Select-Object on nested collections

Question

I'm writing a Powershell cmdlet to list changesets from TFS. I successfully query TFS and get a collection of changesets but want to return simplified objects that contain only a few properties. I can do that using Select-Object like this...

$changesets | Select-Object ChangeSetId, Owner, Comment

The last property I would like to add is the Changes property which is an array of changes. I would like to simplify those objects as well. I'm trying this but it doesn't return what I want...

$changesets | Select-Object `
    ChangeSetId,
    Owner,
    Comment,
    @{Name="Changes"; Expression={ $_.Changes | Select-Object ChangeType, ServerItem }}

Is there a way to handle nested collections with Select-Object?

Answer 1

Your can use -ExpandProperty parameter of Select-Object cmdlet. It will expand collection and add selected properties from parent object to child objects:

$changesets | Select-Object ChangeSetId, Owner, Comment,
    @{Name="Changes"; Expression={ $_.Changes | Select-Object ChangeType, ServerItem }} |
Select-Object -Property * -ExcludeProperty Changes -ExpandProperty Changes