Cannot convert PSCustomObjects within array back to JSON correctly

I'm trying to ingest a JSON file into Powershell, append a block of JSON to an existing node (Components), then convert the PSCustomObject back to JSON and save the file. The JSON I'm playing with looks something like Figure 1.

As you see in my code, I run ConvertTo-Json to cast the data into a PSCustomObject, and I then append a new object to the Components node. If I view the object, $configFile in this case it all looks fine, but when I convert back to JSON the items in the Components node, are treated as strings and not evaluated into JSON (see last snippet). I imagine this is because ConvertTo-JSON treats arrays literally, but not 100% sure.

If someone can advise how to ensure the PSCustomObjects in the Components node get casted back to JSON properly I would be grateful, thank you.

Figure 1 - the original JSON:

{
"EngineConfiguration": {
    "PollInterval": "00:00:15",
    "Components": [
        {
            "Id": "ApplicationEventLog",
            "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
            "Parameters": {
                "LogName": "Application",
                "Levels": "1"
            }
        },
        {
            "Id": "SystemEventLog",
            "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
            "Parameters": {
                "LogName": "System",
                "Levels": "7"
            }
        }
    ],
    "Flows": {
        "Flows": 
        [
            "(ApplicationEventLog,SystemEventLog),CloudWatchLogs"
        ]
    }
} 
}

Figure 2 - my code:

#Requires -Version 3.0

$configFile = "C:\Program Files\Amazon\EC2ConfigService\Settings\AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.json"
$configToPSObject = ConvertFrom-Json "$(Get-Content $configFile)"

$configToPSObject.EngineConfiguration.Components += New-Object -Type PSObject -Property ([ordered]@{
"Id" = "IISRequestQueueSize"
"FullName" = "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.PerformanceCounterComponent.PerformanceCounterInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch"
"Parameters" = [PSCustomObject]@{
        "CategoryName" = "HTTP Service Request Queues"
        "CounterName" = "CurrentQueueSize"
        "InstanceName" = "_Total"
        "MetricName" = "IISRequestQueueSize"
        "Unit" = ""
        "DimensionName" = ""
        "DimensionValue" = ""
}
})

$configJson = ConvertTo-Json -Depth 5 $configToPSObject


Set-Content -Path $configFile -Value $configJson

Figure 3 - the JSON output:

{
"EngineConfiguration":  {
    "PollInterval":  "00:00:15",
    "Components":  [
        "@{Id=ApplicationEventLog; FullName=AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch; Parameters=}",
        "@{Id=SystemEventLog; FullName=AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch; Parameters=}",
        "@{Id=IISRequestQueueSize; FullName=AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.PerformanceCounterComponent.PerformanceCounterInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch; Parameters=}"
        ],
"Flows":  {
    "Flows": 
        "(ApplicationEventLog,SystemEventLog),CloudWatchLogs"
    }
}
}

If I increase the depth to say, 8 or beyond, the JSON comes out as follows:

{
"EngineConfiguration":  {
   "PollInterval":  "00:00:15",
   "Components":  [
       "@{Id=ApplicationEventLog; FullName=AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch; Parameters=}",
       "@{Id=SystemEventLog; FullName=AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch; Parameters=}",
       "Id":  "IISRequestQueueSize",
       "FullName":  "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.PerformanceCounterComponent.PerformanceCounterInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
       "Parameters":  {                                                                        
           "CategoryName":  "HTTP Service Request Queues",
           "CounterName":  "CurrentQueueSize",
           "InstanceName":  "_Total",                                                                      
           "MetricName":  "IISRequestQueueSize",
           "Unit":  "",
           "DimensionName":  "",
           "DimensionValue":  ""
        }
    }
],
"Flows":  {
    "Flows":  "(ApplicationEventLog,SystemEventLog),CloudWatchLogs"
    }
}
}

Solution 1:

The ConvertTo-Json cmdlet also has a Depth parameter, beyond which an object is treated with toString() instead of going deeper with recursion. So just setting that parameter to whatever max depth of objects you have should result in a correctly formed JSON.

$configJson = ConvertTo-Json $configToPSObject -Depth 8 
# your JSON has depth of 5, get some extra