How to Parse HTML in Powershell 5 with -UseBasicParsing

Question

Often Invoke-WebRequest is preferable in usage with the -UseBasicParsing parameter, if not using Invoke-RestMethod command for both performance and network savings.

But the results from these don't have the good ol' PARSEHTML method.

How can we parse html using the stated command setups?

Invoke-Webrequest $site -UseBasicParsing
Invoke-RestMethod $site

AdilZ · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-05 14:49:35Z

3

The scenario can be solved by creating a new HTML object and writing to its IHTMLDocument2 section

NOTE: THIS IS ONLY VALID IN WINDOWS POWERSHELL 5.0 and 5.1

You can deal with the listed scenarios as follows:

For Invoke-Webrequest $site -UseBasicParsing

$html = new-object -ComObject "HTMLFile; $html.IHTMLDocument2_write($site.rawcontent)
For Invoke-RestMethod $site

$html = new-object -ComObject "HTMLFile; $html.IHTMLDocument2_write($site)

Now you can parse like normal for example getting an element by id

$button = $html.getElementById('button')

answered Aug 5, 2020 at 14:49

AdilZ

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2 Comments

Vital Over a year ago

how do you do this in powershell 7.1?

J. DuBois Jun 10 at 16:05

Can you give a complete example, that defines elements like $site? Is site just $site="google.com" or is there more to it? Your example isn't clear.

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