Question

I’m trying to write a script in powershell that i can use to get the HTML from a website after a query has been run.

On my own machine i can run the below which works with no issues, but when i try to run it on a Server 2008 machine i get no output from the Document.Body.InnerHTML command, all the Document.GetElementById parts work with no issues.

    $ie = New-Object -com InternetExplorer.Application
    $ie.silent = $true
    $ie.navigate2("http://www.mxtoolbox.com/")
    while($ie.busy) {start-sleep 1}
    $ie.Document.getElementById("ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_txtToolInput").Value = "mx:domain.co.uk"
    $ie.Document.getElementById("ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_btnAction").Click()
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 10
    $ie.Document.body.innerHTML | Out-File "C:\NETESP\MXRecords\MXRecordsHTML.txt" -Encoding ASCII
    $ie.Quit()

Is there something i need to have installed on a server 2008 box to make this return a value?

Thanks in Advance

Answer 1

Could be a timing issue? I can’t test on 2008 but give this a try:

$ie = New-Object -com InternetExplorer.Application
$ie.silent = $false
$ie.navigate2("http://www.mxtoolbox.com/")
while($ie.busy) {start-sleep 1}
$ie.Document.getElementById("ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_txtToolInput").Value = "mx:domain.co.uk"
$ie.Document.getElementById("ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_btnAction").Click()

# wait for the result page 
While($ie.LocationURL -eq 'http://www.mxtoolbox.com/') {
    Write-Warning "Waiting for result"
    Start-sleep 1
}

# grab the table html
$table = $ie.Document.getElementsByTagName('TABLE') | Where-Object {$_.className -eq 'table table-striped table-bordered table-condensed tool-result-table'}
$table.outerHTML | Out-File "C:\NETESP\MXRecords\MXRecordsHTML.txt" -Encoding ASCII
$ie.Quit()