the output is very strange. I don't understand it. Below is a result of Get-Content C:tmp\test.csv
#TYPE Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.FormatStartData
"ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd","pageHeaderEntry","pageFooterEntry","autosizeInfo","shapeInfo","groupingEntry"
"033ecb2bc07a4d43b5ef94ed5a35d280",,,,"Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.TableHeaderInfo",
"9e210fe47d09416682b841769c78b8a3",,,,,
"27c87ef9bbda4f709f6b4002fa4af63c",,,,,
"4ec4f0187cb04f4cb6973460dfe252df",,,,,
"cf522b78d86c486691226b40aa69e95c",,,,,
I have tried outputting to a .txt file using Out-file, but I always get each property cut off with a ... at the end. I've used the -Autosize and -Expand when formatting the data before piping it to the export line.
Any Suggestions or advice would be extremely helpful.
Things I'll be Looking at later
Go through each line in PowerShell object and extract variables
Powershell & ActiveDirectory - trying to output users in a group and their membership
Out-file crops my text when trying to output a table
Thanks!
As stated, only ever use Format-* cmdlets to produce for-display output, never for outputting data that must be processed programmatically later. What Format-Table outputs are objects representing formatting instructions, and it is their properties that ended up in your CSV file - see this answer for more information.
In order to include collections (arrays) in CSV output, you must convert them to a single string, using a self-chosen separator. Otherwise, Export-Csv simply calls .ToString() on the collection object itself, which yields the collection's type name, and no information about its elements.
Therefore, use something like the following, which uses ', ' as the separator string to represent the group names and descriptions in a single column each:
$UserGroups = [pscustomobject] #{
User = ($user = Read-Host -Prompt "What user do You want to look up Access for?")
Groups = ($groups = (Get-ADUser $User -Properties MemberOf).MemberOf) -join ', '
GroupsDescriptions = (
$groups | ForEach-Object { (Get-ADGroup $_ -Properties *).Description }
) -join ', '
}
$UserGroups | Export-Csv c:\tmp\test.csv
Note:
[pscustomobject] #{ ... } is used to directly construct a custom object, which is syntactic sugar available since PowerShell v3 that is simpler and more efficient than a New-Object call.
In order to use the result from your Read-Host call in later properties of your object definition, you must cache it in aux. variable $user (note that enclosing the assignment in (...) passes its value through.
Similarly, the result of the Get-ADUser call is cached in aux. variable $groups, so that it doesn't have to be repeated in the GroupsDescriptions value.
However, as zett42 points out, it may be cleaner to make the $user = ... and $groups = ... assignments separate statements and place them before the object construction.
The problem is that you pipe to Format-Table before you pipe to Export-Csv. Only use Format-Table for displaying things on screen. The fix is to just remove that.
$Object | Export-Csv c:\tmp\test.csv
Thanks to this post Here and mklement0. I was able to figure out the formatting portion of this problem.
Now I have the remaining code that exports it exactly as intended.
$user= Read-Host -Prompt "What user bonehead?"
$object = Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $user
$Table = $object | ForEach-Object {
[pscustomobject] #{
Groups = $_.Name
GroupDesc = (Get-ADGroup $_ -Properties *).Description
GroupOwner = (Get-ADGroup $_ -Properties *).Info
}
}
$Table | Export-csv -NoTypeInformation c:\tmp\test.csv
The -NoTypeInformation helps eliminate the header on the .csv files and the piped Group info through the ForEach-Object cmdlet helped insure every object had it's own row in excel.

