You can use the ConvertTo-Json cmdlet in PowerShell to convert an object to a JSON-formatted string.
When using the ConvertTo-Json cmdlet on an array with a single item, using a pipeline will produce a single string:
$my_array | ConvertTo-Json
In order to produce a JSON-formatted string, you must use the following syntax instead:
ConvertTo-Json @my_array
This particular example will format the single item in the array named @my_array into a JSON-formatted string.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: How to Use ConvertTo-Json on Array with Single Item
Suppose that we create an array named $my_array that contains the name of one basketball team.
Suppose that we attempt to pass this array in a pipeline to the ConvertTo-Json cmdlet to convert the item in this array to a JSON-formatted string:
$my_array = @('Mavs')
$my_array | ConvertTo-Json
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns a single string.
In order to return a JSON-formatted string, we must use the following syntax instead:
$my_array = @('Mavs')
ConvertTo-Json $my_array
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns a JSON-formatted string, just as we intended.
Note #1: If your array has more than one item then you can actually use the pipeline format with the ConvertTo-Json cmdlet without any issues.
Note #2: You can find the complete documentation for the ConvertTo-Json cmdlet in PowerShell here.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to Sort a Table with Format-Table
PowerShell: How to Sort by Specific Column
PowerShell: How to Use Sort-Object with Multiple Properties
