Formatting powershell SQL Server output into columns and rows

Question

I\'m a beginner with Powershell trying to query a SQL Server database and output the csv in a file organised rows and columns. I can partially achieve this with the following co

Answer 1

Export-Csv expects the input to be objects. String input is considered as string objects, which have just one property (Length), so only this property is exported. If your input is an array of strings, you need to make it into an object, e.g. like this:

$array = "foo", "bar", "baz"

New-Object -Type PSCustomObject -Property @{
  "a" = $array[0]
  "b" = $array[1]
  "c" = $array[2]
} | Export-Csv output.csv -NoTypeInformation

The above would create a file output.csv with the following content:

"c","a","b"
"baz","foo","bar"

The property names (a, b, c) are become the CSV headers, the property values (foo, bar, baz) become the CSV values.

If your SQL query generates a list of arrays, you'll probably have to do something like this:

Invoke-Sqlcmd ... | % {
  New-Object -Type PSCustomObject -Property @{
    "col1" = $_[0]
    "col2" = $_[1]
    "col3" = $_[2]
  }
} | Export-Csv output.csv -NoTypeInformation

I don't have an SQL server at hand, though, so take with a grain of salt.

Answer 2

I think what you are looking for is the -NoTypeInformation switch.

$results | export.csv $FilePathOfCSV -NoTypeInformation

-NoTypeInformation is a switch that omits type information from the outputted CSV file. The first line of the CSV contains the type followed by the full name of the .NET framework object it is using.

That should give you a structured CSV output.

Hope it works!