Replace placeholders with actual values in PowerShell dictionary

Question

Following is the sample xml file:

 
  
    Dev
    Arizona

        

Answer 1

In general, when posting an example with xml or csv data, it is helpful to use here strings to represent the data instead of referencing a file that others do not have.

Something like this can be used to achieve your result.

$xmldata = @"
<configuration>
    <environment id="Development">
    <type>Dev</type>
    <client>Arizona</client>
    <dataSource>Local</dataSource>
    <path>App_Data\%%type%%\%%client%%_%%dataSource%%</path>
    <targetmachines>
        <targetmachine>
        <name>Any</name>
        <remotedirectory>D:\Inetpub\Test</remotedirectory>
        </targetmachine>
    </targetmachines>
    </environment>
</configuration>
"@

[System.Xml.XmlDocument] $configxml = [xml]$xmldata
$environmentId = "Development"
$keyValuePairs = New-Object "System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary``2[System.String,System.String]"
$configxml.SelectNodes("//configuration/environment[@id='$($environmentId)']//*[not(*)]") | `
    ForEach-Object {
                    if($_.ParentNode.ToString() -ne "targetmachine")
                    {

                        $keyValuePairs.Add($_.Name, $_.InnerText)
                    }
                }

"BEFORE---->"
Write-Output $keyValuePairs

# A static way...
#$keyValuePairs.path = $keyValuePairs.path -replace '%%type%%', $keyValuePairs.type
#$keyValuePairs.path = $keyValuePairs.path -replace '%%client%%', $keyValuePairs.client
#$keyValuePairs.path = $keyValuePairs.path -replace '%%datasource%%', $keyValuePairs.datasource

# Something more dynamic
$m = [Regex]::Matches($keyValuePairs.path,"%%(.+?)%%*")
$m | % {
    $tag = $_.Groups[1].Value
    $keyValuePairs.path = $keyValuePairs.path -replace "%%$tag%%", $($keyValuePairs.$tag)
}

"AFTER---->"
Write-Output $keyValuePairs

Note, if you wanted something totally dynamic in nature, it can be done by getting all the placeholders by some other method, like a regex with capture, but that seemed unnecessary based on the problem statement.