How to read XML file from web using powershell

Question

When I connect to my HP ILO using the URL, http://ilo-ip/xmldata?item=All it is returning a XML file in below format.

  <?xml version="1.0" ?> 
- <RIMP>
- <HSI>
  <SPN>ProLiant DL385 G1</SPN> 
  <SBSN>ABCDEFG</SBSN> 
  <UUID>123456789</UUID> 
  </HSI>
- <MP>
  <ST>1</ST> 
  <PN>Integrated Lights-Out (iLO)</PN> 
  <FWRI>1.82</FWRI> 
  <HWRI>ASIC: 2</HWRI> 
  <SN>ILOABCDEFG</SN> 
  <UUID>ILO1234545</UUID> 
  </MP>
  </RIMP>

Is there any powershell command/script to read XML data from web URL?

Answer 1

Hi,

PowerShell uses the .Net framework XmlDocument so you could call the load method to load the xml into an XmlDocument object like this:

#Option 1    
$doc = New-Object System.Xml.XmlDocument
$doc.Load("http://ilo-ip/xmldata?item=All")

#Option 2
[xml]$doc = (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString("http://ilo-ip/xmldata?item=All")


# Your XML will then be in the $doc and the names of the XML nodes can be used as
# properties to access the values they hold. This short example shows how you would
# access the value held in the SPN nodes from your sample XML 
Write-Host $doc.RIMP.HSI.SPN

If your looking for more information on working with the XML once it has been loaded check out Dr. Tobias Weltner's eBook at PowerShell.com, chapter 14 covers XML.

Answer 2

Sure. You can use the .NET WebClient object to download XML from the web and then use the [xml] type to interpret a string as XML like so:

$url = "http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/rss.xml"
[xml]$xml = (new-object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString($url)
$xml.rss.channel | Foreach {$_.item} |
    Where {[DateTime]$_.pubDate -gt (Get-Date).AddMonths(-1)} |
    Format-Table Title