Convert between PowerShell and JSON

New Post: Question on the ps1 files

WebDevHobo — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:47:06 GMT

That site is now in my Google Reader. Awesome stuff.

TBH, never worked with WPF before. When I said "to see if I still know how C# works", I meant that it's been summer vacation. Back to college now :P

New Post: Question on the ps1 files

dfinke — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:24:12 GMT

http://dougfinke.com/blog/index.php/2009/09/02/how-to-host-powershell-in-a-wpf-application/

New Post: Question on the ps1 files

WebDevHobo — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:03:45 GMT

Sadly not, what you see are 2 textarea's.

Enter JSON on the left, hit transform and the Powershell code shows up on the right.

I made this up real quick with VS2008.

Hosting Powershell inside the winform? To be honest, I would have never even considered such a thing to be possible.

New Post: Question on the ps1 files

dfinke — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:09:32 GMT

Nice. Are you hosting PowerShell in the Winform app?

New Post: Question on the ps1 files

WebDevHobo — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:57:04 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply.

By the way, I downloaded the source files and made a small app to test if I still know how C# works :P

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu91/Vordreller/JSON-Powershell.png

Insert JSON left, get Powershell right. Pretty fun.

New Post: Question on the ps1 files

dfinke — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:43:42 GMT

Great question. I wrote the two many months apart.

My need for ConvertFrom did not require me to pipe data into it.

When I built ConvertTo it was more natural to pipe the data so I used Filter.

hth

Doug

New Post: Question on the ps1 files

WebDevHobo — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:52:45 GMT

I'm pretty new to Powershell, but I'm gonna ask anyway: the ConvertFrom file declares itself a function, while the ConvertTo file declares itself a filter. Why are they not both filters or functions?

Updated Wiki: Home

dfinke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:44:38 GMT

Examples

ConvertFrom-JSON

PS C:\> '[{"title":"PowerShell"},{"title":"Test"}]' | ConvertFrom-JSON

title
-----
PowerShell
Test

ConvertTo-JSON

(New-Object PSObject |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Name 'John Doe' |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Age 10          |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Amount 10.1     |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty MixedItems (1,2,3,"a") |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty NumericItems (1,2,3) |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty StringItems ("a","b","c")
) | ConvertTo-JSON

Generated JSON

{
  "Age": 10,
  "Amount": 10.1,
  "MixedItems": [1,2,3,"a"],
  "Name": "John Doe",
  "NumericItems": [1,2,3],
  "StringItems": ["a","b","c"] 
}

Updated Wiki: Home

dfinke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:43:53 GMT

Examples

ConvertFrom-JSON

PS C:\> '[{"title":"PowerShell"},{"title":"Test"}]' | ConvertFrom-JSON

title
-----
PowerShell
Test

ConvertTo-JSON

(New-Object PSObject |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Name 'John Doe' |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Age 10          |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Amount 10.1     |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty MixedItems (1,2,3,"a") |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty NumericItems (1,2,3) |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty StringItems ("a","b","c")
) | ConvertTo-JSON

Generated JSON

{
  "Age": 10,
  "Amount": 10.1,
  "MixedItems": [1,2,3,"a"],
  "Name": "John Doe",
  "NumericItems": [1,2,3],
  "StringItems": ["a","b","c"] 
}

The Script

Place the script in a directory which is in your path

Managed DLL

The managed code stand alone version needs to load the dll with [reflection.assembly]::LoadFrom("") for each session

[void] [reflection.assembly]::loadfrom("$pwd\bin\debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll")

The SnapIn

The snapin needs to be registered. This is only required once.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\InstallUtil.exe $pwd\bin\Debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll

But the snapin must be added each session.

Add-PSSnapin ConvertFromJSONSnapIn

This can be simplfied by using the Export-Console Cmdlet.

Export-Console ConvertFromJSON

Performance

The PowerShell script is the slowest but easiest to modify.
The managed code requires re-compiliation.

Updated Wiki: Home

dfinke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:37:08 GMT

Project Description

PowerShell objects from JSON data. A script, dll and snapin for deserializing JSON data into PowerShell objects.
This project contains three approaches to deserializing JSON formatted data into PowerShell Objects.

