Making a long backstory short, I was checking one of our local weather sites during one of the few warm summer days here in Northern-Norway. For most people, it ends there but I obviously started thinking that it would be so much easier to write a function that could check the weather for me. I head off to check their API and it turns out that they are working on a modern API but is serving out XML files based on location.
I have never worked with XML before, so the journey to extract the information I wanted was kind of interesting. I noted everything, so let’s take a look at how one can go about extracting the information one needs from XML and use it in PowerShell. Feel free to follow the lines of code.
Turns out my example Yr (a weather service in Norway) has changed a lot in it’s XML structure. The example still applies, but I’ll update this as soon as possible with new example data.
# Load the file, define it as XML.
$URL = "https://www.yr.no/sted/Norge/postnummer/9024/varsel.xml"
[xml]$file = Invoke-webrequest -uri $URL
# Check the result.
$file
# Check the property "weatherdata".
$file.weatherdata
# We want real time data, so let's continue with observations.
$file.weatherdata.observations
# Closing in at something. Checking out our options by using Get-Member...
$file.weatherdata.observations | Get-Member
# And now, weatherstation?
$file.weatherdata.observations.weatherstation
# Bingo.