Socket Client over PowerShell

Table of Contents

In this article let’s use PowerShell to create a socket client and do a simple call to a webserver.

There are multiple ways to create sockets using PowerShell. For this article let’s take use TcpClient object for it’s simplicity.

Table of Contents #

Set up the Client Socket
Sending the Request
Reading the Response
Closing the Connection
Complete Code

Set up the Client Socket #

Let’s start by creating the client object. TcpClient it’s a very easy way to handle TCP connections as a client.

We’re going to use the web server https://httpbin.org/ to connect our client.

# Creates the TCP Client
$client = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient

# Connect to the server
$client.Connect("eu.httpbin.org", 80)

Sending the Request #

Since we’re calling a Web Server HTTP 1.1. We must send the appropriate request as a HTTP 1.1 client.

# Data mimicking a web client
$payload = "GET /get HTTP/1.1
Host: eu.httpbin.org
Accept: */*

"

$bytesPayload = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($payload) 
$stream.Write($bytesPayload, 0, $bytesPayload.Length)

Reading the Response #

Once the request is sent we must immediately start reading the response.

# Receive data from the server
$bufferResponse = New-Object byte[] 4096 #enough to read our response 4mb
$bytesRead = $stream.Read($bufferResponse, 0, $bufferResponse.Length)
$response = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString($bytesRead, 0, $bytesRead)

# Output the Response
Write-Host $response

Finally! Close the connection #

Don’t forget to close the connection. 🚀

# Close the connection
$stream.Close()
$client.Close()

Complete Code #

# Create a TCP client object
$client = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient

# Connect to the server
$client.Connect("eu.httpbin.org", 80) 

# Get the network stream for reading and writing
$stream = $client.GetStream() 

# Send data to the server
$data = "GET /get HTTP/1.1
Host: eu.httpbin.org
Accept: */*

"

$bytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($data) 
$stream.Write($bytes, 0, $bytes.Length)

# Receive data from the server
$buffer = New-Object byte[] 1024
$bytesRead = $stream.Read($buffer, 0, $buffer.Length)
$response = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString($buffer, 0, $bytesRead)

# Display the response
Write-Host $response

# Close the connection
$stream.Close()
$client.Close()