CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
Jake
Jake

Reputation: 1781

Can a function process multiple custom objects without using a pipeline?

I'll use Test-Path as the example here.

You can pass the array as parameters to the function:

Test-Path 'C:\', 'G:\

Or they can be piped:

'C:\', 'G:\ | Test-Path

Now this is simple enough as it's just an array of strings.

But what if I wanted to do that with objects?

Again, I'm skimping on the details here. But I have a function that has 3 arguments:

  1. String (required)
  2. String (optional)
  3. Switch (optional)

If I'm calling the function with only one object. All of these invocations are valid.

My-Function -RequiredString 'requiredstring' -OptionalString 'optionalstring' -MySwitch
My-Function -RequiredString 'requiredstring'
My-Function -RequiredString 'requiredstring' -MySwitch

If I want to process multiple objects at once. I do something like this:

$objs = @(
    (New-Object PSObject -Property @{ RequiredString='requiredstring'; OptionalString='optionalstring'; MySwitch=$true} ),
    (New-Object PSObject -Property @{ RequiredString='requiredstring'} ),
    (New-Object PSObject -Property @{ RequiredString='requiredstring'; MySwitch=$true} )
)

$objs | My-Function

Is there any way that I can call the function to process multiple objects without using a pipeline?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 70

Answers (1)

mjolinor
mjolinor

Reputation: 68331

No.

If you want to pass an array of objects to the function, the function will need to be re-written to expect and iterate through the array.

The pipeline is doing that for you, by "unrolling" the array and passing one object at a time to the function. If you want to pass the array as a parameter, then that unrolling/iteration will need to be done inside the function.

Upvotes: 1

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