Using IE automation in powershell to login to a website that has input validation - powershell

Question

I am trying to use PowerShell to login to a website. In the example below I am trying to login to live.com.
I am able to update the username field but the webpage runs some sort of input validation that does not accept my value. If I manually go in and edit the username field, like hitting space and then backspace, the input is then valid.
I found some documentation about changing the focus or using fireevent, but neither seems to work.
While sendkeys would resolve my issue, I have had numerous problems with sendkeys before and would really like to avoid going down that path.
$Site = 'https://login.live.com'
$UserName = 'FakeUserName#outlook.com'
$ie = New-Object -ComObject 'internetExplorer.Application'
$ie.Visible= $true
$ie.Navigate($Site)
while ($IE.busy)
{
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100
}
$Inputs = $IE.document.getElementsByTagName("input")
foreach ($Input in $Inputs)
{
if ($Input.type -eq "email")
{
$UserIDField = $Input
}
if ($Input.type -eq "submit")
{
$LoginButton = $Input
}
}
$UserIDField.focus()
$UserIDField.value = $UserName
$UserIDField.FireEvent('onchange')
$LoginButton.focus()
$LoginButton.click()

Answer 1

#Ranadip Dutta is certainly true, you should not, do that this way, but if you want to automate web browser Selenium is a good tool, here it tooks five minutes to automate Chrome on your web site. You can chooe an IE driver,Mozilla or Opera. for that have a look to Selenium.
# Selenium directory is the place where I expand Selenium Client & WebDriver Language Bindings for C#
$seleniumDir = 'D:\Developpements\Pgdvlp_PowerShell\selenium-dotnet-3.0.0'
# Selenium Webdriver
Add-Type -Path "$seleniumDir\net40\WebDriver.dll"
Add-Type -Path "$seleniumDir\net40\WebDriver.Support.dll"
Add-Type -Path "$seleniumDir\net40\ThoughtWorks.Selenium.Core.dll"
Add-Type -Path "$seleniumDir\net40\Selenium.WebDriverBackedSelenium.dll"
# With Chrome
# I Download Chrome driver here : https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=2.25/
# It stands in "$seleniumDir" drive
$chrome = New-Object OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome.ChromeDriver "$seleniumDir"
#$chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://fr.hightail.com/loginSpaces?redirect_url=https%3A%2F%2Fspaces.hightail.com%2Foauth%2Fhightail");
$chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://login.live.com");
$Browser = $chrome
$email = $Browser.FindElements([OpenQA.Selenium.By]::Name('loginfmt'))
$email[0].SendKeys("adress#hotmail.com")
$button = $Browser.FindElements([OpenQA.Selenium.By]::Id('idSIButton9'))
$button.Click()
Start-Sleep 2
$passwd = $Browser.FindElements([OpenQA.Selenium.By]::Name('passwd'))
$passwd[0].SendKeys("toto")
$button = $Browser.FindElements([OpenQA.Selenium.By]::Id('idSIButton9'))
$button.Click()

Answer 2

If your website is checking for automated login then how can you expect it to be automated in this way. Sendkeys actually send like user input which is similar to what user does and thereby sorts your problem in that case.
I would like you to see if there is any API available for the web service to get logged in.
Other than that, I do not see anything which can help you. This concern is not about powershell or any scripting language. It is pretty much generic for your website.

Answer 3

You may also want to consider passing stored credentials more securely instead of putting your creds in full view plain text within your script(s).
TechNet - PowerShell Tip - Storing and Using Password Credentials