Simple Examples of PowerShell's Invoke-RestMethod

01 Oct 2014

The documentation for Invoke-RestMethod is a long sea of text. Skip it. These simple examples should get your started with consuming a REST API with PowerShell. Just a quick note that Invoke-RestMethod will parse the HTTP response for you and return a PowerShell object.

Simple GET example

$response = Invoke-RestMethod 'http://example.com/api/people'
# assuming the response was in this format { "items": [] }
# we can now extract the child people like this
$people = $response.items

GET with custom headers example

$headers = New-Object "System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary[[String],[String]]"
$headers.Add("X-DATE", '9/29/2014')
$headers.Add("X-SIGNATURE", '234j123l4kl23j41l23k4j')
$headers.Add("X-API-KEY", 'testuser')

$response = Invoke-RestMethod 'http://example.com/api/people/1' -Headers $headers

PUT/POST example

$person = @{
    first='joe'
    lastname='doe'
}
$json = $person | ConvertTo-Json
$response = Invoke-RestMethod 'http://example.com/api/people/1' -Method Put -Body $json -ContentType 'application/json'

DELETE example

$response = Invoke-RestMethod 'http://example.com/api/people/1' -Method Delete