CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlxmlpowershell
MisterAlvis
MisterAlvis

Reputation: 715

In Powershell Use -replace or .replace To Change TD value to a Link

I am trying to generate HTML reports of data collected in Powershell. I want to eventually have the HTML link to more specific information about the different elements in the table. In particular, the first column contains names of Virtual Machines, but this isn't particularly important. I am attempting to replace the name value with a link.

 for($i=1; $i -le $xml.table.tr.Count-1; $i++){
 $xml.table.tr[$i].td[0].replace($xml.table.tr[$i].td[0],"<a href=`"http://stackoverflow.com`">myLink</a>")
 }

  $file = Join-Path C:\users\myname\Documents "VMSpecs.html"

  ConvertTo-Html -Title "VM Specs" `
  -CssUri C:\Users\myname\Documents\style.css `
  -Body $($xml.InnerXml) | Out-file $file


 Invoke-item $file

Based on the output, the value of $xml.table.tr[$i].td[0] is being replaced with the link information but not permanently. When the file is written to HTML the link information is nowhere to be found, and the original value is still held in the td el

So,big picture, I would like to know how to append a link into html -fragment at a particular location. Any samples or resources be much obliged.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1766

Answers (1)

KevinD
KevinD

Reputation: 3163

Both .Replace and -replace produce a new string. What you'll want to do is reassign the results:

for($i=1; $i -le $xml.table.tr.Count-1; $i++){
  $xml.table.tr[$i].td[0] = $xml.table.tr[$i].td[0].replace($xml.table.tr[$i].td[0],"<a href=`"http://stackoverflow.com`">myLink</a>")
 }

Although, in this particular case, there doesn't seem to be any need for the replace at all. Since you're replacing the entire content of the td, just directly assign it:

 for($i=1; $i -le $xml.table.tr.Count-1; $i++){
  $xml.table.tr[$i].td[0] = "<a href=`"http://stackoverflow.com`">myLink</a>"
 }

I initially misread your question as being about replace, rather than assigning to a node. It looks like when you get a particular element as above, PowerShell is converting it to a string, so you're not actually updating the node. Try this instead:

 for($i=1; $i -le $xml.table.tr.Count-1; $i++){
  ($xml.table.tr[$i].GetElementsByTagName("td") | Select-Object -First 1)."#text" = "<a href=`"http://stackoverflow.com`">myLink</a>"
 }

The "#text" property may vary, I'm not sure. I did a test with a very simple HTML file, and by doing a Get-Member on each level of the resulting XML object, I found that that was the property I needed to update.

Hmmm ... okay, try this. Create a new XML element containing the link, and append it to the td element:

for($i=1; $i -le $xml.table.tr.Count-1; $i++){
  $link = $xml.CreateElement("a")
  $link.SetAttribute("href", "http://stackoverflow.com")
  $link.InnerText = "myLink"
  $xml.table.tr[$i].FirstChild."#text" = ""
  $xml.table.tr[$i].FirstChild.AppendChild($link)
}

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions