Powershell CSV Variable to Out-GridView

Question

This is driving me nuts. I want to save CSV text to a string variable - NOT a file! I want to then output that (CSV) text to the Out-GridView using the commas as column separators.

How do I do this? I have looked high and low, and I can find nothing - NOTHING - on how to do this without saving the text to CSV file first then importing it using Import-Csv. I don't want to save a file, I just want to display my CSV formatted multiline string object (with NewLine characters) in the Out-GridView.

Any clues?

Example:

$rows += "COL1,COL2,COL3`n"    # CSV header row AS TEXT
$rows += "val1,val2,val3`n"    # CSV data row AS TEXT

$rows | Out-GridView           # does not work! No columns :( - just a single column per row

Santiago Squarzon · Answer 1 · 2022-10-27T17:05:33.280

3

Pipe $rows to ConvertFrom-Csv:

$rows += "COL1,COL2,COL3`n"
$rows += "val1,val2,val3`n"
$rows | ConvertFrom-Csv | Out-GridView

What you would normally want to do when creating a objects from a embebed CSV structured string instead of += is to use Here-Strings:

@'
COL1,COL2,COL3
val1,val2,val3
'@ | ConvertFrom-Csv | Out-GridView

edited Oct 27 '22 at 17:05

answered Dec 02 '21 at 02:48

Santiago Squarzon

41,465
5
14
37

Here-Strings example is not useful for looping. CSV is created using a loop. – digitalbunny Dec 02 '21 at 03:04
2

@digitalbunny if you're using a loop to generate a CSV then you mind as well cast a `[pscustomobject]` and by doing so you wouldn't need to use `ConvertFrom-Csv`. – Santiago Squarzon Dec 02 '21 at 03:07

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 02 '21 at 02:48

0

Use this:

$rows += "COL1,COL2,COL3`n"
$rows += "val1,val2,val3`n"

$csv = $rows | ConvertTo-Csv -Delimiter ","
$csv | Out-GridView

Et viola!

answered Dec 02 '21 at 02:48

skeetastax

1,016
8
18

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 20 '23 at 12:31

0

this post is a quite old, but I'm facing the same need, so I found a way by using a Class:

    Class MyRow
{
  [string] $col1
  [string] $col2
  [string] $col3
}
MyList = new-object System.collections.arraylist


$Currentrow = new-object MyRow
$currentrow.Col1 ="Col1"
$currentrow.Col2 ="Col2"
$currentrow.Col3 ="Col3"
Mylist.add($currentrow)


Mylist | out-gridview

answered Jul 20 '23 at 12:31

Philippe

1
1

Thank you for contributing to the Stack Overflow community. This may be a correct answer, but it’d be really useful to provide additional explanation of your code so developers can understand your reasoning. This is especially useful for new developers who aren’t as familiar with the syntax or struggling to understand the concepts. **Would you kindly [edit] your answer to include additional details for the benefit of the community?** – Jeremy Caney Jul 27 '23 at 00:25

Powershell CSV Variable to Out-GridView

3 Answers3