Query a website with data from Excel using Powershell

Question

I want to use a powershell script to get data from an excel sheet to query an online database

I used this code to open the spreadsheet from powershell

$xl = New-Object -COM "Excel.Application"
$xl.Visible = $true
$wb = $xl.Workbooks.Open("C:\Documents\Book4.xlsx")
$ws = $wb.Sheets.Item(1)

But I can't really work on the spreadsheet ie reference cells. What I need is to select contents of individual cells, store in a variable and use to populate a query for an online database.

I used this code to access the website url

$IE=new-object -com internetexplorer.application
$IE.navigate2("http://www.google.com")
$IE.visible=$true

But I've not been able to fill the form or query the database.

Please how can I do this using powershell? Thanks

Answer 1

Use the $ws.Columns

Example (get the text in column2, row 2):

$query = $ws.Columns[2].Rows[2].Text

Then you could use and navigate to the google using the query string, example:

$IE.navigate2(("http://www.google.com?q={0}" -f $query))

You could also use the Range to fetch the cells (if multiple) and select it's text.

Example (get cells between A2-A99, and select the text):

$queries = $ws.Range("A2","A99")|select Text

Then you will have an array with the queries in mind if you want to iterate over them.

Answer 2

Thank you so much guys.

This code works well for google although you might have to do some formatting to the query when the browser launches

#To open spreadsheet
$xl = New-Object -COM "Excel.Application" 
$xl.Visible = $true
$wb = $xl.Workbooks.Open("C:\Users\Documents\Book4.xlsx")
$ws = $wb.Sheets.Item("Team Sheet") #Incase of multiple sheets
$queries = $ws.Range("D9")|select Text #specify cell use ("D9", "D99") for range 
#$queries 

#To open urls
$IE=new-object -com internetexplorer.application
$IE.navigate2(("http://www.google.com?q={0}" -f $queries))
$IE.visible=$true

Just in case anyone needs it