Question

Currently, I’m building several arrays in Powershell, but to make the code more portable, I’d like to use XML files as a simpler (read more foolproof) way of managing how each array serves its purpose.

Array 1 is a master list of information – containing a rownumber, Name, retention, and Type. I would like for the XML to look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ZipList>
    <Backup RowID="1">
        <RowNbr>1</RowNbr>
        <NameType>TargetBackup</NameType>
        <Retention>10</Retention>
        <FileType>Folder</FileType>
    </Backup>
    <Backup RowID="2">
        <RowNbr>2</RowNbr>
        <NameType>SourceBackup</NameType>
        <Retention>7</Retention>
        <FileType>Folder</FileType>
    </Backup>
    <Backup RowID="3">
        <RowNbr>3</RowNbr>
        <NameType>XMLBackup</NameType>
        <Retention>21</Retention>
        <FileType>File</FileType>
    </Backup>
</ZipList>

The array I currently build I use to loop thru it later on, and to build hash tables from as well. So, I don’t really want to re-engineer the rest of the powershell script.

However, since it’s easier to make changes to an XML file (as opposed to changing the array inside the script), all I want to do is to duplicate this array in an XML file that would be a little more straightforward & self-documenting to make changes to, read this xml file in and then store it in the array I’m currently creating.

I can get the xml file read in, but I’m having trouble getting the xml data into an array. For the above XML example, the array would look like this:

counter ++
arr1 += ,@(counter,1,"TargetBackup",10,"Folder")
counter ++
arr1 += ,@(counter,2,"SourceBackup",7,"Folder")
counter ++
arr1 += ,@(counter,3,"XMLBackup",21,"File")

and so on….

The issue I am having is that the xml data is in, but it’s a string that I can’t do anything with other than grab it all at once. Any help, suggestions appreciated.

Answer 1

Why not just export that array as clixml. Then its portable, and when you want to use it in your script, just re-import it and you have your array back.