Execute javascript trough Internet Explorer's com interface using PowerShell

Question

I am writing some Internet Explorer automation scripts using PowerShell. Here is how I start the IE com object:

$ie = New-Object -com "InternetExplorer.Application"
$ie.Navigate("about:blank")
$ie.visible = $true

$doc = $ie.Document

So, what I would like to do is to execute some javascript on the $doc object. For example, I have an item on the page that has an onclick event which executes submitCommand('lookup'), so I'd like to run that directly on the $doc instead of having to find the object on the page and then calling the Click() method on it.

It would be easier as the object has no name nor id, making it very sensible to change as I can only rely on it's position on the page (eg: the 11th span item on the page).

Alternatively, how would you select elements based on their class? That would help a lot as the "button" has it's own class.

Thanks

Solution

$spans=@($ie.document.getElementsByTagName("SPAN"))

Pipe to where-object to filter the one you need (based on its attributes) and then call the click method, for example:

$span11 = $spans | where {$_.innerText -eq 'something'}
$span11.click()

Comments

[Philippe]

Not exactly the solution I was hoping for, but definitely a cleaner solution to my issue. Thanks.

[Philippe]

By the way, is there any way to store the result of the where in an array? In case there are more than one result to the filtering, only the first one is returned if you store it in a variable like this?

[Shay Levy]

You can wrap it in '@()': $span11 = @($spans | where {$_.innerText -eq 'something'})