ConvertTo-JSON should allow nesting 0

There seems to be an oversight of what ConvertTo-JSON allows when it comes to nesting. Since the default value is 2 (not 0) it’s impossible to set it to 0, as minimal value is 1.

Steps to reproduce

[PSCustomObject] @{
    Test  = 1
    Test2 = 2
    Test3 = [PSCustomObject] @{
        IdontWantThat = 1
    }
} | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 0

Expected behavior

[PSCustomObject] @{
    Test  = 1
    Test2 = 2
    Test3 = [PSCustomObject] @{
        IdontWantThat = 1
    }
} | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 0

Should be:

{
"Test":"1",
"Test2":"2",
"Test3":"@{IDontWantThat=1}"}

or similar

Actual behavior

[PSCustomObject] @{
    Test  = 1
    Test2 = 2
    Test3 = [PSCustomObject] @{
        IdontWantThat = 1
    }
} | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 0

ConvertTo-Json : Cannot validate argument on parameter 'Depth'. The 0 argument is less than the minimum allowed range of 1. Supply an argument that is greater than or equal to 1 and then try the command again.

Environment data

[PrzemyslawKlys]

@TravisEz13 You already allow setting depth. You also specify it to a default value. I want to be able to choose that. Does Depth 2 for an object that is nested 5 levels deep is any different than what I requested?

I already showed you the HTML example above. I have a PowerShell module called PSWriteHTML. By default, it uses ConvertTo-HTML which uses depth 0. However, pushing 50k users into HTML makes browsers cry when trying to show it. So I’m using the javascript approach of storing data which prevents autoloading of all 50k rows before displaying them.

Since JavaScript is very similar to JSON I’m using ConverTo-JSON to store it within an HTML file. I only require flat JSON. While I guess I could store 5 or 10 or 50 levels deep in there it doesn’t make sense for me as I want to display it as a Table (so flat storage). Now imagine 50k adobjects objects each having 5 levels deep of which 4 are useless to display. While the display would still work, the size of the generated HTML would go from 80MB to 120 or 160MB in size. I don’t need that.

This is just one use case. A similar use case is used within the PSTeams Powershell module. I sometimes don’t want to get 2 levels deep when I require just 0.

Since it takes ages to implement this little change I wrote my own ConvertTo-JSONLiteral which happens to work in PS5+ and allows me to also define how Arrays are treated (for example join them with defined char), how DateTime is converted - for example to a specific format, how numbers are treated, how enums are treated. I got a greater control for display purposes.

While you specifically are thinking JSON use case is very limited I’ve found that JSON is really similar to JavaScript or CSS with some exceptions or small changes and I use it frequently in ways you would not expect. I don’t care if I lose data, as long as I am doing this explicitly.

This change just adds the ability to go from 0 to 100, not from 1-2 to 100. It’s trivial, and just fixes something that should have been there from the beginning. The bigger problem is going to remove the default Depth which is set to 2 now, but it’s outside of the scope of this change.

[kvprasoon]

Depth 0 with code change has

{
  "Test": 1, 
  "Test2": 2,
  "Test3": "@{IdontWantThat=1}"
}