Often you may want to check if an object has a specific property in PowerShell.
You can use the following methods to do so:
Method 1: Check if Object has Property (Return True or False)
$my_object.PSobject.Properties.Name -contains 'this_property'
This particular example checks if the object named $my_object contains the property named this_property and returns either True or False as a result.
Method 2: Check if Object has Property (Use with if Statement)
if($my_object| Get-Member this_property){
Write-Host 'Has Property'
}
This particular example checks if the object named $my_object contains the property named this_property and returns ‘Has Property’ if it does contain the property or else it returns nothing.
The following example shows how to use each of these methods in practice.
Example: How to Check if Object has Specific Property in PowerShell
For this example, we will create a variable named $host_info that holds the object produced by the Get-Host cmdlet, which contains information about the program hosting our PowerShell.
We can use the following syntax to create this variable and then view all of its properties:
$host_info = Get-Host
$host_info.psobject.Properties.Name
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Suppose that we would like to check if a property named UI exists in this object.
We can use the following syntax to do so:
$host_info.PSobject.Properties.Name -contains 'UI'
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
The object does contain the property named UI so it returns True as a result.
We can also use the following syntax to use an if statement to check if the property exists and write custom output instead:’
if($my_object| Get-Member this_property){
Write-Host 'Has Property'
}
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
The object does contain the property named UI so the if statement returns Has Property as a result.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to Use Group-Object with Multiple Properties
PowerShell: How to Use Sort-Object with Multiple Properties
PowerShell: How to Use Where-Object in List
