Unlocking PowerShell Magic: Different Approach to Creating ‘Empty’ PSCustomObjects

$propertyDefinitions = @{
    Users   = @(
        "FirstName", "LastName", "UserName", "Title", "Department",
        "StreetAddress", "City", "State", "PostalCode", "Country",
        "PhoneNumber", "MobilePhone", "UsageLocation", "License"
    )
    Groups  = @(
        "DisplayName", "PrimarySMTP", "Description", "Owner", "Type"
    )
    JobRole = @(
        "DisplayName", "PrimarySMTP", "Description", "Type"
    )
}


$CustomObject2 = [ordered] @{}
foreach ($P in $propertyDefinitions.Users) {
    $CustomObject2[$P] = $null
}
[PSCustomObject] $CustomObject2

$CustomObject3 = [ordered] @{}
foreach ($P in $propertyDefinitions.Groups) {
    $CustomObject3[$P] = $null
}
[PSCustomObject] $CustomObject3

$CustomObject4 = [ordered] @{}
foreach ($P in $propertyDefinitions.JobRole) {
    $CustomObject4[$P] = $null
}
[PSCustomObject] $CustomObject4

OrderedDictionary additionally offers the ability to create an object with some data and then append data on the fly in your script. This means, for example, you could create a dictionary first at the beginning of the script, and during the whole run of the script, you could append data to it without ever pre-creating it in the first place, to finally convert it to a custom object.

In a long script you could do

$CustomObject1 = [ordered] @{
    Name = 'John'
    Age  = 30
    City = 'New York'
}
<#
Do lots of code here
#>
$CustomObject1['Address'] = 'New Value'
<#
More code here
#>
$CustomObject1['State'] = 'New Value 2'
# Convert to PSCustomObject
[pscustomobject] $CustomObject1