PowerShell grab plaintext from URL and use as variable

Question

I have a dynamic list of server names coming from a report on an internal website. I'm looking to have PowerShell get this list from URL, then use it as a variable that I can cycle through.

Currently, this is what I have.

$servers = Invoke-WebRequest -URI http://myserver/hostgroup.php?hostgroup=test | Select -expand Content

This returns a simple list, such as "SERVER1","SERVER2","SERVER3",. I want to loop through this list to run reports on. Here's a simple foreach as a starting point (which doesn't work).

foreach ($s in $servers) {
    if(Test-Connection -Quiet $s -Count 1) { 
        Write-Host "Online"

    } else {
        # connection test failed 
        Write-Host "`a`n" $s "is unreachable" -ForegroundColor Red 
    }
}

The output I receive looks like it's using the whole string as the server name, and it's not breaking it down.

Here's the output.

 "SERVER1","SERVER2","SERVER3", is unreachable

Keith Hill · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-29 20:31:29Z

5

In addition to splitting up the single string into an array of strings, you will need to trim off the double-quotes e.g.:

$result = ($servers = Invoke-WebRequest -URI http://myserver/hostgroup.php?hostgroup=test).Content
$servers = $result -split ',' -replace '"','' | Where {$_ -notmatch '^\s*$'}

answered Dec 29, 2014 at 20:31

Keith Hill

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3 Comments

Pat Over a year ago

This worked. Splitting the commas only didn't make it. Trimming the quotes did. It seems to be cycling through the foreach now. Thanks! Can you explain the regex you have at the end?

Matt Over a year ago

@Pat Keith is filtering out entries that are just whitespace(\s) only from start to finish.

Keith Hill Over a year ago

Yup. The sample text looked like it had a trailing comma - "SERVER3", and the split operation would have created an empty entry because of it.

Micky Balladelli · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-29 20:24:05Z

2

If $servers contains a single string, just split it:

$servers = $servers -split ','

This will return an array, which can be used with your Foreach statement.

answered Dec 29, 2014 at 20:24

Micky Balladelli

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1 Comment

Pat Over a year ago

That helps! It breaks it up, but not quite out of the woods yet. I'm still getting the "Unreachable" portion of the foreach. If I manually type in a variable with the server names, it works. If I fetch from a URL, it's still not working.

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