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Back to Basics: Comparing Property Values Between PS Custom Objects

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You have two PS custom objects. They contain the same property names. You want to compare the values of each of the properties, i.e. does the value of property 1 from PS custom object A match the value of property 1 from PS custom object B, does the value of property 2 from PS custom object A match the value of property 2 from PS custom object B, and so on?

As always, with PowerShell there's many ways to 'skin a cat' (achieve the same objective).

 

 
$a = [pscustomobject]@{

    test1 = "a"
    test2 = "b"
    test3 = "c"
    test4 = "d"
    test5 = "e"

}



$b = [pscustomobject]@{

    test1 = "a"
    test2 = "b"
    test3 = "z"
    test4 = "d"
    test5 = "bobo"
}



$a_props = $a.psobject.Properties.Name


foreach ($a_prop in $a_props) {

    
    $comp = Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $a -DifferenceObject $b -Property $a_prop -IncludeEqual 

    if ($comp.sideindicator -eq "==") {

        "$($comp.psobject.Properties.name[0]) - the same"
        
    } 
    else {
    
        "$($a_prop) - different"
            
    }

}

 

Man, that's a lot of code for one of my posts!

What's going on? Well, first up we create  two PS custom objects, both with the same property names, but with a slight variation in values.

Next, get a list of the property names from the first object.

Loop through these property names and perform Compare-Object using the current property name, comparing the respective values from PS custom object A and PS custom object B.

Output where we have a match and where we have a deviation.

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