Format a nested hashtable

Question

Given a hashtable that contains heterogeneous data such as:

$items = @{
  a = @{a1 = "A1"; a2 = "A2"; a3 = "A3" }
  b = 1234
  c = @{c1 = "C1"; c2 = "C2"; c3 = "C3" }
  d = [DateTime]::Now
}

When I attempt to display the contents using the following:

$items | Format-Table -AutoSize

The output is:

Name Value
---- -----
c    {c3, c1, c2}
d    05/23/15 11:37:56
b    1234
a    {a2, a3, a1}

But how can I expand the contents of the nested hashtables so that I can see the key-value pairs such as:

Name Value
---- -----
c    {c3=C3, c1=C1, c2=C2}
d    05/23/15 11:37:56
b    1234
a    {a2=A2, a3=A3, a1=A1}

The exact display format of the nested key-value pairs is not super critical, I just want to see them.

Answer 1

inspired by donothingsuccessfully, what about

$items | ConvertTo-Json

Looks more readable (to me)

Answer 2

You need to expand nested hashtables yourself:

$items | Format-Table Name, @{n='Value';e={
  if ($_.Value -is [Hashtable]) {
    $ht = $_.Value
    $a  = $ht.keys | sort | % { '{0}={1}' -f $_, $ht[$_] }
    '{{{0}}}' -f ($a -join ', ')
  } else {
    $_.Value
  }
}}