ConvertTo-CliXml

ConvertTo-CliXml
    [-InputObject] <PSObject>
    [-Depth <Int32>]
    [<CommonParameters>]

The ConvertTo-CliXml cmdlet converts objects to strings that are formatted as Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) XML. This command is similar to Export-Clixml, but it doesn't write to a file. Instead, it outputs a string.

This cmdlet was introduced in PowerShell 7.5-preview.4.

This example shows the result of converting a process object to CliXml and back. First, the current process is stored in the variable $process. The pstypenames property of the process object shows that the object is of type System.Diagnostics.Process. The next command displays the count for each type of member in the process object.

$process = Get-Process -Id $PID
$process.pstypenames

System.Diagnostics.Process
System.ComponentModel.Component
System.MarshalByRefObject
System.Object

$process | Get-Member | Group-Object MemberType | Select-Object Name, Count

Name           Count
----           -----
AliasProperty      7
CodeProperty       1
Property          52
NoteProperty       1
ScriptProperty     8
PropertySet        2
Method            19
Event              4

$xml = $process | ConvertTo-CliXml
$fromXML = ConvertFrom-CliXml $xml
$fromXML.pstypenames

Deserialized.System.Diagnostics.Process
Deserialized.System.ComponentModel.Component
Deserialized.System.MarshalByRefObject
Deserialized.System.Object

$fromXML | Get-Member | Group-Object MemberType | Select-Object Name, Count

Name         Count
----         -----
Property        46
NoteProperty    17
PropertySet      2
Method           2

Next, the process object is converted to CliXml and back. The type of the new object is prefixed with Deserialized. The count of members in the new object is different from the original object.

This cmdlet supports the common parameters: -Debug, -ErrorAction, -ErrorVariable, -InformationAction, -InformationVariable, -OutBuffer, -OutVariable, -PipelineVariable, -ProgressAction, -Verbose, -WarningAction, and -WarningVariable. For more information, see about_CommonParameters.