Can powershell be used to click an angularjs button?

Question

<div class="w-btn" ng-click="vm.callbacks.compareAll();" ng-if="vm.folderData.projects.length > 0 &amp;&amp; vm.noneSelectedProjects" tabindex="0"><i class="glyphicon glyphicon-transfer btn-icon"></i> Report from all</div>

I need to use Powershell to click that button. There are multiple div's on that page with the class="w-btn" but only one with the ng-click that has Compare all in it.

when that button is clicked it will change another tag on the page which is like the following

<a href="/data/project/export/projects-tasks?projectIds[]=103473&amp;projectIds[]=103474&amp;projectIds[]=106186&amp;projectIds[]=108395&amp;projectIds[]=110653&amp;projectIds[]=110657" target="_self" class="inline-btn pull-right" ng-if="vm.projects.length > 0">

the first button changes that href for the projects as they get added. I have to write this script to click the first button and then use the resultant href as part of a link in my wget

so far I haven't been able to get anything to work

$Link = 'https://url.com/folder/2880'
$html = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Link -UseDefaultCredentials
$btnclick = $html.getElementsByTagName("div") | Where-object{$_.Name -like 'ng-click="vm.callbacks.compareAll();"' }

when I then do a write to console to see what $btnclick is I get an error:

Method invocation failed because [Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.HtmlWebResponseObject] does not contain a method named 'getElementsByTagName'

eventually, I think I would then do like $btnclick.Click() and do another getElement on the href so I can pull the

/data/project/export/projects-tasks?projectIds[]=103473&amp;projectIds[]=103474&amp;projectIds[]=106186&amp;projectIds[]=108395&amp;projectIds[]=110653&amp;projectIds[]=110657

portion out.

Any help getting this done is appreciated. The high-level overview is I need to click an angular js button from a webpage and then extract a piece of a URL to use in a wget from the resulting a href tag.

Have you tried $html.ParsedHtml.getElementsByTagName('div') |where name -like '…'? Invoke-WebRequest's Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.HtmlWebResponseObject uses IE to headlessly render the DOM unless you add -UseBasicParsing, and the objects returned do seem to have a click() method. — brianary
– brianary, Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 17:55

JPBlanc · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-24 09:13:20Z

7

+25

Invoke-WebRequest in AngularJS webpages is useless, since there is client side javascript rendering. You can use combination of powershell + selenium + protractor for that (Powershell v5 required):

# initialize selenium
$protractorPackage = Install-Package Protractor -Destination ".\NugetPackages" -Force -Source 'https://www.nuget.org/api/v2' -ProviderName NuGet
Add-Type -Path ".\Selenium.WebDriver.$($protractorPackage.Where({$_.name -eq "Selenium.WebDriver"}).version)\lib\net40\WebDriver.dll"
Add-Type -Path ".\Protractor.$($protractorPackage.Where({$_.name -eq "Protractor"}).version)\lib\net40\Protractor.dll"

# initialize chrome driver
$chromeDriverPackage = Install-Package Selenium.WebDriver.ChromeDriver -Destination "." -Force -Source 'https://www.nuget.org/api/v2' -ProviderName NuGet
$Env:Path += ";" + ((Resolve-Path ".\Selenium.WebDriver.ChromeDriver.$($chromeDriverPackage.Version)\driver\win32") -join ";")
$Selenium = New-Object OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome.ChromeDriver

# interact with website
$Selenium.Manage().Timeouts().SetScriptTimeout([TimeSpan]::FromSeconds(15)) # Configure timeouts (important since Protractor uses asynchronous client side scripts)
$Protractor = New-Object Protractor.NgWebDriver($Selenium)
try
{
    $Protractor.Url = "https://url.com/folder/2880"
    $Protractor.WaitForAngular() # sync with angular, this waits for all elements to load

    $Protractor.FindElement([OpenQA.Selenium.By]::CssSelector('[ng-click="vm.callbacks.compareAll();"]')).Click();

    Write-Host "Url is: $($Protractor.Url)"
    $FullhtmlDOM = $Protractor.PageSource
    Write-Host "Full page source: $FullhtmlDOM"
}
finally
{
    $Protractor.Dispose()
}

if you don't want to depend on Chrome browser, you can use headless PhantomJS instead. It will work the same way, you just download different packages:

...
# initialize phantomjs driver
$phantomJsDriverPackage = Install-Package Selenium.WebDriver.PhantomJS -Destination "." -Force -Source 'https://www.nuget.org/api/v2' -ProviderName NuGet
$Env:Path += ";" + ((Resolve-Path ".\Selenium.WebDriver.PhantomJS.$($phantomJsDriverPackage.Version)\driver") -join ";")
$Selenium = New-Object OpenQA.Selenium.PhantomJS.PhantomJSDriver
...

edited Aug 24, 2017 at 9:13

JPBlanc

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answered Aug 19, 2017 at 10:09

Tomas Panik

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3 Comments

Patrick Meinecke Over a year ago

Worth mentioning the NuGet source isn't defined by default, so if Install-Package throws an error, try adding the parameters -Source 'https://www.nuget.org/api/v2' -ProviderName NuGet

JPBlanc Over a year ago

Thanks for the example, I just modify the installation part because Protractor nuget install brings also Selenium.WebDriver.

brianary Over a year ago

Invoke-WebRequest's Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.HtmlWebResponseObject uses IE to headlessly render the DOM unless you add -UseBasicParsing.

bthal · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-24 12:31:46Z

1

If your fine with IE It appears creating an IE COM object will get what you want.

$ie = New-Object -ComObject "InternetExplorer.Application"
$ie.Navigate("URL GOES HERE")
$Document = $ie.document
$Document.GetElementsByTagName('div')

If you want it visible:

$ie.visible = $True

Here is the Microsoft page on the COM Object

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752084(v=vs.85).aspx

And one on using it in powershell.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/luisdem/2016/02/09/browsing-in-internet-explorer-via-powershell/

answered Aug 24, 2017 at 12:31

bthal

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