Object arrays in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Working with Object Arrays in PowerShell

📖 Scenario: You are managing a small inventory system for a local bookstore. You want to keep track of books using PowerShell objects. Each book has a Title, Author, and Price. You will create an array of book objects, set a price limit, filter books below that price, and display the filtered list.

🎯 Goal: Build a PowerShell script that creates an array of book objects, sets a price limit, filters books cheaper than the limit, and prints the filtered books.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array of book objects with exact properties and values

Add a variable for the price limit

Filter the array to include only books cheaper than the price limit

Print the filtered list of books

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Managing collections of items like books, products, or users is common in automation scripts. Object arrays let you organize and filter data easily.

💼 Career

PowerShell scripting with object arrays is useful for IT admins and automation engineers to handle system inventories, reports, and data filtering.

1

Create an array of book objects

Create an array called $books containing these three book objects with properties Title, Author, and Price: 'The Hobbit', 'J.R.R. Tolkien', 15.99; '1984', 'George Orwell', 12.5; 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Jane Austen', 9.99.

PowerShell

# Create the $books array with three book objects
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use [PSCustomObject] to create each book object and put them inside an array @( ... ).

2

Set a price limit variable

Create a variable called $priceLimit and set it to 13.

PowerShell

$books = @(
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='The Hobbit'; Author='J.R.R. Tolkien'; Price=15.99},
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='1984'; Author='George Orwell'; Price=12.5},
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='Pride and Prejudice'; Author='Jane Austen'; Price=9.99}
)
# Create $priceLimit variable and set it to 13
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 13 to the variable $priceLimit.

3

Filter books cheaper than the price limit

Create a new variable called $affordableBooks that contains only the books from $books where the Price is less than $priceLimit. Use the Where-Object cmdlet with a script block comparing $_ object's Price property to $priceLimit.

PowerShell

$books = @(
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='The Hobbit'; Author='J.R.R. Tolkien'; Price=15.99},
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='1984'; Author='George Orwell'; Price=12.5},
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='Pride and Prejudice'; Author='Jane Austen'; Price=9.99}
)
$priceLimit = 13
# Filter books cheaper than $priceLimit into $affordableBooks
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Where-Object { $_.Price -lt $priceLimit } to filter the array.

4

Print the filtered list of affordable books

Print the $affordableBooks variable to display the filtered books.

PowerShell

$books = @(
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='The Hobbit'; Author='J.R.R. Tolkien'; Price=15.99},
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='1984'; Author='George Orwell'; Price=12.5},
    [PSCustomObject]@{Title='Pride and Prejudice'; Author='Jane Austen'; Price=9.99}
)
$priceLimit = 13
$affordableBooks = $books | Where-Object { $_.Price -lt $priceLimit }
# Print the $affordableBooks variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Simply type $affordableBooks to print the filtered list.