Renaming Variable Output in PowerShell - powershell

Question

I'm trying to write a script to monitor URLs. I've managed to get the information I want, and my script looks like this
$logfile = "C:\LogFileTest.log"
Function WriteHeader-Websites {
[cmdletbinding()]
param (
[string]$URL
)
if ($logfile -eq "nologfile"){
write-host
write-host "$URL"
write-host
}
else {
add-content -path $logfile -value ""
add-content -path $logfile -value "$URL"
add-content -path $logfile -value ""
}
}
Function Test-Websites {
$URLs = Get-Content -Path C:\WebsiteChecks.txt
foreach ($URL in $URLs) {
$ArrayLine =$Line.split(",")
$
$Line.name =
try {
$request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create($URL)
$response = $request.GetResponse()
WriteHeader-Websites "$URL is available!"
} catch {
WriteHeader-Websites ("$URL failed! The error message was '{0}'." -f $_)
} finally {
if ($response) {
$response.Close()
Remove-Variable response
}
}
}
}
Test-Websites
My text file looks like this:
http://www.google.com
http://www.bing.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk
And the output from the script looks like this:
http://www.google.com is available!
I'd like to be able to add a short name for the websites in the text file, so it uses that name instead.
An example of the text file would be:
http://www.google.com,Google Website
http://www.bing.com,Bing Website
and I'd like the return to look like:
Google Website is available!
Bing Website is available!
or
Google Website failed! Error message is...
But I have no idea how to do that, or what I'd even Google for to find it out. Any suggestions?
Thanks

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this would be to create a csv with headers, then you can refer to the columns using their headers.
url,description
http://www.google.com,Google Website
http://www.bing.com,Bing Website
Then use Import-Csv to import the file, so you could do something like this:
Import-Csv -Path C:\WebsiteChecks.txt | % {
$_.description
$_.url
}
Update
Here's your code rewritten using Import-Csv notice I put description in it's own variable as $_ would be updated by the exception in your catch statement.
$logfile = "C:\LogFileTest.log"
Function WriteHeader-Websites {
[cmdletbinding()]
param (
[string]$URL
)
if ($logfile -eq "nologfile"){
write-host
write-host "$URL"
write-host
}
else {
add-content -path $logfile -value ""
add-content -path $logfile -value "$URL"
add-content -path $logfile -value ""
}
}
Function Test-Websites {
Import-Csv -Path C:\WebsiteChecks.txt | % {
$url = $_.url
$description = $_.description
try {
$request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create($url)
$response = $request.GetResponse()
WriteHeader-Websites "$description is available!"
} catch {
WriteHeader-Websites ("$description failed! The error message was '{0}'." -f $_)
} finally {
if ($response) {
$response.Close()
Remove-Variable response
}
}
}
}
Test-Websites