February 2015 NoVA PSUG Mini-Scripting Games Solutions

Challenge 1 Solution 1

$WebRequest = Invoke-WebRequest http://www.presidentsusa.net/presvplist.html
$tables = @($WebRequest.ParsedHtml.getElementsByTagName("TABLE"))
$table = $tables[0]

$titles = @()
$rows = @($table.Rows)
$arrPresidents = @()

foreach($row in $rows){
    $cells = @($row.Cells)
    if($cells[0].tagName -eq "TH"){
        $titles = @($cells | % { ("" + $_.InnerText).Trim() })
        continue
    }

    $resultObject = [Ordered] @{}

    for($counter = 0; $counter -lt $cells.Count; $counter++){
        $title = $titles[$counter]
        $resultObject[$title] = ("" + $cells[$counter].InnerText).Trim()
    }

    $a = $resultObject.President -split " "
       $CustomObject = New-Object psobject

    if ($a[2].Length -gt 3){

        $CustomObject | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "LastName" -Value $a[2]

    }

    else{
        $CustomObject | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "LastName" -Value $a[3]
    }

    $CustomObject | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "FirstName" -Value $a[1]
    $arrPresidents += $CustomObject
}

$arrPresidents | Sort-Object LastName

Challenge 1 Solution 2

$contents = iwr 'http://www.presidentsusa.net/presvplist.html'
$rawNames = $contents.AllElements | Where-Object {$_.tagName -eq "TD" -and $_.innerText -match "^\d+"} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty innerText

$list = foreach ($item in $rawNames)
{
    $splitArray = $item.split(' ')
    $president = [pscustomobject]@{Number = $splitArray[0].trim('.')
                   Firstname = $splitArray[1]
                   Lastname = $splitArray[-2]
                   Term = $splitArray[-1]}

    Write-Output $president
}

$list | Sort-Object -Property Lastname

The President of the United States is both an honor and considered one of the world's most powerful people. The US Presidents List responsibilities include being the commander-in-chief of the military and leading the nation with the largest economy.