What is the best way to send HTTP requests from Windows Powershell?

Question

What is the best way to send HTTP requests from Windows Powershell?

Answer 1

Found one way:

$page = (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString("http://localhost/")

Thanks to Steven Murawski for his comment:

The best way really depends on what task you are trying to accomplish as the two answers below have noted. WebClient is the simplest, but HttpWebRequest is the most flexible.

Answer 2

System.Net.WebClient is the easiest way to do it for simple GET request. However if you need to do a POST request for a form then you will need to use System.Net.HttpWebRequest.

Answer 3

In PowerShell 3.0+ you can use Invoke-WebRequest

$page = Invoke-WebRequest "http://localhost/"