In the first Free Upskill Challenge in this series, UC – PowerShell, Microsoft MVP Andrew Pla provided a basic overview, and you took the first steps into PS for cybersecurity. In this second one on REST APIs in PS7, you’ll learn how to open up PowerShell to get data from far beyond the boundaries of your own enterprise. More importantly, you’ll discover opportunities for automation!
Many tools you use every day are really APIs with a dashboard on top. The UI is just one way to talk to the platform, but the real interface is often an HTTP endpoint that receives requests, returns data, and performs actions behind the scenes.
If you only ever use the UI, you are limited to clicking through forms and buttons the way the vendor designed them. But, we’re hackers! We know that there’s a lot more happening behind the scenes.
In this Upskill Challenge, you will use PowerShell 7 to work with REST-style APIs. You will learn how to read generic API documentation, translate what you see into PowerShell, and call endpoints to pull data or perform actions in a repeatable, scriptable way.
Price = FREE!
Goals for UC – PowerShell: APIs in PS7
By the end of this UC, you should be able to:
- Break down an API request into core parts – Base URI, endpoint, method, headers, and body.
- Explain REST basics in practical terms – How GET, POST, PATCH, and DELETE map to typical actions.
- Call a REST-style API with PowerShell 7 – Use ‘Invoke-RestMethod’ with headers, query strings, and JSON bodies.
- Recognize automation opportunities – Use APIs to streamline tasks you’d normally perform through dashboards.
What’s an Upskill Challenge (UC)?
A UC is a CTF-style, bite-sized lesson from the JHT Team, our courseware developers as well as “friends” of JHT. They are meant to be short and to the point. UCs focus on a single tool or concept and are helpful in quickly providing useful skills that might be prerequisites for other types of educational content on the platform.
A UC should be 10 – 30 minutes of student time and have no VMs. There are quizzes to make sure that the content is understood.
Prerequisites for UC – PowerShell: APIs in PS7
UCs assume no knowledge at all! They’re meant to be completely self-contained, so all of the answers are in the lesson. No outside research is required.
