# Communicating with RESTful APIs
REST stands for Representational State Transfer (sometimes spelled "ReST"). It relies on a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications protocol and mostly HTTP protocol is used. It is primarily used to build Web services that are lightweight, maintainable, and scalable. A service based on REST is called a RESTful service and the APIs which are being used for it are RESTful APIs. In PowerShell, Invoke-RestMethod
is used to deal with them.
# Post Message to hipChat
$params = @{
Uri = "https://your.hipchat.com/v2/room/934419/notification?auth_token=???"
Method = "POST"
Body = @{
color = 'yellow'
message = "This is a test message!"
notify = $false
message_format = "text"
} | ConvertTo-Json
ContentType = 'application/json'
}
Invoke-RestMethod @params
# Using REST with PowerShell Objects to GET and POST many items
GET your REST data and store in a PowerShell object:
$Users = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users"
Modify many items in your data:
$Users[0].name = "John Smith"
$Users[0].email = "John.Smith@example.com"
$Users[1].name = "Jane Smith"
$Users[1].email = "Jane.Smith@example.com"
POST all of the REST data back:
$Json = $Users | ConvertTo-Json
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri "http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users" -Body $Json -ContentType 'application/json'
# Use Slack.com Incoming Webhooks
Define your payload to send for possible more complex data
$Payload = @{ text="test string"; username="testuser" }
Use ConvertTo-Json
cmdlet and Invoke-RestMethod
to execute the call
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://hooks.slack.com/services/yourwebhookstring" -Method Post -Body (ConvertTo-Json $Payload)
# Using REST with PowerShell Objects to Get and Put individual data
GET your REST data and store in a PowerShell object:
$Post = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1"
Modify your data:
$Post.title = "New Title"
PUT the REST data back
$Json = $Post | ConvertTo-Json
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Put -Uri "http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1" -Body $Json -ContentType 'application/json'
# Using REST with PowerShell to Delete items
Identify the item that is to be deleted and delete it:
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Delete -Uri "http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1"