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Referencing the help file for `Invoke-RestMethod:

PS /home/nicholas> PS /home/nicholas> $response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/feed/ PS /home/nicholas> PS /home/nicholas> $json = $response | ConvertTo-Json WARNING: Resulting JSON is truncated as serialization has exceeded the set depth of 2. PS /home/nicholas> PS /home/nicholas> $xml = $response | ConvertTo-Xml PS /home/nicholas> PS /home/nicholas> $xml.OuterXml

How can I convert the response to xml and output it, as above, in a single line?

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3 Answers 3

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The specific URI you're targeting returns XML content, which Invoke-RestMethod automatically parses into XML DOMs (document object models) of type System.Xml.XmlElement (an array of such instances in this case).

A simple way to visualize the output is to access the .OuterXml property:

(Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/feed/).OuterXml

If you really need a single-line representation:

(Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/feed/).OuterXml -replace '\r?\n'

You can work with these XmlElement instances using OOP techniques, relying on PowerShell's convenient adaptation of the XML DOM; for instance, the following extracts the value of the <title> child element from all array elements, using member-access enumeration:

$entries = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/feed/ $entries.title

Note:

  • Because the target URI represents an Atom feed, the feed entries are returned as an array of XML elements rather than as a single XML document.

  • It is more common for web services to return XML that is parsed into a single XML document, as a [xml] (System.Xml.XmlDocument) instance.

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Just a slight variant:

PS /home/nicholas> PS /home/nicholas> $url="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/feed/" PS /home/nicholas> PS /home/nicholas> Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri $url -Body $body -ContentType 'application/xml'

which, despite a specified "ContentType" certainly seems to not be XML at least as printed to the console. Still, interesting.

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2 Comments

What you're seeing is PowerShell's default formatting of the System.Xml.XmlElement objects it has automatically parsed the XML response text into.
Also, in your call -ContentType 'application/xml' is effectively ignored, because it relates only to the request data being sent; it doesn't request the response format.
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[xml]$testResult = (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'url').OuterXml $testResult.Details.Status

In case xml is 3

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Please format your post properly. Also, [xml]$testResult = (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'url').OuterXml is unnecessary - $testResult = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'url' will do, if the response is XML text, because PowerShell automatically parses it into an [xml] instance. I assume that $testResult.Details.Status is just an example of how to drill down into the [xml] instance, but I suggest you point that out in the answer.

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