PowerShell / Html - questions - html

Question

I am new to Powershell, and I suck at html.
There's a page with a table, and each cell has a ahref link, the value of the link is dynamic, but the link which I want to automate-clicking is always in the first cell.
I know there's cellindex in html/JS, is it usable in PS?
For example, let's say I have this table on a website.
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<a href="http://example1.com">
<div style="height:100%;width:100%">
hello world1
</div>
</a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<a href="http://example2.com">
<div style="height:100%;width:100%">
hello world2
</div>
</a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<a href="http://example3.com">
<div style="height:100%;width:100%">
hello world3
</div>
</a>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
And I want to make powershell to always click on the first link, the link inside is dynamic though.
Any ideas? Hints?

Answer 1

The result of Invoke-WebRequest returns a property named Links that is a collection of all the hyperlinks on a web page.
For example:
$Web = Invoke-webrequest -Uri 'http://wragg.io' $Web.Links | Select innertext,href
Returns:
innerText href
--------- ----
Mark Wragg http://wragg.io
Twitter https://twitter.com/markwragg
Github https://github.com/markwragg
LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/mwragg
If the link you want to capture is always the first in this list you could get it by doing:
$Web.Links[0].href
If it's the second [1], third [2] etc. etc.
I don't think there is an equivalent of "cellindex", although there is a property named AllElements that you can access via an array index. E.g if you wanted the second element on the page you could for example do:
$Web.AllElements[2]
If you need to get to a specific table in the page and then access links inside of that table you'd probably need to iterate through the AllElements property until you reached the table you wanted. For example if you know the links were in the third table on the page:
$Links = #()
$TableCount = 0
$Web.AllElements | ForEach-Object {
If ($_.tagname -eq 'table'){ $TableCount++ }
If ($TableCount -eq 3){
If ($_.tagname -eq 'a') {
$Links += $_
}
}
}
$Links | Select -First 1

Answer 2

Ok, the Invoke-webrequest method is working with mark's link but with my page; but I noticed a pattern that may can be used:
I noticed the the following:
<table id="row" class="simple">
<thead>
<tr>
<th></th>
<th class="centerjustify">File Name</th>
<th class="centerjustify">File ID</th>
<th class="datetime">Creation Date</th>
<th class="datetime">Upload Date</th>
<th class="centerjustify">Processing Status</th>
<th class="centerjustify">Exceptions</th>
<th class="centerjustify">Unprocessed Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">Discarded Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">Rejected Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">Void Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">PO Total Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">PO Total Amount</th>
<th class="centerjustify">CM Total Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">CM Total Amount</th>
<th class="centerjustify">PO Processed Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">PO Processed Amount</th>
<th class="centerjustify">CM Processed Count</th>
<th class="centerjustify">CM Processed Amount</th>
<th class="centerjustify">Counts At Upload</th></tr></thead>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<td><input type="radio" disabled="disabled" name="checkedValue" value="12047" /></td>
<td class="leftjustify textColorBlack">
520170123000000_520170123000000_20170327_01.txt</td>
<td class="centerjustify textColorBlack">1</td>
<td class="datetime textColorBlack">Mar 27, 2017 0:00</td>
<td class="datetime textColorBlack">Mar 27, 2017 10:33:24 PM +03:00</td>
<td class="centerjustify textColorBlack">
The fId part in "loadConfirmationDetails.htm?fId=12047" is dynamic; and it's the last part of the next page;
For example: "https://aaa.xxxxxxx.com/aaa/community/loadConfirmationDetails.htm?fId=12047
And table's ID is unique, called "row" - I wonder if I can use a completely another way; other than invoking the webpage, by auto-copying this id info from its source html and concatenate it with the main link?
I am really out of ideas beyond that.