Setting all headers when using Powershell Invoke-WebRequest

Question

I would like to download PDF file from online form. I used the fiddler to find out the header and post fields. However, I cannot get the header from Firefox to match with Powershell using Invoke-webrequest.

Original request

POST http://somesight/SPLeam/EAMDisplayReportWithParamValues.asp HTTP/1.1   
Host: someserver
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0    
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8    
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5    
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Referer: http://someserver/SPLeam/EAMPickParamValues.asp?plant=01&reportuser=reports&reportuserpw=pw&ReportName=SPLEAM%5CMNT+%2D+MM+Tracking+Rpt%2Erpt
Cookie: ASPSESDFSDIDSSQAQBQC=APHPHMNCHIECSFSSPOIKBDCAM`    
Connection: keep-alive    
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded    
Content-Length: 132

Text0=12%2F1%2F2013&Text1=12%2F31%2F2013&Text2=MESGI&Drop2=MESCI&Text3=01&Text4=&Drop4=&Text5=R&Text6=N&cmdSaveParameters=Run+Report

POWERSHELL

POST http://someserver/SPLeam/EAMPickParamValues.asp?plant=01&reportuser=reports&reportuserpw=pw&ReportName=SPLEAM%5CMNT+%2D+MM+Tracking+Rpt%2Erpt HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) WindowsPowerShell/3.0
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Host: someserver
Content-Length: 129
Connection: Keep-Alive
cmdSaveParameters=Run%2bReport&Text3=01&Text5=R&Text1=12%252F31%252F2013&Drop2=MI&Text2=MI&Text4=&Text6=N&Text0=12%252F1%252F2013

I run it as $f = invoke-webrequest -uri $url -UserAgent $useragent -method Post -Body $param

How can I make Powershell's request match what Firefox sent?

Shouldn't your $url be set to http://somesight/SPLeam/EAMDisplayReportWithParamValues.asp in order to match the working example? Also, try putting the form body in a hashtable to get proper HTML encoding e.g. -body @{Text0='12/1/2013';...;cmdSaveParameters='Run+Report'} — Keith Hill
The body is in hashtable just as you described it. The URL goes to the referer URL described in header. I would like to use the original URL but cannot add referer in Header option. I get an error. Also cannot add Accept to Header. Another way to add them separately? — user3367197

EricLaw EricLaw · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-05T17:36:39

.NET's HTTPWebRequest object has separate properties for the Accept and Referer headers; you must manually set these properties instead of trying to add the headers directly.

(These header restrictions exist partly for security purposes; partial trust code cannot set the properties).

Setting all headers when using Powershell Invoke-WebRequest

1 Answers