Get-WebPage

# Code Snippet from aperturescience.su
Function Get-WebPage
{
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Get a webpage

.DESCRIPTION
Gets the webpage at the specified URL and returns the string representation of that page. Webpages can be accessed over an URI including http://, Https://, file://, \\server\folder\file.txt etc.

.PARAMETER URL
The url of the page we want to download and save as a string. URL must have format like: http://google.com, https://microsoft.com, file://c:\test.txt

.PARAMETER Credentials
[Optional] Credentials for remote server

.PARAMETER WebProxy
[Optional] Web Proxy to be used, if none supplied, System Proxy settings will be honored

.PARAMETER Headers
[Optional] Used to specify additional headers in HTTP request

.PARAMETER UserAgent
[Optional] Simpler method of specifying useragent header

.INPUTS
Nothing can be piped directly into this function

.OUTPUTS
String representing the page at the specified URL

.EXAMPLE
Get-Webpage "http://google.com"
Gets the google page and returns it

.NOTES
NAME: Get-WebPage
AUTHOR: [email protected]
LASTEDIT: 2012-10-14 9:15:00
KEYWORDS:

.LINK
http://aperturescience.su/
#>
[CMDLetBinding()]
Param
(
  [Parameter(mandatory=$true)] [String] $URL,
  [System.Net.ICredentials] $Credentials,
  [System.Net.IWebProxy] $WebProxy,
  [System.Net.WebHeaderCollection] $Headers,
  [String] $UserAgent
)

#make a webclient object
$webclient = New-Object Net.WebClient
#set the pass through variables if they are not null
if ($Credentials)
{
    $webclient.credentials = $Credentials
}
if ($WebProxy)
{
    $webclient.proxy = $WebProxy
}
if ($Headers)
{
    $webclient.headers.add($Headers)
}
if ($UserAgent)
{
    $webclient.headers["User-Agent"] = $UserAgent
}

#Set the encoding type, we will use UTF8
$webclient.Encoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8

#contains resultant page
$result = $null

#call download string and return the string returned (or any errors generated)
try
{
    $result = $webclient.downloadstring($URL)
}
catch
{
    throw $_
}

return $result

}
# Code Snippet from aperturescience.su