how to split a string in powershell based on output from azure command

Question

I have a powershell script that i'm trying to write. I need to take some input / output from the console and pipe it into a split command but I don't know how.

I'm running an azure cli command... to list a bunch of resources. and I need to extract the name of the storage account. Here's some sample output:

Name                  ResourceGroup    Location      Type   
------------------    -------------    ------------  ----------  
asdf1234-insights        jjResourceGrp     eastus    microsoft.insights/components
asdf1234-storage         jjResourceGrp     eastus    Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts
asdf1234                 jjResourceGrp     eastus    Microsoft.Web/serverFarms
asdf1234                 jjResourceGrp     eastus    Microsoft.Web/sites

This is the powershell command I'm using right now to find just the storage Account:

az resource list -g jjResourceGrp -o table | Select-String -Pattern "storageAccounts"

But what I really need is to extract the "asdf1234-storage" from that line. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

As Ash has pointed out:

• It is always preferable to use PowerShell commands that output objects whose properties you can operate on, which in this case requires installing the Az PowerShell module (Install-Module Az), which then allows you to call Get-AzStorageAccount.

• If you're interacting with external programs, such as the az CLI, you're of necessity dealing with text (string) output, which complicates subsequent processing:

  • The next best option is to deal with an external program's structured text output format, if available, such as CSV or JSON; indeed, as Ash also points out, the az CLI's default output format is JSON, so you could omit -o table and process the output further with ConvertFrom-Json

  • Absent that, text parsing based, typically based on regexes, such as via the -replace and -split operators, are required.

---

To answer the question as asked (because text parsing is so much fun):

The switch statement combined with its -Regex switch offers a concise solution:

switch -Regex (az resource list -g jjResourceGrp -o table) {
  '^(\w+).*\bstorageAccounts\b' {
    $Matches[1]; break
  }
}