How would I use an array with the contains operator

I have a CSV file and in that file are 2 columns (this is just for testing purposes before using actual files), I need to get all the data for the specific pets so Dog and Cat in this example.
I have put the animals I want the data for in an array but for some reason the statement is not working it just returns an empty file, when I use a string (so just "dog") in the place of the array then I get the data back fine. Is there anything i'm doing wrong
$Pets = "Dog", "Cat"
import-csv -Path "C:\Users\User\deletingRows.csv" | where Animal -Contains $Pets | export-csv -Path "C:\Users\User\Result.csv" -NoTypeInformation
I believe you're misunderstanding what -Contains is supposed to do. Since you're trying to match a field against more than one value (within $Pets), you're better of using the -In switch. See the working example below.
$Pets = "Dog", "Cat"
Import-Csv -Path "C:\Users\User\deletingRows.csv" | where "Animal" -In $Pets | Export-Csv -Path "C:\Users\User\Result.csv" -NoTypeInformation

Recursively delete folders where folder name contains a number

Good afternoon all,
I am attempting to delete folders at a specific location containing a number in the name, which can be any number in the array.
$fso = New-Object -com "Scripting.FileSystemObject"
$Versionarray = (13..20)
$folder =
$fso.GetFolder("$env:USERPROFILE\appdata\local\Microsoft\OneDrive")
foreach ($subfolder in $folder.SubFolders)
{
If ($subfolder.Name -match "$Versionarray")
{
remove-item $subfolder.Path -Verbose
}
}
Please see an example of the following folders it will sift through below:
18.172.0826.0010
18.172.0826.0010_2
18.172.0826.0015
18.172.0920.0015
18.172.0920.0015_1
logs
settings
setup
If I change the "VersionArray"array to the variable "18" instead, it will start to remove the folders. It doesn't appear to be going through each number of the array. I need it to be an array to future-proof the script as the number represents a version of OneDrive.
Thank you for looking over this.
Going from your initial idea to have a list of items that must be contained in the subfolder name, we can do a pipeline like this:
$Versionarray = 13..20
Get-ChildItem "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\OneDrive" -Recurse | Where-Object {
$item = $_
$item -is [System.IO.DirectoryInfo] -and (
$Versionarray | Where-Object { $item.Name.Contains($_) }
)
} | Remove-Item -WhatIf
Notes:
Get-ChildItem returns all subfolders and files in a folder. Drop -Recurse if you don't need that.
Where-Object filters any list of objects according to a condition. Any result other than 0, $false, $null, or the empty string/empty list will be considered $true. It's not necessary to actually return $true, as long as anything is returned at all.
$_ is the "current item" in the pipeline
$foo -is [Fully.Qualified.ClassName] checks if an object is of a certain class. In this case, we only want to look at System.IO.DirectoryInfo objects and ignore all files.
$Versionarray | Where-Object { $item.Name.Contains($_) } filters the $Versionarray down to those elements that are contained in the folder name. You could use .StartsWith() or any other method of .NET strings in its place.
Any object that "survives" the Where-Object filter is passed to Remove-Item
-WhatIf performs a dry-run, drop it when you're sure the right thing will happen.

