I have a ldif file exported from a LDAP server, the format is as:

UID: id1

Firstname: Lyle1

Lastname: Thomas1

Email: test1@test.com

UID: id2

Firstname: Lyle2

Lastname: Thomas2

Email: test2@test.com

etc...

The file contains many records, each record has 4 attributes seperated by a blank line.

How can I convert the ldif to a csv file using PowerShell? I would like to remove the attribute title from each attribute and only keep the actual value in the csv file.

I am still learning PowerShell, I think I can read the file to an array, but not sure how to handle the reading and processing after that.

Thanks very much for your input on this!

Having done a quick search and not found any specific functions to achieve this, you could do something like this:

$obj = $null
$objlist = @()
Get-Content "C:\MyLdif.ldif"|Foreach{
  $parts = $_.Split(":")
  switch($parts[0].Trim())
  {
    "UID" {
      if($obj -ne $null)
      {
        $objlist+=$obj
      }
      $obj=""|select UID,Firstname,Lastname,Email
      $obj.UID=$parts[1].Trim()
    }
    "" {
      # Do nothing if it's blank
    }
    default {
      $obj."$($parts[0].Trim())"=$parts[1].Trim()
    }
  }
}
if ($obj -ne $null)
{
  $objlist+=$obj
}
$objlist|Export-Csv C:\MyCsv.csv

Thanks, Chris.

• Edited by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:23 AM Completing answer
• Proposed as answer by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:24 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:53 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:53 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:55 AM

Having done a quick search and not found any specific functions to achieve this, you could do something like this:

$obj = $null
$objlist = @()
Get-Content "C:\MyLdif.ldif"|Foreach{
  $parts = $_.Split(":")
  switch($parts[0].Trim())
  {
    "UID" {
      if($obj -ne $null)
      {
        $objlist+=$obj
      }
      $obj=""|select UID,Firstname,Lastname,Email
      $obj.UID=$parts[1].Trim()
    }
    "" {
      # Do nothing if it's blank
    }
    default {
      $obj."$($parts[0].Trim())"=$parts[1].Trim()
    }
  }
}
if ($obj -ne $null)
{
  $objlist+=$obj
}
$objlist|Export-Csv C:\MyCsv.csv

Thanks, Chris.

• Edited by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:23 AM Completing answer
• Proposed as answer by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:24 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:53 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:53 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:55 AM

Having done a quick search and not found any specific functions to achieve this, you could do something like this:

$obj = $null
$objlist = @()
Get-Content "C:\MyLdif.ldif"|Foreach{
  $parts = $_.Split(":")
  switch($parts[0].Trim())
  {
    "UID" {
      if($obj -ne $null)
      {
        $objlist+=$obj
      }
      $obj=""|select UID,Firstname,Lastname,Email
      $obj.UID=$parts[1].Trim()
    }
    "" {
      # Do nothing if it's blank
    }
    default {
      $obj."$($parts[0].Trim())"=$parts[1].Trim()
    }
  }
}
if ($obj -ne $null)
{
  $objlist+=$obj
}
$objlist|Export-Csv C:\MyCsv.csv

Thanks, Chris.

• Edited by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:23 AM Completing answer
• Proposed as answer by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:24 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:53 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:53 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:55 AM

(Get-Content t.ldif -Delimiter UID) -replace "UID" | Foreach {
 $hash = $_ -replace "^:","UID=" -replace ":","=" | ConvertFrom-StringData
 New-Object PSObject -Prop $hash
} | Export-CSV result.csv -NoType

• Proposed as answer by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:39 AM
• Edited by KazunMVP Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:45 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:55 AM

(Get-Content t.ldif -Delimiter UID) -replace "UID" | Foreach {
 $hash = $_ -replace "^:","UID=" -replace ":","=" | ConvertFrom-StringData
 New-Object PSObject -Prop $hash
} | Export-CSV result.csv -NoType

• Proposed as answer by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:39 AM
• Edited by KazunMVP Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:45 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:55 AM

(Get-Content t.ldif -Delimiter UID) -replace "UID" | Foreach {
 $hash = $_ -replace "^:","UID=" -replace ":","=" | ConvertFrom-StringData
 New-Object PSObject -Prop $hash
} | Export-CSV result.csv -NoType

• Proposed as answer by Dwarfsoft Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:39 AM
• Edited by KazunMVP Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:45 AM
• Marked as answer by Flowery Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6:55 AM

Thanks so much Chris and Kazun for your quick reply.

I tried both, get some errors on both commands(may have something to do with my PowerShell version v2.0 or configuration), but also get the csv file in the proper format I need.

Now I got to understand what each line means and start learning PowerShell.

All the best!

Alternately, you could extract from the LDAP server directly into .csv format using CSVDE.exe instead of LDIFDE.exe.

Thanks Dwarsoft. I could fix your solution for a greater example. 

Regards!

Works fine for me! Thx!

But if you have a multi-value attribute like

UID: id1
Firstname: Lyle1
Lastname: Thomas1
Email: test1@test.com
UID: id2
Firstname: Lyle2
Lastname: Thomas2
Email: test2@test.com
Email: test3@test.com
etc...

I would like to join those two email and become:

"UID";"FristName";"LastName";"Email"
"id2";"Lyle2";Thomas2";"test2@test.com;test3@test.com"

Thanx for your input!

Works fine for me! Thx!

But if you have a multi-value attribute like

UID: id1
Firstname: Lyle1
Lastname: Thomas1
Email: test1@test.com
UID: id2
Firstname: Lyle2
Lastname: Thomas2
Email: test2@test.com
Email: test3@test.com
etc...

I would like to join those two email and become:

"UID";"FristName";"LastName";"Email"
"id2";"Lyle2";Thomas2";"test2@test.com;test3@test.com"

Thanx for your input!

• Proposed as answer by xbstoller 10 hours 17 minutes ago
• Unproposed as answer by xbstoller 10 hours 16 minutes ago

Works fine for me! Thx!

But if you have a multi-value attribute like

UID: id1
Firstname: Lyle1
Lastname: Thomas1
Email: test1@test.com
UID: id2
Firstname: Lyle2
Lastname: Thomas2
Email: test2@test.com
Email: test3@test.com
etc...

I would like to join those two email and become:

"UID";"FristName";"LastName";"Email"
"id2";"Lyle2";Thomas2";"test2@test.com;test3@test.com"

Thanx for your input!

• Proposed as answer by xbstoller Wednesday, April 15, 2015 8:50 PM
• Unproposed as answer by xbstoller Wednesday, April 15, 2015 8:51 PM

We also have a need to parse varying length multi-valued fields

We have a need to determine our [publicDelegatesBL] and [publicDelegates]

Many thousand's of are users have +5 or more delegates in the fields delimited by a semi-colon

I tried using csvde and ms-access  to attempt to parse out the multi-valued properties with a query and while it worked
the ms-access queried field string to <256 characters which only is enough to parse the 1st (2) Delegates<o:p></o:p>

 What we need is a pwrshell script to read in a multi-valued  LDIFDE FILE and create a CSVDE output creating a column for each "new" value

 Id imagine the 1st pass thru the file would determine  the max # of [publicDelegatesBL] and [publicDelegates]in the file to format the CSVDE output file to add the headers and an array type table could be used for the "new" column names. (?)

thanks for your time ,

Brian