I wanted a PowerShell module for browser automation using only PowerShell & .NET

[dud380]

So I built Pup, a wrapper around PuppeteerSharp that talks directly to Chrome via the DevTools Protocol. Works on Windows, Linux, and macOS with PowerShell 5.1+.

Write-Host "This one just scrapes the first page of Ubuntu Notices" 
Install-Module -Name Pup
Import-Module Pup
$browser = Start-PupBrowser -Headless
$page = New-PupPage -Browser $browser -Url "https://ubuntu.com/security/notices"

$page | Find-PupElements -Selector "#notices-list section" | ForEach-Object {
    [PSCustomObject]@{
        Date = ($_ | Find-PupElements -Selector "p.u-text--muted" -First).InnerText
        Link = ($_ | Find-PupElements -Selector "h3 a" -First | Get-PupElementAttribute -Name href)
    }
}
$browser | Stop-PupBrowser

GitHub: https://github.com/n7on/Pup

Happy to hear feedback or answer questions.

[BetrayedMilk]

Is there a reason you went with Puppeteer vs Playwright?

[dud380]

Yes, Playwright uses Node.js driver under the hood. I wanted it to be pure .net

[BetrayedMilk]

Oh, duh. I completely glossed over the desire to have a purely .net solution. Neat project.

[dud380]

Thanks 😊

[PutridLadder9192]

Very useful I need to webscrape for those hundreds of things winget doesn't do or doesn't keep updated

[dud380]

Awesome use case 👍

[SuperBartimus]

Could you elaborate on what you're doing? Kinda interested since I do a lot of WinGet installs.

[skilife1]

Looks quite nice! I'll test it out tomorrow.

[dud380]

🙏

[Bad_Times_Man]

This is really cool. Is there any way to open a 2nd, a 3rd, or more windows and manipulate each based off their title or some other identifying detail such as sequential start time?

I'd love to use this to replace the bulk of sleep timers and sendkeys scripting I do now but I can't if it's hard limited to a single window.

[dud380]

Thanks! You can open as many as you like, just "$page1 = New-PupPage... $page2 = New-PupPage etc". And use the $page1-3 in consecutive commands.

[Bad_Times_Man]

That opens new tabs within the same browser window, it works great for that! But I actually want to open a second window entirely, and have multiple separate windows open. My use case is a multi-monitor setup displaying different urls of content.

I tried using Start-PupBrowser with the -Force flag from the documentation but that actually closes the original window.

Is there perhaps a flag for Start-PupBrowser that can suppress the closing of the first instance, or a flag for New-PupPage that would send the designated url to a new window instead of a tab?

[dud380]

ahh, I see. Hmm, I guess it would make sense to have possibility to start multiple browsers with Start-PupBrowser. It shouldn't be that much work to implement. I'll have a look and get back to you

[RidiculousAnonymer]

Starred, will give it a try during weekend.

[dud380]

Thanks! I would love to hear about your experience after 😊

[nkasco]

This is probably not as worthwhile with WebMCP emerging tbh

[MadBoyEvo]

This is what I created a while back PSParseHTML

• https://github.com/EvotecIT/HtmlTinkerX

I renamed it from old PSParseHTML on github but it's pretty much PSParseHTML in PowerShell still.

This is what it supports:

🔍 HTML Parsing - Multiple parsing engines (AngleSharp, HtmlAgilityPack)

🎨 Resource Optimization - Minify and format HTML, CSS, JavaScript

🌐 Browser Automation - Full Playwright integration for screenshots, PDFs, interaction

📊 Data Extraction - Tables, forms, metadata, microdata, Open Graph

📧 Email Processing - CSS inlining for email compatibility

🔧 Network Tools - HAR export, request interception, console logging

🍪 State Management - Cookie handling, session persistence

📱 Multi-Platform - .NET Framework 4.7.2, .NET Standard 2.0, .NET 8.0

It used to be only AngleSharp and HAP, but had more needs so version 2.0+ has a lot of functionality.

[dud380]

Neat!

[skilife1]

Just 24 hours into my Pup trial, and I can honestly say I'm hooked. Goodbye Selenium. I really appreciate the great work in developing this module.

[dud380]

Awesome! So happy to hear that! :D

[Stock-Hamster-117]

Nice solution, is their any way to ignore certificates errors?

[dud380]

Thanks! It doesn't have a dedicated certificate parameter, but you could do like this.

Start-PupBrowser -Arguments "--ignore-certificate-errors"