Open Internet Explorer browser with POST parameters - c#

I would like to open a webpage in Internet Explorer using the WebBrowserTask but I would also like to pass a POST parameter(s) as well.
Is this possible using the WebBrowserTask?
EDIT: I forgot to mention that this is part of an XNA project. All I would like to do is to display a webpage and passing POST parameters with the request

You can also use the WebClient object to accomplish this though it is much more obscure. Webclient is a wrapper around HTTPRequest. It is like HTTPRequest on easy mode. The trade off is that if you want to send post data then you need to be crafty about it. You can create new headers in WebClient and set their names to what you need. Then when you make the call it will send them out as post data. Sounds complicated but actually pretty easy and clean when implemented. WAY cleaner than HTTPRequest.

WebBrowserTask can only navigate to a specific page and invoke GET request. You can simulate POST requests using the HttpWebRequest, but I doubt that will help you with what you are trying to do.

This is not possible with the WebBrowserTask, however it is possible using the WebBrowser control.
Specifically check out the Navigate method of WebBrowser.
This takes a byte[] with your POST data.
public void Navigate(
Uri uri,
byte[] postData,
string additionalHeaders)

Related

Using .Net how can I programmatically navigate to a webpage, interact with it via code, then get particular values from a newly generated page

I have a scenario where I would like to automate programmatically the following process:
Currently, I have to manually
Navigate to a webpage
Enter some text (an email) in a certain field on the webpage
Press the 'Search' button, which generates a new page containing a Table with the results on it.
Manually scroll through the generated results table and extract 4 pieces of information.
Is there a way for me to do this from a Desktop WPF App using C# ?
I am aware there is a WebClient type that can download a string, presumably of the content of the webpage, but I don't see how that would help me.
My knowledge of web based stuff is pretty non-existent so I am quite lost how to go about this, or even if this is possible.
I think a web driver is what you're looking for, I would suggest using Selenium, you can navigate to sites and send input or clicks to specific elements in them.
Well, I'll write the algorithm for you but you also need to some homework.
UseWebClient get the htm page with the form you want to auto fill and submit
Us regex and extract the action attribute of the form you want to auto submit. That gets you the URL you want to submit your next request to.
Since you know the fields in that form, create a class corresponding to those fields, let's call the class AutoClass
Create a new instance of your auto class and assign values you want to auto fill
Using WebClient to send your new request with the url you extracted from the form previously, attach your object which you want to send to the server either through serialization or any method.
Send the request and wait for feedback, then further action
Either use a web driver like Puppeteer (Selenium is kinda dead) or use HTTPS protocol to make web requests (if you don't get stopped by bot checks). I feel like your looking for the latter method because there is no reason to use a web driver in this case when a lighter method like HTTP requests can be used.
You can use RestSharp or the built in libraries if you want. Here is a popular thread of the ways to send requests with the libraries built in to C#.
To figure out what you need to send you should use a tool like Fiddler or Chrome Dev Tools (specifically the Network tab) to see what you need to send to acheive your goal as you would in a browser.

Upload image from android to ASP.NET server C#

After searching in google and here, i saw the popular approach is to convert the image to byte array and then to base64 string. this part was easy, but sending it and receiving it over HTTP is harder, and I can't find an easy way to do it.
I have 2 main question which depend one another
Send with android on HTTP:
Android 6 deprecated HttpClient, so i don't want to use that.
I thought to use Volley but i cant figure out how to make it work right.
Can you please give me an example of code to transfer it in a simple and elegant way which will be easy to intercept with C#?
Receive with C# and use of web service:
I'm not sure what is the best way to implement it? Should I create a web service method? in case i should, how can i intercept the post request? Should I create a new page to handle only this part. this way i know how to handle the request.
Edit:
I managed to create a request using HttpClient, but the base64 string after converting the file made the URI too long.
any other ideas?
I found here a post for uploading files from Android to ASP.NET Web API. However the HTTPClient was used for handling HTTP request but I think you can use code as reference.
Found the simple and elegant solution i wanted!
I use loopj library, "android-async-http" for sending files with 3-4 lines.
Then i get the request to a new aspx file in my ASP.NET server, and save it using "Request.Files" object.

