Powershell download .htm file

If your job involves downloading files from the web regularly, you will probably want to automate the task. Why not use PowerShell to download files much like an alternative PowerShell wget? Windows PowerShell and PowerShell comes with file-download capabilities. Using PowerShell to download files is a matter of knowing which cmdlets and. NET classes to use and how to use them.

Since this is a learning-by-doing article, there are some prerequisites to ensure that you can follow the examples. Below are the basic requirements. There are four methods to use PowerShell to download files that do not depend on third-party tools.

These are:. Whichever one of these four methods you use, the logic and components to make them work are the same. If required by the webserver, you need to enter the credentials as well. The next sections show each of these four methods. Whether the source location requires users to log in, the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet can handle requests with credentials as well. To download a file, the syntax below shows the minimum parameters required to achieve the desired outcome. For example, the code below downloads a file with the name 10MB.

You may copy the code below and paste it into your PowerShell session to test. The demonstration below shows the expected result after running the code above in PowerShell. As you can see, the file download was successful. How about if the source requires authentication before allowing access?

For example, the code below downloads a file from a private website where users must log in. If authentication is required, you should add a credential to the request using the -Credential parameter. As you can see, the Get-Credential cmdlet prompted a PowerShell credential request.

This time, using the credential with Invoke-WebRequest resulted in a successful download. A crucial thing to remember when using Invoke-WebRequest in Windows PowerShell is that, by default, this cmdlet uses the Internet Explorer engine to parse data.

This command creates an HTML page called pslog. These commands create and open an HTML page that lists the name, path, and company of the processes on the local computer. The first command uses the Get-Process cmdlet to get objects that represent the processes running on the computer.

The command uses the pipeline operator to send the process objects to the ConvertTo-Html cmdlet. The command uses the Property parameter to select three properties of the process objects to be included in the table. The second command uses the Invoke-Item cmdlet to open the Proc. The HREF attribute in the tag contains the name of the style sheet. The command uses the As parameter to specify a list format.

The command uses the Get-Date cmdlet to get the current date. It uses a pipeline operator to send the results to the ConvertTo-Html cmdlet. This command creates and opens a Web page that displays the services on the computer that begin with A. The first part of the command uses the Get-Service cmdlet to get the services on the computer that begin with A. The command uses a pipeline operator to send the results to the ConvertTo-Html cmdlet. The command also uses the Out-File cmdlet to send the output to the Services.

A semicolon ; ends the first command and starts a second command, which uses the Invoke-Item cmdlet to open the Services. This command creates the HTML for a webpage with the meta tags for refresh, author, and keywords. The charset for the page is set to UTF I plan to use this along with task scheduler to download a fresh file every week. However, the new file overwrites the older one.

Is there a way to preserve the older file as well? Ken - You should be able to relatively easily - however, you'd have to download it first, since you can't get the file properties until you download it. You could download it to a temp location, grab the LastWriteTime stamp and parse it to create your new name. Sumit - You have a similar situation. You'll also need to manage the old copies so you don't fill up your disk.

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Contents of this article. Related Articles. GitOps vs. Shane 2 years ago. Hi Michael - great article. Michael Pietroforte Rank: 4 2 years ago. For versions of PowerShell earlier than 3. WebClient class must be used to download a file from the Internet.

To download a file from an FTP server with authorization, you need to specify the FTP username and password in the script:.