Powershell Web Scraping
PowerShell is a scripting language that can be used for web scraping. Users can leverage the built-in cmdlets and libraries to invoke-WebRequest and Invoke_restMethod. What makes this important is that it enables the user to interact with web pages. It is also versatile enough to both send HTTP requests and parse HTML or JSON responses in a fast and efficient manner.
Power Your Scraping
All the proxies you need. Cost effective and in one place.
PowerShell web scraping is an innovative solution that may be beneficial in a variety of situations. What makes it beneficial to some is that it doesn’t require a lot of experience or any coding skills to be able to use it.
Once you learn the steps to web scraping with PowerShell, you may find this is a very direct and efficient way to automate various repetitive tasks. If you need a simple and straightforward data extraction tool, using PowerShell for this task can be easy to do. In this guide, we will discuss what it is, how it works, and how you can use it, along with proxies from Rayobyte to build web scrapers.
PowerShell Web Scraping: How It Works
Web scraping is the task of extracting valuable information and data from a website and using it for other needs. It is a process that enables businesses, as well as others, to capture incredible amounts of data to use for decision-making or research. The data scraped from the web is then parsed to capture those specific details you need. If you are new to the process, our web scraping tutorials can help you to get started.
To accomplish these tasks, it is critical to have a tool that will do the work for you, automating many of the tedious tasks it would take for a person to capture the same information. The problem is that web scraping complexities exist, such as changing website structures and pages being blocked by tools that detect bots. PowerShell can offer some advantages in getting around these challenges.
You may know that both Python and Java offer a variety of libraries that can help you navigate many of the complex tasks necessary for web scraping. These libraries allow you to take the already-written code and apply it to your specific task, making it far easier to get started if you are new to the process. This is meant to minimize the amount of knowledge you need to make these tasks possible.
PowerShell offers two specific cmdlets that will scrape HTML data from the website you select, called the target web page. This includes Invoke-WebRequest and Invoke-RestMethod. What makes these and other components of PowerShell beneficial for web scraping is that it automates many of the steps in the process. That simply makes it easier and faster to use.
Pros and Cons of Web Scraping with PowerShell
Before providing insight into how to use PowerShell web scraping, it helps to have a solid foundation of both the good and the bad that comes from using this tool. You may know there are many web scraping tools available to you, and finding the right one could take trying out a few options. To help you see what you can expect from web scraping PowerShell, consider these elements.
The Pros of Using PowerShell: There are certainly benefits to using PowerShell. For example, as long as you put some specific rules in place, you can benefit from the ease of functionality that PowerShell offers. In short, it is easy to use even if you do not have any web development or web scraping experience. If you are looking for a web scraping tool that offers basic functionality and benefits (intricate processes are going to take a bit more help), then this could be the tool for you.
The Cons of Using PowerShell: Keep in mind there are some drawbacks or limitations to using this tool. While the configuration tools are good, you may find that some OS functionality can expose your system to vulnerabilities. It is a very good idea to do two things: be careful about what you are exposing yourself to and use a proxy service like Rayobyte to protect your IP address.
How to Use PowerShell to Scrape a Website
While there are numerous ways PowerShell can help you with this process, we are going to use it for some basic functionality. For this task specifically, we are going to use a script that will visit an e-commerce website, apply pagination as needed, and retrieve the product data on a page. The fictitious website for this will be ecommercesite.com. Let’s see how this may work for you.
Establish the Project: The first step is to establish a product. If you are already using Windows, you likely have PowerShell Core on board. You can also download the PowerShell Core 7 installer. To make sure you have the updated version, you need to follow this tutorial.
Once you do this, you then need to open the terminal and create a PowerShellScraper folder. Follow these commands for simplistic examples:
mkdir PowerShellScraper cd PowerShellScraper
Next, add the following scraper.ps1 PowerShell script inside the directory
Write-Host "Hello, World!"
Once you do this and launch it, it should show the following:
Write-Host “Hello, World!”
Good? Now, let’s move on.
To make sure the script works, use the following command:
.\scraper.ps1
This should result in:
Hello, World!
Load the PowerShellScraper into your IDE. Once you do this, you can then start using the tool for your application.
Get HTML from the Target Page: For this step, we need to find the HTML of the target page. Invoke-WebRequest comes with a built-in HTML parser (that’s a component of your Windows PowerShell application). This will perform an HTTP request and parse the HTML content from it. If you are using PowerShell Core, you will need to use a third-party application (we encourage you to use PSParsHTML. You can install that by using the following command:
Install-Module -Name PSParseHTML -AllowClobber -Force
Once this is in place, it is then possible to get the target page and parse the HTML content on it. You can do that with ConvertFrom-HTML functions.
PSParseHTML returns an HTML Agility Pack object. HAP does not support CSS selectors, so you will need to use the -Engine AngleSharp option to get an AngleSharp object instead. Use this:
$ParsedHTMLResponse = ConvertFrom-HTML -URL "https://www.ecommercesite.com/" -Engine AngleSharp
What you may not be seeing is that PSParseHTML will HTTP Get request to the target URL in -URL. It will then retrieve the HTML document that comes from that target URL page. It then parses it and will return an object that exposes the AngleSharp methods to you.