Easy alternative to HttpWebRequest for POST requests?

I need to trigger an action on a remote server using an http POST request. The server sends a response, either Y or N, to inform me if the action suceeded or not.
I am looking at using HttpWebRequest to do this, but this seems too complex. To use this class you have to set all the headers, such as content type and content length.
Is there a quicker way to send a POST request that doesn't require setting lower level properties such as this?
Try this WebClient
// Create a new WebClient instance.
WebClient myWebClient = new WebClient();
byte[] responseArray = myWebClient.UploadData("YOUR URI","POST","DATA to be Posted");
You can try with WebClient class. It's much more simpler and it's basically a wrapper for HttpWebRequest. It encapsulate all this complex logic you're trying to avoid.
I think the easiest built in class in the framework is WebClient. Scott Hanselman has an example on how to perform gets and posts using it. This SO answer also has a good overview on how to post data.
If you have control over the server you're posting to, you might want to consider making it respond with HTTP status codes instead of some custom method.
the wcf web api project has an http client. It's super easy to use. http://wcf.codeplex.com/

how to create a win app which can interact with a website?

Hi
I'm trying to write a windows application which can read HTML content of a specific website and fill some data in some input fields and submit the page.
what I did untill now was reading page content from a WebBrowser object, navigated to the website.
I know that i need to create some request/response variables and work with them, but I have no good view on what i'm trying to do.
also, my information about HttpRequest and HttpResponse is so low...
HttpWebRequest is what you're looking for, examples for read/write to scrape abound.
WebClient might be simpler for you to implement but in the end is only a wrapper to the above.
You can try to use the approach described in the HttpWebRequest with https in C# thread as a starting point.

Getting data from a webpage

I have an idea for an App that would really help me out in work but I'm not sure if it's possible.
I want to run a C# desktop application that will ask for a value. When a value is supplied, the application will open a browswer, go to a webpage and add the value into a form on an online website. The form is then submitted and a new page is loaded that contains a table of results. I then want to extract the table of results from the page source and write code to parse the result values.
It is not important that the user see's this happen in an actual browser. In other words if there's a way to do it by reading HTTP requests then thats great.
The biggest problem I have is getting the values into the form and then retrieving the page source after the form is submitted and the next page loads.
Any help really appreciated.
Thanks
Provided that you're only using this in a legal context:
Usually, web forms are sent via POST request to the web server, specifically some script that handles it. You can look at the HTML code for the form's page and find out the destination for the form (form's action).
You can then use a HttpWebRequest in C# to "pretend you are the form", sending a POST request with all the required parameters (adding them to the HTTP header).
As a result you will get the source code of the destination page as it would be sent to the browser. You can parse this.
This is definitely possible and you don't need to use an actual web browser for this. You can simply use a System.Net.WebClient to send your HTTP request and get an HTTP response.
I suggest to use wireshark (or you can use Firefox + Firebug) it allows you to see HTTP requests and responses. By looking at the HTTP traffic you can see exactly how you should pass your HTTP request and which parameters you should be setting.
You don't need to involve the browser with this. WebClient should do all that you require. You'll need to see what's actually being posted when you submit the form with the browser, and then you should be able to make a POST request using the WebClient and retrieve the resulting page as a string.
The docs for the WebClient constructor have a nice example.
See e.g. this question for some pointers on at least the data retrieval side. You're going to know a lot more about the http protocol before you're done with this...
Why would you do this through web pages if you don't even want the user to do anything?
Web pages are purely for interaction with users, if you simply want data transfer, use WCF.
#Brian using Wireshark will result in a very angry network manager, make sure you are actually allowed to use it.

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