ConvertFrom-Json output doesn't work for Select-Object

Question

I am using PowerShell 4 to make a series of web requests. From one call I get a generic array - for the sake of discussion it looks like this

$data = '[{"Id":"1","Name":"One"},{"Id":"2","Name":"Two"}]'

I am trying to parse this data to pull out the Name properties. However, when I use the following call it writes a line with Name and no information under it:

$data | ConvertFrom-Json | Select-Object Name

But if I save the object to an intermediate object like this it works:

$o1 = $data | ConvertFrom-Json
$o1 | Select-Object Name

I get the proper output.

The object types are different but I don't understand why. Here's output from relevant Get-Member calls:

$test | ConvrtFrom-Json | gm

TypeName: System.Object[]

and

$o1 | gm

TypeName: System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject

Can anyone help me understand what I'm doing wrong in terms of my collection management? I'd like to be able to do this in one statement.

Answer 1

It seems like the parentheses are needed for some mysterious reason, as OP pointed out in the comment. Adding parentheses was the fix for me as well. I am not sure why this breaks without parens, but I can confirm that code without parens is not an issue when executed in powershell core.