How to warm-up SharePoint or other web applications and WCF (SOAP) services with PowerShell

There are many reasons you might want to warm-up a web application occasionally. It can be after a fresh deployment or on a regular basis after recycling application pools. Some times you might also need to warm-up SOAP services without going through front-end.

It might seems to be any easy task specially if you have PowerShell 3.0 or higher on your servers, but after Googling a while and reviewing some of the top hits I discovered that each solution is missing a part. Some only work in a single server scenario and some has forgotten that each HTTP response might contain links to scripts and images that we need to download and finally I could not find anything for SOAP services that just works. Long story short I decided to put together a simple script that just works and is easy to change to everyone’s needs.

Please note that my only assumption is you have PowerShell 3.0+ in your servers.

Currently the script takes care of the following tasks, but I will most likely improve it to cover other useful scenarios.

• Calling SOAP operations and sending parameters and custom headers
• Calling front-end URIs and downloading scripts and images that are local to the front-end
• Logging to a configurable folder and file name
• Cleaning up old log files

Currently, I have the following points in mind to improve the script.

• Put configuration in a different file.
• Improve function definitions (named and typed parameters and description).
• Default values for parameters when it makes sense (e.g. log folder can be the current folder).
• Support REST services.

	#Parameters
	$logFolder = "C:\Temp\logs"
	$logFile = "$logFolder\Warmup_$(Get-Date -Format "MM-dd-yyyy_hh-mm-ss").log"
	$timeoutSec = 10
	$headers = @{
	SOAPAction= "";
	"Accept-Encoding" = "gzip,deflate";
	"User-Agent" = "PowerShell/Warmup-WebApp"
	}
	$webRequests = @(
	@{
	SOAPAction = "http://tempuri.org/IService1/Operation1";
	Body = @"
	<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/&quot; xmlns:tem="http://tempuri.org/"&gt;
	<soapenv:Body>
	<tem:Operation1>
	<tem:Parameter1>1</tem:Parameter1>
	<tem:Parameter2>2</tem:Parameter2>
	</tem:Operation1>
	</soapenv:Body>
	</soapenv:Envelope>
	"@
	},
	@{
	SOAPAction = "http://tempuri.org/IService1/Operation2&quot;;
	Body = @"
	<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/&quot; xmlns:tem="http://tempuri.org/"&gt;
	<soapenv:Body>
	<tem:Operation1>
	<tem:Parameter1>1</tem:Parameter1>
	<tem:Parameter2>2</tem:Parameter2>
	</tem:Operation1>
	</soapenv:Body>
	</soapenv:Envelope>
	"@
	}
	)
	# Functions
	function Write-Log([string]$level, [string]$text) {
	$logTime = Get-Date -Format "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff"
	Write-Host "[$level] $text"
	if ($logFile -ne $null) {
	"$logTime [$level] $text" | Out-File -FilePath $Logfile -Append
	}
	}
	function Cleanup-LogFiles() {
	$expiryDate = (Get-Date).AddMinutes(-7)
	[bool]$logFileDeleted = $false
	$filesToDelete = Get-Childitem $logFolder -Include "*.log" -Recurse | ? {$_.LastWriteTime -le $expiryDate} | % {
	Remove-Item $_.FullName | out-null
	Write-Log "Information" "File deleted successfully – $_"
	$logFileDeleted = $true
	}
	if (-not $logFileDeleted) {
	Write-Log "Information" "No old log file was found in $logFolder"
	}
	}
	function Warmup-WcfService($serviceUrl) {
	foreach($webRequest in $webRequests) {
	$headers["SOAPAction"] = $webRequest.SOAPAction
	Invoke-WcfService $serviceUrl $headers $webRequest.Body
	}
