How do I create an object in c# similar to powershell system.object?

Question

In Powershell, I can do the following with a list

$obj = New-Object System.Object    
foreach ($item in $list) {
       $obj | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name fname -value $item.firstname
       $obj | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name lname -value $item.lastname
    }

    $obj

and this will print out two columns with the first and last name.

In C#, i'm not sure how I can accomplish this. Do I need to create a custom class for each object? Or is there a way to do this dynamically in c# like in powershell?

The data i've got is in JSON. I can use JSON.net to iterate through the list of results but I'm not sure how to put them into an object such that

WriteObject(customObj);

will result in the same output as above.

By the way, this is all inside of a PSCmdlet class so output will always go to the console/cmd window.

thank you.

Answer 1

Your best option would be to use anonymous types. The code you gave would (probably) be equivalent to:

var obj = new List<dynamic>();
foreach (var item in list)
    obj.Add(new { fname = item.firstname, lname = item.lastname });
//From here, use whatever output method you would like.

To access the members, use obj[index].fname to get the fname at index, obj[index].lname to get the lname at index, obj.Select(item => item.fname) to get an IEnumerable<string> of all fnames, and obj.Select(item => item.lname) to get an IEnumerable<string> of all lnames.

Answer 2

In C# you should operate on PSObject to achieve same result as your PowerShell code:

PSObject obj=new PSObject();
obj.Properties.Add(new PSNoteProperty(fname,item.firstname));
obj.Properties.Add(new PSNoteProperty(lname,item.lastname));
WriteObject(obj);