Crawling the Web with PowerShell

By | 2023-02-23

To crawl links on the internet using PowerShell, you can use the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet. Here is an example script that can be used as a starting point:

# Define the starting URL to crawl
$url = "https://www.example.com/"

# Create an array to store the URLs
$urls = @()

# Get the web page content
$response = Invoke-WebRequest $url

# Find all links on the page
$links = $response.Links | Select-Object -ExpandProperty href

# Add the links to the array
$urls += $links

# Loop through each link and repeat the process
foreach ($link in $links) {
   $response = Invoke-WebRequest $link
   $links = $response.Links | Select-Object -ExpandProperty href
   $urls += $links
}

# Output the final list of URLs
$urls

In this example, the script starts by defining the starting URL to crawl. It then creates an array to store the URLs that it finds.

The script uses Invoke-WebRequest to get the web page content of the starting URL, and then uses the Links property to find all links on the page. It adds these links to the array of URLs.

The script then loops through each link that it found, uses Invoke-WebRequest to get the web page content of that link, and finds all links on that page. It adds these links to the array of URLs.

Finally, the script outputs the final list of URLs that it found.

Note that this script will continue crawling indefinitely until it runs out of links to follow, so you may want to add some logic to limit the number of links that it follows or to avoid crawling certain types of links.

Author: dwirch

Derek Wirch is a seasoned IT professional with an impressive career dating back to 1986. He brings a wealth of knowledge and hands-on experience that is invaluable to those embarking on their journey in the tech industry.

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