	}
	function Invoke-WcfService($uri, $headers, $body) {
	$invocationStartTime = Get-Date
	try {
	$result = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri -Method Post -UseDefaultCredentials -ContentType "text/xml; charset=utf-8" -Headers $headers -body $body -TimeoutSec $timeoutSec
	$invocationDuration = (Get-Date).Subtract($invocationStartTime)
	if ($result.StatusCode -eq 200) {
	if ($result.Headers.ContainsKey("Content-Length")) {
	$contentLength = $result.Headers["Content-Length"]
	} else {
	$contentLength = "$($result.RawContentLength) (raw)"
	}
	Write-Log "Information" "WCF operation invoked successfully – Operation: $($webRequest.SOAPAction)($variation), Duration: $($invocationDuration), Length: $contentLength"
	} else {
	Write-Log "Warning" "WCF operation failed – Operation: $($webRequest.SOAPAction)($variation), Status: $($result.StatusCode) $($result.StatusDescription), Length: $contentLength"
	}
	} catch {
	Write-Log "Critical" "WCF operation failed – Operation: $($webRequest.SOAPAction)($variation), Exception: $_"
	}
	}
	function Invoke-WebPage([string]$uri, [bool]$getImages, [bool]$getScripts) {
	try {
	$response = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri -UseDefaultCredentials -TimeoutSec $timeoutSec -Proxy "http://localhost&quot; -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials
	if ($response.StatusCode -eq 200) {
	Write-Log "Information" "Web page invoked successfully – URL: $uri, Images: $($response.Images.Count), Scripts: $($response.Scripts.Count), Links: $($response.Links.Count)"
	} else {
	Write-Log "Warning" "Web page invocation failed – URL: $uri, Status: $($response.StatusCode) $($response.StatusDescription)"
	}
	} catch {
	Write-Log "Critical" "Web page invocation failed – URL: $uri, Exception: $_"
	}
	if ($getImages) {
	Fetch-Resources $uri ($response.Images | ? { $_.src } | % { $_.src })
	}
	if ($getScripts) {
	Fetch-Resources $uri ($response.Scripts | ? { $_.src } | % { $_.src })
	}
	}
	Function Fetch-Resources($baseUrl, $resources) {
	[uri]$uri = $baseUrl
	$rootUrl = $uri.Scheme + "://" + $uri.Authority
	$counter = 0
	foreach ($resUrl in $resources) {
	if ($resUrl.StartsWith("http", [System.StringComparison]::OrdinalIgnoreCase)) {
	$fetchUrl = $resUrl
	} elseif (!$resUrl.StartsWith("/")) {
	$fetchUrl = $rootUrl + "/" + $resUrl
	} else {
	$fetchUrl = $rootUrl + $resUrl
	}
	# Progress
	Write-Progress -Activity "Opening " -Status $fetchUrl -PercentComplete (($counter/$resources.Length)*100)
	$counter++
	# Execute
	try {
	$resp = Invoke-WebRequest -UseDefaultCredentials -UseBasicParsing -Uri $fetchUrl -TimeoutSec 120
	Write-Log "Information" "Resource has been downloaded successfully – URL: $fetchUrl"
	} catch {
	Write-Log "Warning" "Resource failed to download – URL: $fetchUrl, Exception: $_"
	}
	}
	Write-Progress -Activity "Completed" -Completed
	}
	# Execution
	Write-Log "Information" "My Web Application Warmup Script – $(Get-Date)"
	Write-Log "Information" "Cleaning up old log files…"
	Cleanup-LogFiles
	Write-Log "Information" "Warming up WCF Services…"
	Warmup-WcfServices
	Write-Log "Information" "Warming up Front-End…"
	Invoke-WebPage "http://domain.com/area1/Page1.aspx&quot; $true $true
	Invoke-WebPage "http://domain.com/area1/Page2.aspx&quot; $true $true
	Write-Log "Information" "My Web Application Warmup Script Completed."

view raw

Warmup-WebApp.ps1

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I’m open to any suggestion and feature request. Please let me know if you found it useful or if have got something wrong.