Using Invoke-WebRequest to Return Upcoming MMA Events
PowerShell, Invoke-WebRequest ·When I began using PowerShell I recall seeing some awesome stuff being done with Invoke-WebRequest. After seeing the output of Invoke-WebRequest I quickly became overwhelmed and moved onto a different task. The output may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but once you know what to look for it starts to become more managable.
Goal
Our goal is to create a function that will query whenarethefights.com. I love watching MMA events, and I rarely miss a UFC event. There are also events by other promotions that I don’t want to miss. Hopefully the function that we create will help me ensure that I’m aware of all upcoming events, without having to leave my favorite console!
Invoke-WebRequest
Invoke-WebRequest is a command that will send a web request and output the parsed results. Your browser sends web requests and renders the html that is returned. We don’t have the benefit of being able to render html in PowerShell, so we have to be creative.
Sending a Web Request
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri 'https://www.whenarethefights.com/'
The output contains several properties that have been created for us. These include Statuscode, StatusDescription, Content, RawContent, Forms, Headers, Images, InputFields, and Links. We are interested in the Links property.
Parsing the Web Request
$request = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri 'https://www.whenarethefights.com'
# view the 1st link
$request.links.innertext[1]
LFA 75: Lamson vs. Estr?zulas
00days
10hours
15minutes
Sat Sep 7th 9:00:00 PM EDT
It looks like all of the relevant information is there.
Now all that’s left is to parse the text and output an object.