Question

Is it possible to have custom datatype in powershell?

I would like to have a (structured) variable like below. Following thing is not syntactically correct.I just want to club following three variables.

Variable Databasedetails {
   string  DatabaseName
   string  TableName
   string[] columnNames 
}

If Powershell has provision to do it then i can have single variable array which can help me to write queries easily.

$Databasedetails = { "DataBaseName=DB-someX","TableName=TableX"," (ColumnNames={"Col1","col2"}" 
                    "DataBaseName=DB-someY","TableName=TableY"," (ColumnNames={"Col2","colN"}"
                  }

Foreach ($DBdetails in $DataBaseDetails)
  {
      $query= "SELECT [$DBdetails.$columnName] FROM [$DBdetails$DatabaseName].[dbo].[$DBdetails.$TableName]"
      invoke-sqlcmd -query $query -ServerInstance $srvInstance"
  }

Is there any way to create structured variable and i can create array of that and process?

Answer 1

You will want to look into either Add-Member or Add-Type, the later being only in Powershell 2.0.

$details = New-Object PsObject
             | Add-Member NoteProperty DatabaseName '' -pass 
             | Add-Member NoteProperty TableName '' -pass
             | Add-Member NoteProperty ColumnNames @() -pass

or with Add-Type

Add-Type 'public class DatabaseDetails { public string DatabaseName; public string TableName; public string[] ColumnNames; }' -Language CSharp

$details = New-Object DatabaseDetails