How to escape special characters in PowerShell while creating json object

Question

I have powershell script that I run in an installer while installation. I tried alot of examples to escape special characters, meaning if user choose username or password and that contains characters like slashes or commas, powershell fails to create json objects. Sometimes if user enters a comma, instead of taking it as a string, it breaks into json array. Following are my example and values for varibles are coming from installer, which are valid strings. Thank you for your insights.

$pathToJson = $InstalledPath+"appsettings.json"
$a = Get-Content $pathToJson | ConvertFrom-Json
$a.SQLConnectionSettings.SqlServerIp=$GkDbIP
$a.SQLConnectionSettings.SqlInitialCatalog=$GkDbName
$a.SQLConnectionSettings.SqlIntegratedSecurity=$SqlAuthType
$a.SQLConnectionSettings.SqlUserId=$GkDbUsername
$a.SQLConnectionSettings.SqlPassword=$SQLPassword
$a | ConvertTo-Json | set-content $pathToJson

Reza Aghaei · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-09 06:06:17Z

4

You can use Regex.Unescape to unscape the json content. For example:

$OBJECT = @{username="someone"; password="someone's \password"}
$OBJECT | ConvertTo-Json -depth 100 |
     % { [System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex]::Unescape($_) } |
         Out-File "D:\somefile.json" -Encoding utf8

And here is the result:

{
    "password":  "someone's \password",
    "username":  "someone"
}

If you don't use unescape, the password will be saved as "someone\u0027s \\password".

edited Dec 9, 2017 at 6:06

answered Dec 9, 2017 at 5:59

Reza Aghaei

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5 Comments

Raj Over a year ago

when I enter a comma, it broke string into array "SqlServerIp": [ "192.168.1.60", "1433\SQLEXPRESS01" ],

Reza Aghaei Over a year ago

I tested with this: $OBJECT = @{username="someone"; password="someone's \password";SqlServerIp = @("192.168.1.60", "1433\SQLEXPRESS01")} and it worked as expected.

Raj Over a year ago

@("192.168.1.60", "1433\SQLEXPRESS01")} should be as one string "192.168.1.60,1433\SQLEXPRESS01". I am having headaches now with that back slash and commas. json file expects two slashes so that i can be escaped while user will enter only one in the installer textbox. Comma is breaking one string into array.

Reza Aghaei Over a year ago

Probably you are doing it in a wrong way. I also tested $OBJECT = @{username="someone"; password="someone's \p,assword";SqlServerIp = "192.168.1.60,1433\SQLEXPRESS01"} and got the expected result. As a single string.

Raj Over a year ago

Is there a way to keep the order of the $OBJECT as defined while creating, when file is creating the json objects are not in order. Thank You Reza

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