Using Classes (Creating Objects – Part 1)

Beginning in PowerShell 5, there is a new keyword called “class”. It creates new classes for you. You can use classes as a blue print for new objects. Here is code that defines the blueprint for a new class called “Info”, with a number of properties:

#requires -Version 5.0
class Info 
{ 
  $Name
  $Computer
  $Date 
}

# generic syntax to create a new object instance
$infoObj = New-Object -TypeName Info

# alternate syntax PS5 or better (shorter and faster)
$infoObj = [Info]::new()
 

$infoObj

$infoObj.Name = $env:COMPUTERNAME
$infoObj.Computer = $env:COMPUTERNAME
$infoObj.Date = Get-Date

$infoObj
$infoObj.GetType().Name

You can use New-Object to create as many new instances of this class. Each instance represents a new object of type “Info” with three properties.

 
Name            Computer        Date               
----            --------        ----               
                                                   
DESKTOP-7AAMJLF DESKTOP-7AAMJLF 1/2/2017 2:00:02 PM
Info
 

This is just a very simple (yet useful) example of how to use classes to produce objects. If you just want to store different pieces of information in a new object, you could as well use [PSCustomObject] which was introduced in PowerShell 3:

#requires -Version 3.0
$infoObj = [PSCustomObject]@{
  Name = $env:COMPUTERNAME
  Computer = $env:COMPUTERNAME
  Date = Get-Date
}

$infoObj
$infoObj.GetType().Name

This approach does not use a blueprint (class) and instead creates individual new objects based on a hash table:

 
Name            Computer        Date               
----            --------        ----               
DESKTOP-7AAMJLF DESKTOP-7AAMJLF 1/2/2017 2:02:39 PM
PSCustomObject
 

So the type of the produced object is always “PSCustomObject” whereas in the previous example, the object type was defined by the class name.

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