Manipulating a CSV with Powershell - powershell

Question

At the moment I am working on a script to automate a process in IE to add Computer Names and their MACs so we can image them. The page has two fields one for MAC and one for a computer name then a add new button. I had to come to a pretty sloppy solution for avoiding a popup from the page by just quitting out of the com object after submitting.
I don't have much experience with Powershell yet and none with working with CSVs so I'm having a bit of trouble making this work. My goal is to have the script read two entries from a row fill out the correct field then submit it then move to the next row and repeat.
Right now what it does is fills out the fields with undefined in both fields, then submits and repeats.
EDIT: I have edited my code slightly just so it confirms what is trying to read.This is what the results look like. I believe #WalterMitty is on to something that something is wrong with $ie.document.getElementsByName lines, I just tried $ie.document.getElementById but that didn't fill out any fields. It seems it has no problem reading the CSV, but it does have a problem entering the information it reads into the fields properly.
This is an example of what the CSV would look like.
NewComputerName,NewMACAddress
ComputerName1,111122223333
ComputerName2,112233446677
ComputerName3,AAAABBBBCCCC
ComputerName4,AABBCCDDEEFF
This is what my code currently looks like.
cls
$URL = ""
$iterator = 1;
$csv = Get-Content C:\example1.csv
foreach($row in $csv)
{
#starts IE
$ie = new-object -ComObject "InternetExplorer.Application"
$ie.visible = $true
$ie.navigate($URL)
while($ie.Busy -eq $true) { start-sleep -Milliseconds 100 }
($ie.document.getElementsByName("mc_id") |select -first 1).value = $_.NewComputerName;
($ie.document.getElementsByName("mac_id") |select -first 1).value = $_.NewMACAddress;
$ie.document.forms | Select -First 1| % { $_.submit() };
$ie.quit()
$iterator++
write-host "$iterator new ID(s) added"
write-host $row.NewComputerName - $row.NewMACAddress
}

Answer 1

$URL = ""
$iterator = 1
# use Import-Csv for CSV files
$csv = Import-Csv "C:\example1.csv" -Delimiter ","
foreach($row in $csv) {
Write-Host "$iterator new ID(s) added"
#starts IE
$ie = New-Object -ComObject "InternetExplorer.Application"
$ie.Visible = $true
$ie.Navigate($URL)
while ($ie.Busy -eq $true) { Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100 }
# $_ is not defined in foreach blocks, you have to use $row here
($ie.Document.getElementsByName("mc_id") | Select-Object -First 1).Value = $row.NewComputerName
($ie.Document.getElementsByName("mac_id") | Select-Object -First 1).Value = $row.NewMACAddress
$ie.Document.Forms | Select-Object -First 1 | ForEach-Object { $_.submit() }
$ie.Quit()
$iterator++
}

Answer 2

I'm having similar issues but I just found this may help you guys - I don't have 50 reputation to comment sorry :/....
I messed around with the -Path of the Import-CSV command but I just couldn’t make it work. Apparently this has nothing to do with the path of the CSV file. The Warlock posted this on his blog:
Long story short, the error came from having trailing blank columns in
my CSV. Import-Csv uses the first row in the CSV as names for the
columns (unless you specify otherwise) and when you have blank columns
(or at least multiple blank columns) it causes this error as it
doesn’t have a valid name for them.
Instead of changing the file, I changed my import command to include the headers as per Dale's comment and it worked perfectly:
$data = import-csv "C:\Sharepoint.csv" -header("Department","AD Group","Members","Notes")
The Warlock and Dale saved me lots of time, please stop by the Warlock’s blog and give them a big Thanks

Answer 3

Consider using Import-Csv and Invoke-WebRequest in combination, e.g. like this:
import-csv .\example.csv | %{ iwr http://someurl.local -body #{mc_id=$_.NewComputerName; mac_id=$_.NewMACAddress} -Method POST }
It will read the csv file, iterate over the records and create a application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST request with the values from each record.
When you use iwr (Invoke-WebRequest) and pass a hash table as the "body" it will act as if it is a form being submitted. The POST method will submit the form values as application/x-www-form-urlencode. Without the POST method it would submit the form as if it was a GET, i.e. pass the values in the url.
If you need authentication, session support etc. then read the documentation for Invoke-WebRequest.
Using IE to automate web requests is brittle and error prone.