I hope this post has helped you to determine when to use which command and what each command is capable of, at least when getting data from web endpoints. Invoke-RestMethod is much better at dealing with XML and JSON results, while Invoke-WebRequest is better at dealing with straight HTML results. In one step I have the data I wanted, where Invoke-WebRequest required several extra steps, to ultimately get the same result. However, Invoke-Restmethod returns the resulting XML back as a powershell object natively. Now I have all the data in the Powershell pipeline. Because the result is a XML file we can tell Powershell that we are working with XML by putting before our variable. But, if I want to get the content as Powershell objects by doing $web.content and assigning that to the variable $content, I can’t get them. xml document from the same website.Īs you can see, once again we have all the same fields as the previous page. We’ll use the same example as above, only getting a.

But it also does the same for XML content. If you read my weather data post, then you already know Invoke-Restmethod returns JSON files natively as Powershell objects. So in this instance, Invoke-webrequest is the better option, because I can create logic around the status code, or find other data in the fields because they are already Powershell objects. Here, we output the entire $rest result, which is essentially the entire HTML document. Notice when I do $rest.headers nothing is returned. When we connect with webrequest and output that to a variable everything in the red box becomes a object we can access via the variable.Įxample: getting the base response from the site.Īnd getting the headers. Suppose we connect to the same website with both commands, where the variable $web is using Invoke-WebRequest and $Rest is using Invoke-RestMethod. In my exploration of multiple websites, if you have no documentation Invoke-WebRequest is a great start. Are there other areas when one is better than the other? Keep reading to find out more about Invoke-RestMethod vs Invoke-WebRequest. Like Invoke-RestMethod turning JSON response files directly into Powershell objects, as shown in my post about weather data. So far there are times when one is better than the other at certain things.

I’ve been exploring both as part of my APIs and Powershell series. In Powershell, aside from the old school Net objects, we have Invoke-RestMethod and Invoke-WebRequest cmdlets to make HTTP/REST calls.

Webrequest vs httpclient