How to make an authenticated web request in Powershell? - powershell

Question

In C#, I might do something like this:
System.Net.WebClient w = new System.Net.WebClient();
w.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential(username, auth, domain);
string webpage = w.DownloadString(url);
Is there a Powershell version of this, or should I just call through to the CLR?

Answer 1

The PowerShell is almost exactly the same.
$webclient = new-object System.Net.WebClient
$webclient.Credentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential($username, $password, $domain)
$webpage = $webclient.DownloadString($url)

Answer 2

For those that need Powershell to return additional information like the Http StatusCode, here's an example. Included are the two most likely ways to pass in credentials.
Its a slightly modified version of this SO answer:
How to obtain numeric HTTP status codes in PowerShell
$req = [system.Net.WebRequest]::Create($url)
# method 1 $req.UseDefaultCredentials = $true
# method 2 $req.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($username, $pwd, $domain);
try
{
$res = $req.GetResponse()
}
catch [System.Net.WebException]
{
$res = $_.Exception.Response
}
$int = [int]$res.StatusCode
$status = $res.StatusCode
return "$int $status"

Answer 3

In some case NTLM authentication still won't work if given the correct credential.
There's a mechanism which will void NTLM auth within WebClient, see here for more information: System.Net.WebClient doesn't work with Windows Authentication
If you're trying above answer and it's still not working, follow the above link to add registry to make the domain whitelisted.
Post this here to save other's time ;)