How to enter text into an input field through Power Shell? - windows

Question

Here is a PowerShell script to trigger Internet Explorer, open LinkedIn login page and enter some text in the username text field.
$ie = New-Object -Com "InternetExplorer.Application"
$ie.Navigate("www.linkedIn.com")
$ie.Visible = $true
$doc = $ie.document
$usernameElement = $doc.getElementByTagName("input") | Where-Object {$_.id = "session_key-login""}
$usernameElement.Click()
Get-Process iexplore | Foreach-Object {$_.CloseMainWindow()}
Unfortunately, I keep getting the following error:
You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression.
At C:\Users\Pinku\Desktop\Untitled1.ps1:7 char:23
+ $usernameElement.Click <<<< ()
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (Click:String) [], RuntimeExcepti
on
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull
I have tried but have not been able to alleviate myself from this issue.Please suggest!

Answer 1

Instead of using $doc.getElementsByTagName("input") and then trying to filter through the results, try retrieving the ID directly using getElementById:
$usernameElement = $doc.getElementById("session_key-login")
$usernameElement.Click()
---Edit---
Response to still getting the null-valued expression after using the above:
The error message is that it can't find any elements called "session_key-login", and so it returns $null, and hence, when you try to invoke the Click() method, it throws the error. Some things to try:
-Check to see if the id exists. Run the following code after creating your $ie object, and see if there is an ID that matches "session_key-login":
$ie = New-Object -Com "InternetExplorer.Application"
$ie.Navigate("www.linkedIn.com")
$ie.Visible = $true
$doc = $ie.document
$doc.getElementsByTagName("Input") | Select Id, Name
-Try running your PowerShell session as Administrator. I know I wasn't able to launch IE properly until I ran PowerShell as Administrator. For ex. even though the iexplore process was created, the physical Internet Explorer window didn't open for me.