Now, you can use the OuterHtml attribute to get raw HTML from the page. To do this, follow these commands:
$ParsedHTMLResponse.OuterHtml
The scraper.ps1 file will now store the following code:
# download the target page and parse its HTML content $ParsedHTMLResponse = ConvertFrom-HTML -URL "https://www.ecommercesite.com" -Engine AngleSharp $ParsedHTMLResponse.OuterHtml
Once you do that and run the script, you should see the following:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en-US"> <head> <!--- ... ---> <title>Ecommerce Web Scraping – eCommercesite.com</title> <!--- ... ---> </head> <body class="home archive ..."> <p class="woocommerce-result-count">Showing 1–16 of 188 results</p> <ul class="products columns-4"> <!--- ... ---> </ul> </body> </html>
Now that you have the script working for you as desired, we need to get PowerShell web scraping working at the next step, which is to extract that data.
Extract the Data from the Page: when web scraping with PowerShell, your next step will be to define an effective node selection strategy, which will then scrape the data from the page. In other words, select the HTML element that you want to collect from the data you have. How can you do that? Look at the HTML code on the page.
Power Your Scraping
All the proxies you need. Cost effective and in one place.
To do this, inspect the product HTML node using the DevTools for the site. You should notice a few different components here, including li.product, and that it is an effective CSS selector. For more detail, the li is a stage in the HTML element, and the product refers to its class.
$ParsedHTMLResponse exposes all methods supported by AngleSharp. This includes both QuerySelector() – which returns the first node that matches the CSS selector passed as an argument – and QuerySelectorAll() – which returns all nodes matching the given CSS selector.
Let’s now take the information we have and put the web scraping PowerShell to work on finding a single product element. Use the following code as an example:
# select the first HTML product node on the page
$HTMLProduct = $ParsedHTMLResponse.QuerySelector("li.product")
# extract data from it
$Name = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("h2").TextContent
$URL = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("a").Attributes["href"].NodeValue
$Image = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("img").Attributes["src"].NodeValue
$Price = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("span").TextContent
This process will apply the specified CSS selector and then retrieve the desired node. You can use the TextContent attribute to access its text. Attributes will return the HTML attributes with their values that have been stored in the NodeValue.
Next, print the scraped data in the terminal by using the following:
$Name $URL $Image $Price
Once you do this, the scraper.ps1 will have the following:
# download the target page and parse its HTML content
$ParsedHTMLResponse = ConvertFrom-HTML -URL "https://www.ecommercesite/" -Engine AngleSharp
# get the first HTML product on the page
$HTMLProduct = $ParsedHTMLResponse.QuerySelector("li.product")
$Name = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("h2").TextContent
$URL = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("a").Attributes["href"].NodeValue
$Image = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("img").Attributes["src"].NodeValue
$Price = $HTMLProduct.QuerySelector("span").TextContent
# log the scraped data
$Name
$URL
$Image
$Price
Now, all you need to do is to execute it. When you do, it will print the desired information you are looking for.
How to Use Web Scraping with PowerShell
The example above is just that, one example of how web scraping with PowerShell can work for you. There are many ways that you can use web scraping to achieve your objectives, and this tool can help you to do that in a variety of ways. Some of the most common use cases for using PowerShell to scrape a website include:
- Product descriptions
- Reviews
- Product details
- Inventory reasons
- Price monitoring
- Market research
- Brand reputation material
- Competitor analysis
It’s fantastic that it can be so effective at so many different tasks. There are a variety of ways that web scraping, in general, can help you. If you have not done so yet, check out the following tutorials we offer:
- Web Scraping for Beginners (Tips to Help You Get Started)
- Web Scraping Pagination: A Simple Web Scraper Tutorial
With that in mind, we want to discuss one more potential obstacle you need to overcome to do well in this area: proxies.
The Importance of Proxies in Web Scraping with PowerShell
Using a proxy with web scraping is an incredibly important part of building an effective tool and using it wisely. While there are a lot of reasons to use web scraping, it is only effective if you can continue to access the content you need and not get blocked by the many anti-bot tools out there today. Yet, this is a common problem many people face.
A proxy service can eliminate this risk. For example, when you use our rotating proxies, the requests you are sending through your scraper go through the proxy service first. This masks your location’s IP address. And, because they are rotating IP addresses, they keep changing over time. This way, your actions seem more natural like a human would engage in, and there is less risk that you will be detected as you scrape the site. As you start to see the benefits of using PowerShell for web scraping, do not overlook the importance of aligning your process with our team at Rayobyte.
We can help you get the right proxy for your needs. Read our guide on how to buy and use proxy services now. Then, sign up with us for no risk. Couple that with PowerShell web scraping, and you will capture the information and resources you need with ease.
Power Your Scraping
All the proxies you need. Cost effective and in one place.
The information contained within this article, including information posted by official staff, guest-submitted material, message board postings, or other third-party material is presented solely for the purposes of education and furtherance of the knowledge of the reader. All trademarks used in this publication are hereby acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.
