When exporting catalogue variables are evaluated and then not exported correctly

[AleksPish]

When exporting snippets to .json with export-psnote the stored vairables are evaluated against the current powershell session which causes the values to either not show in exported snippet if value is null, or show as value saved in variable, rather than variable name as would be required to maintain consistency

Example snippet to be exported:

❯ Get-ExpiredCertificates
Get-ChildItem cert:\ -Recurse | Where-Object {$_ -is [System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2] -and $_.NotAfter -lt (Get-Date)} | Select-Object -Property FriendlyName,NotAfter

Exported .json file:

❯ gc .\export.json
{
"Catalog": "Certs",
"StoreVersion": 1,
"Notes": [
{
"Name": "Get-ExpiredCertificates",
"Snippet": "Get-ChildItem cert:\ -Recurse | Where-Object { -is [System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2] -and .NotAfter -lt (Get-Date)} | Select-Object -Property FriendlyName,NotAfter",
"Details": "",
"Alias": "Get-ExpiredCertificates",
"Tags": null,
"Catalog": "Certs",
"Run": false,
"Kind": 0
},
null
],
"IsRemote": false
}

[AleksPish]

Confirmed behaviour does not occur if code is stored as a script block and not a snippet.

The suggestion would be to only use script block and completely remove the snippet option as there does not appear to be much functional difference between them.

[mdowst]

Interesting. There shouldn't be any difference between them. In the code if you use a snippet it just converts it to a string and passes to the constructor as if it was a snippet.

Are you trying to store the results of running the snippet in Catalog?