ACL "fuzzy" comparision

I'm trying to compare ACLs on a folder with a reference set of ACLs, and then list any exceptions. The "fuzzy" part of the equation is that I want to be able to disregard any unknown SID. So creating a reference folder with the perms I want to test won't work to use Compare-Object between it and my test folder.
The underlying scenario is that I am cleaning up old user directories where the actual user account has been deleted (this is where the non-resolved SID comes in). By default, the folders include perms for Administrator and the like, which I don't care about. There are some folders, however, where another user has been granted explicit permissions, and I want to capture these. Unfortunately, there aren't any shortcuts I can use to check: e.g. -IsInherited or the like to exclude ACLs I don't care about.
Per the below, I can dump the ACLs out into an array
$acl = get-acl f:\user_folder
$access = $acl.Access | ForEach-Object { $_.identityReference.value }
$access
BUILTIN\Administrators
MYDOMAIN\JBLOGGS
S-1-5-21-4444444444-9999999-1111111111-74390
MYDOMAIN\Domain_Group ###Yes, the group has an underscore in the name
I can create another array of the users I want to ignore, including a partial string to match any unresolved SID.
$defaults = #("BUILTIN\Administrators","MYDOMAIN\DomainGroup","S-1-5-21")
So how do I compare my $defaults array with the $access array and output only the exceptions like "MYDOMAIN\JBLOGGS"?
I'm trying a foreach, but I'm stumped about grabbing that exception. The following still outputs the SID I want to avoid. I'm hoping to also avoid too many nested "IFs".
$access | ForEach { If ($defaults -notcontains $_) { Write-Output $_ } }
MYDOMAIN\JBLOGGS
S-1-5-21-4444444444-9999999-1111111111-74390 #Do not want!
If I put the wildcard $_* into the -notcontains, I get the whole contents of $access again.
I'd do something like this:
$defaults = 'BUILTIN\Administrators', 'MYDOMAIN\DomainGroup', 'S-1-5-21*'
$acl.Access | Where-Object {
$id = $_.IdentityReference
-not ($defaults | Where-Object { $_ -like $id })
} | Select-Object -Expand value
$defaults | Where-Object { $_ -like $id } does a wildcard match of the given identity against all items of $defaults. The wildcard * at the end of S-1-5-21* allows to match all strings starting with S-1-5-21. The negation -not inverts the result so that only identities not having a match in $defaults pass the filter.
give the users you want to ignore some right on a dummy folder, get the acl of that folder and then compare whith the acl of your actual folder
$genericACL = get-acl c:\temp\dummy
$folderacl = get-acl f:\user_folder
$exceptions= $folderacl.Access.identityreference.value |?{ ($_ -notin $genericACL.access.identityreference.value) -and ($_.strartswith('S-1-5-21') -eq $false)) }
In the end, it was fairly simple, thanks to the help above.
I managed to omit the fact in the original question where I required it to work in Powershell v2.
$defaults = #("BUILTIN\Administrators","MYDOMAIN\DomainGroup")
$acl = get-acl $folder
$access = $acl.Access | ForEach-Object { $_.identityReference.value }
# check that no other account still has access to the folder
$access | ForEach {
If ($defaultACL -notcontains $_ -and $_ -notlike 'S-1-5-21*') {
write-output "Extra perms:$user $_"
}

Powershell: How to dynamically build array or objects?

I would like to collect some information about hosts in the domain, so I am trying to write something like this:
# declare array for storing final data
$servers_list = #()
#start with a list of servers and go through collecting the info
$servers | ForEach-Object {
$sys = Get-WmiObject Win32_computersystem -ComputerName $_
# create new custom object to store information
$server_obj = New-Object –TypeName PSObject
$server_obj | Add-Member –MemberType NoteProperty –Name Domain –Value $sys.Domain
# .... add all other relevant info in the same manner
# Add server object to the array
$servers_list += $server_obj
}
The problem with this code is that I pass a reference to the object into array and not the actual object. So by the time my loop is finished I end up with an array that contains rows that look all the same :(
Any idea how to pass actual object into array and not just a reference to it?
Another thought is to dynamically declare new object instead of using $server_obj variable every time but I am not sure how to do this either...
Thanks!!!
You can build an array of objects and keep dynamically adding information to them like this:
#This will be your array of objects
#In which we will keep adding objects from each computer
$Result = #()
#start with a list of servers and go through collecting the info
$servers | ForEach-Object {
$sys = Get-WmiObject Win32_computersystem -ComputerName $_
# create new custom object to keep adding store information to it
$Result += New-Object –TypeName PSObject -Property #{Domain = $sys.Domain;
Name = $sys.Name;
SystemType = $sys.SystemType
}
}
# Get back the objects
$Result
Where Domain,Name and SystemType are the properties that you want to associate with the objects.
It sounds like it is passing a reference, but I don't think it's the object that's being passed as a reference, but the property values. There are discrete objects, but they all have the same reference for their property values, so they all look the same. If that's the case,
$server_obj | Add-Member –MemberType NoteProperty –Name Domain –Value "$($sys.Domain)"
should make the value a string, which is a value type and won't change.
You're making this a little harder than it should be. Pass the server names from a query, csv or list then iterate over them. Select what you want from the result.
$info = "server1", "server2" | ForEach-Object{Get-WmiObject -Class win32_computersystem -ComputerName $_ } | Select-Object Domain, Name, Systemtype
$info[1].Domain will output domain.com

Resources