Invoke-WebRequest

Specifies the body of the request. The body is the content of the request that follows the headers.

You can also pipe a request body to Invoke-WebRequest.

Specifies the client certificate that is used for a secure web request. Enter a variable that contains a certificate or a command or expression that gets the certificate.

To find a certificate, use Get-PfxCertificate or use the Get-ChildItem cmdlet in the Certificate (Cert:) drive. If the certificate is not valid or does not have sufficient authority, the command fails.

Specifies the digital public key certificate (X509) of a user account that has permission to send the request. Enter the certificate thumbprint of the certificate.

Certificates are used in client certificate-based authentication. They can be mapped only to local user accounts; they do not work with domain accounts.

To get a certificate thumbprint, use the Get-Item or Get-ChildItem command in the Windows PowerShell Cert: drive.

Specifies the content type of the web request, such as "application/x-www-form-urlencoded".

Specifies a user account that has permission to send the request. The default is the current user.

Type a user name, such as "User01" or "Domain01\User01", or enter a PSCredential object, such as one generated by the Get-Credential cmdlet.

Sets the KeepAlive value in the HTTP header to False. By default, KeepAlive is True. KeepAlive establishes a persistent connection to the server to facilitate subsequent requests.

Specifies the headers for the web request. Enter a hash table or dictionary.

Specifies the path to the file that contains the web request.

Enter a path and file name. If you omit the path, the default is the current location.

Determines how many times Windows PowerShell redirects a connection to an alternate Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) before the connection fails. The default value is 5. A value of 0 (zero) prevents all redirection.

Specifies the method used for the web request. Valid values are Default, Delete, Get, Head, Options, Post, Put, and Trace.

Sends the results to the specified output file. Enter a path and file name. If you omit the path, the default is the current location.

By default, Invoke-WebRequest returns the results to the pipeline. To send the results to a file and to the pipeline, use the Passthru parameter.

Returns the results, in addition to writing them to a file. This parameter is valid only when the OutFile parameter is also used in the command.

Uses a proxy server for the request, rather than connecting directly to the Internet resource. Enter the URI of a network proxy server.

Specifies a user account that has permission to use the proxy server that is specified by the Proxy parameter. The default is the current user.

Type a user name, such as "User01" or "Domain01\User01", or enter a PSCredential object, such as one generated by the Get-Credential cmdlet.

This parameter is valid only when the Proxy parameter is also used in the command. You cannot use the ProxyCredential and ProxyUseDefaultCredentials parameters in the same command.

Uses the credentials of the current user to access the proxy server that is specified by the Proxy parameter.

This parameter is valid only when the Proxy parameter is also used in the command. You cannot use the ProxyCredential and ProxyUseDefaultCredentials parameters in the same command.

Specifies a name for the session variable. Enter a variable name without the dollar sign ($) symbol.

When you use the session variable in a web request, the variable is populated with a WebRequestSession object.

You cannot use the SessionVariable and WebSession parameters in the same command.

Specifies how long the request can be pending before it times out. Enter a value in seconds. The default value, 0, specifies an indefinite time-out.

Specifies a value for the transfer-encoding HTTP response header. Valid values are Chunked, Compress, Deflate, GZip and Identity.

Specifies the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the Internet resource to which the web request is sent.

This parameter is required. The parameter name (-Uri) is optional.

Uses the response object for HTML content without Document Object Model (DOM) parsing.

This parameter is required when Internet Explorer is not installed on the computers, such as on a Server Core installation of a Windows Server operating system.

Uses the credentials of the current user to send the web request.

Specifies a user agent string for the web request.

Specifies a web request session to store data for subsequent requests.

You cannot use the SessionVariable and WebSession parameters in the same command.

This cmdlet supports the common parameters: -Verbose, -Debug, -ErrorAction, -ErrorVariable, -OutBuffer, and -OutVariable. For more information, see  about_CommonParameters (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=113216).

This command uses the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet to send a web request to the Bing.com site.

The first command issues the request and saves the response in the $r variable.

The second command gets the InnerHtml property when it includes an equal sign, sorts the inner HTML by length and selects the 5 shortest values.

PS C:\> $r = Invoke-WebRequest -URI http://www.bing.com?q=how+many+feet+in+a+milePS C:\>$r.AllElements | where {$_.innerhtml -like "*=*"} | Sort { $_.InnerHtml.Length } | Select InnerText -First 5

innerText---------1 =5280 feet1 mile

This example shows how to use the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet with a stateful web service, such as Facebook.

PS C:\> $r = Invoke-WebRequest http://www.facebook.com/login.php -SessionVariable fb

PS C:\> $fbHeaders               : {}Cookies               : System.Net.CookieContainerUseDefaultCredentials : FalseCredentials           :Certificates          :UserAgent             : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) WindowsPowerShell/3.0Proxy                 :MaximumRedirection    : -1

PS C:\> $form = $r.Forms[0]
PS C:\>$form | Format-ListId     : login_formMethod : postAction : https://www.facebook.com/login.php?login_attempt=1Fields : {[charset_test, ?,',?,',?,?,?], [lsd, ], [return_session, 0], [legacy_return, 1]...}PS C:\> $form.fieldsKey                                                                   Value---                                                                   -----charset_test                                                          ?,',?,',?,?,?lsdreturn_session                                                        0legacy_return                                                         1displaysession_key_only                                                      0trynum                                                                1ug1j2t_1emailpasspersist_box                                                           1default_persistent                                                    0ug1j2t_2                                                              Log In
 
                        

PS C:\> $form.Fields["email"] = "User01@Fabrikam.com"PS C:\>$form.Fields["pass"] = "P@ssw0rd"

PS C:\> $r = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $form.Action -WebSession $fb -Method POST -Body $form.FieldsPS C:\>$r.StatusDescriptionOK