A PowerShell script
The PowerShell script converted to C# and compiled as a managed DLL
The managed DLL implemented as a PowerShell SnapIn

Examples

ConvertFrom-JSON

PS C:\> '[{"title":"PowerShell"},{"title":"Test"}]' | ConvertFrom-JSON

title
-----
PowerShell
Test

ConvertTo-JSON

(New-Object PSObject |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Name 'John Doe' |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Age 10          |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty Amount 10.1     |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty MixedItems (1,2,3,"a") |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty NumericItems (1,2,3) |
   Add-Member -PassThru NoteProperty StringItems ("a","b","c")
) | ConvertTo-JSON

Generated JSON

{
  "Age": 10,
  "Amount": 10.1,
  "MixedItems": [1,2,3,"a"],
  "Name": "John Doe",
  "NumericItems": [1,2,3],
  "StringItems": ["a","b","c"] 
}

The Script

Place the script in a directory which is in your path

Managed DLL

The managed code stand alone version needs to load the dll with [reflection.assembly]::LoadFrom("") for each session

[void] [reflection.assembly]::loadfrom("$pwd\bin\debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll")

The SnapIn

The snapin needs to be registered. This is only required once.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\InstallUtil.exe $pwd\bin\Debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll

But the snapin must be added each session.

Add-PSSnapin ConvertFromJSONSnapIn

This can be simplfied by using the Export-Console Cmdlet.

Export-Console ConvertFromJSON

Performance

The PowerShell script is the slowest but easiest to modify.
The managed code requires re-compiliation.

Updated Wiki: Home

dfinke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:31:29 GMT

Project Description

A PowerShell script
The PowerShell script converted to C# and compiled as a managed DLL
The managed DLL implemented as a PowerShell SnapIn

Examples

ConvertFrom-JSON

PS C:\> '[{"title":"PowerShell"},{"title":"Test"}]' | ConvertFrom-JSON

title
-----
PowerShell
Test

The Script

Place the script in a directory which is in your path

Managed DLL

The managed code stand alone version needs to load the dll with [reflection.assembly]::LoadFrom("") for each session

[void] [reflection.assembly]::loadfrom("$pwd\bin\debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll")

The SnapIn

The snapin needs to be registered. This is only required once.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\InstallUtil.exe $pwd\bin\Debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll

But the snapin must be added each session.

Add-PSSnapin ConvertFromJSONSnapIn

This can be simplfied by using the Export-Console Cmdlet.

Export-Console ConvertFromJSON

Performance

The PowerShell script is the slowest but easiest to modify.
The managed code requires re-compiliation.

Updated Wiki: Home

dfinke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:29:53 GMT

Project Description

A PowerShell script
The PowerShell script converted to C# and compiled as a managed DLL
The managed DLL implemented as a PowerShell SnapIn

The Script

Place the script in a directory which is in your path

Managed DLL

The managed code stand alone version needs to load the dll with [reflection.assembly]::LoadFrom("") for each session

[void] [reflection.assembly]::loadfrom("$pwd\bin\debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll")

The SnapIn

The snapin needs to be registered. This is only required once.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\InstallUtil.exe $pwd\bin\Debug\PowerShellJSONParser.dll

But the snapin must be added each session.

Add-PSSnapin ConvertFromJSONSnapIn

This can be simplfied by using the Export-Console Cmdlet.

Export-Console ConvertFromJSON

Performance

The PowerShell script is the slowest but easiest to modify.
The managed code requires re-compiliation.

Examples

The examples are the same for each implementation.

PS C:\> '[{"title":"PowerShell"},{"title":"Test"}]' | Convert-FromJSON

title
-----
PowerShell
Test

Source code checked in, #36048

dfinke — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:14:02 GMT

Source code checked in, #35750

dfinke — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:59:42 GMT

New Post: Why not create the object?

dfinke — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:19:47 GMT

Thanks for the suggestions. I checked in the changes.

IIRC my rationale for generating the new objects only was because to turn it into running objects I would only need to pipe it to ' | Invoke-Expression'.

In my private testing I was saving the text output of the ConvertFrom-JSON to a file or passing it to other scripts.

The changes are checked in and there is a [switch]$raw argument.

By default the objects are invoked. Pass in -raw and you get the the text.

Source code checked in, #35577

dfinke — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:06:54 GMT

Quick test of ConvertFrom-JSON

Source code checked in, #35576

dfinke — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:06:06 GMT

Renamed to use standard PowerShell conventions. Changed default return to do an Invoke-Expression of the PowerShell objects from the converted JSON. Added [switch]$raw so

Source code checked in, #35575

dfinke — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:03:59 GMT

Renamed to ConvertFrom-JSON

New Post: Why not create the object?

dfinke — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:57:13 GMT

Good question. That was two years ago. I was just getting my feet under me with PoSh.

I will have a look.

New Post: Why not create the object?

halr9000 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:05:02 GMT

Why does the script only produce the text commands needed to make the new objects? Why not go aehad with that last step? Just seemed an odd choice to me, and trivial to change.