How can you order columns in HTML output when using ConvertTo-HTML in Powershell?

Question

I use ConvertTo-HTML to convert a list of objects into a table. The only problem is that I cannot define the order of the columns in that table. I want a specific property (hostname) for all of the objects to be the first column in the table. Is there any way to do this?

Example Code:

function Create-MyObject {
    param(
        $name
    )

    $object = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{
        "Name" = $name
        "Prop1" = Get-Property1 $name
        "Prop2" = Get-Property2 $name
        "Prop3" = Get-Property3 $name
    }

    return $object
}

$myarray = @()

foreach($value in $list)
{
    $myarray += Create-MyObject -name $value
}

Add-Content -Value $(ConvertTo-HTML $myarray | Out-String) -Path "C:\Temp\output.html"

Answer 1

Here is one solution that modifies the function to create the object from an ordered hash table so that the order is maintained. This requires V3 or better.

function Create-MyObject {
    param(
        $name
    )

    $object = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property [ordered]@{
        "Name" = $name
        "Prop1" = Get-Property1 $name
        "Prop2" = Get-Property2 $name
        "Prop3" = Get-Property3 $name
    }

    return $object
}

 $myarray = @()

    foreach($value in $list)
    {
        $myarray += Create-MyObject -name $value
    }

Add-Content -Value $(ConvertTo-HTML $myarray | Out-String) -Path "C:\Temp\output.html"

Heres's another solution using Select-Object in the main script to reorder the properties before it's converted. This will work on V2 or better:

$myarray = @()

foreach($value in $list)
{
    $myarray += Create-MyObject -name $value
}

Add-Content -Value $(ConvertTo-HTML $myarray | Out-String) -Path "C:\Temp\output.html"



function Create-MyObject {
    param(
        $name
    )

    $object = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{
        "Name" = $name
        "Prop1" = Get-Property1 $name
        "Prop2" = Get-Property2 $name
        "Prop3" = Get-Property3 $name
    }

    return $object
}

$myarray = @()

foreach($value in $list)
{
    $myarray += Create-MyObject -name $value
}

$myarray = $myarray | select Name,Prop1,Prop2,Prop3

Add-Content -Value $(ConvertTo-HTML $myarray | Out-String) -Path "C:\Temp\output.html"