Develop Reference

How to scrape data from another website which is built in AngularJS?

I have to get some specific data from another web page which is built in AngularJS.
What I have done until now:
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
request.Method = "GET";
response = request.GetResponse();
reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream(), Encoding.UTF8);
result = reader.ReadToEnd();
HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml(result);
It's not returning proper HTML and I suppose (after searching) that the site is returning 4 items but the page source shows only one item with this {{item.name}} type of syntax.
How to solve this issue?

If you use HttpWebRequest, it will just return you the HTML template, it will not contain any data. Due to the nature of Angular, data binding happens later on using JavaScript.
I suggest you to use WebBrowser Control instead of HttpWebRequest for data scraping. Using WebBrowser you should be able to get the complete HTML after the $scope is initialized and data is added to the DOM.
To know more about how to use WebBrowser in ASP.NET you can check this link

.net MVC：How to hide the true URL?

I have an external URL, like http://a.com/?id=5 (not in my project)
and I want my website to show this URL's contents,
ex.
My website(http://MyWebsite.com/?id=123) shows 3rd party's url (http://a.com/?id=5) contents
but I don't want the client side to get a real URL(http://a.com/?id=5), I'll check the AUTH first and then shows the page.

I assume that you do not have control over the server of "http://a.com/?id=5". I think there's no way to completely hide the external link to users. They can always look at the HTML source code and http requests & trace back the original location.
One possible solution to partially hide that external site is using curl equivalent of MVC, on your controller: after auth-ed, you request the website from "http://a.com/?id=5" and then return that to your user:
ASP.NET MVC - Using cURL or similar to perform requests in application:
I assume the request to "http://a.com/?id=5" is in GET method:
public string GetResponseText(string userAgent) {
string url = "http://a.com/?id=5";
string responseText = String.Empty;
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
request.Method = "GET";
request.UserAgent = userAgent;
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream())) {
responseText = sr.ReadToEnd();
}
return responseText;
}
then, you just need to call this in your controller. Pass the same userAgent from client so that they can view the website exactly like they open it with their web browsers:
return GetResponseText( request.UserAgent);
//request is the request passed to the controller for http://MyWebsite.com/?id=123
PS: I may not using the correct MVC API, but the idea is there. Just need to look up MVC document on HttpWebRequest to make it work correctly.

Retrieve DOM data from site

Is there any chance to retrieve DOM results when I click older posts from the site:
http://www.facebook.com/FamilyGuy
using C# or Java? I heard that it is possible to execute a script with onclick and get results. How I can execute this script:
onclick="(JSCC.get('j4eb9ad57ab8a19f468880561') && JSCC.get('j4eb9ad57ab8a19f468880561').getHandler())(); return false;"

I think older posts link sends an Ajax request and appends the response to the page. (I'm not sure. You should check the page source).
You can emulate this behavior in C#, Java, and JavaScript (you already have the code for javascript).
Edit:
It seems that Facebook uses some sort of internal APIs (JSCC) to load the content and it's undocumented.
I don't know about Facebook Developers' APIs (you may want to check that first) but if you want to emulate exactly what happens in your browser then you can use TamperData to intercept GET requests when you click on more posts link and find the request URL and it's parameters.
After you get this information you have to Login to your account in your application and get the authentication cookie.
C# sample code as you requested:
private CookieContainer GetCookieContainer(string loginURL, string userName, string password)
{
var webRequest = WebRequest.Create(loginURL) as HttpWebRequest;
var responseReader = new StreamReader(webRequest.GetResponse().GetResponseStream());
string responseData = responseReader.ReadToEnd();
responseReader.Close();
// Now you may need to extract some values from the login form and build the POST data with your username and password.
// I don't know what exactly you need to POST but again a TamperData observation will help you to find out.
string postData =String.Format("UserName={0}&Password={1}", userName, password); // I emphasize that this is just an example.
// cookie container
var cookies = new CookieContainer();
// post the login form
webRequest = WebRequest.Create(loginURL) as HttpWebRequest;
webRequest.Method = "POST";
webRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
webRequest.CookieContainer = cookies;
// write the form values into the request message
var requestWriter = new StreamWriter(webRequest.GetRequestStream());
requestWriter.Write(postData);
requestWriter.Close();
webRequest.GetResponse().Close();
return cookies;
}
Then you can perform GET requests with the cookie you have, on the URL you've got from analyzing that JSCC.get().getHandler() requests using TamperData, and eventually you'll get what you want as a response stream:
var webRequest = WebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;
webRequest.CookieContainer = GetCookieContainer(url, userName, password);
var responseStream = webRequest.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();
You can also use Selenium for browser automation. It also has C# and Java APIs (I have no experience using Selenium).

Facebook loads it's content dynamically with AJAX. You can use a tool like Firebug to examine what kind of request is made, and then replicate it.
Or you can use a browser render engine like webkit to process the JavaScript for you and expose the resulting HTML:
http://webscraping.com/blog/Scraping-JavaScript-webpages-with-webkit/

how to read the response from a web site?

I have a website url which gives corresponding city names by taking zip code as input parameter. Now I want to know how to read the response from the site.
This is the link I am using http://zipinfo.com/cgi-local/zipsrch.exe?zip=60680

You'll have to Use the HTTPWebRequest object to connect to the site and scrape the information from the response.
Look for html tags or class names that wrap the content you are trying to find, then use either regexes or string functions to get the required data.
Good example here:

try this (you'll need to include System.text and System.net)
WebClient client = new WebClient();
string url = "http://zipinfo.com/cgi-local/zipsrch.exe?zip=60680";
Byte[] requestedHTML;
requestedHTML = client.DownloadData(url);
UTF8Encoding objUTF8 = new UTF8Encoding();
string html = objUTF8.GetString(requestedHTML);
Response.Write(html);

The simplest way it to use the light-weight WebClient classes in System.Net namespace. The following example code will just download the entire response as a string:
using (WebClient wc = new WebClient())
{
string response = wc.DownloadString("http://zipinfo.com/cgi-local/zipsrch.exe?zip=60680");
}
However, if you require more control over the response and request process then you can use the more heavy-weight HttpWebRequest Class. For instance, you may want to deal with different status codes or headers. There's an example of using HttpWebRequest this in the article How to use HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse in .NET on CodeProject.

Used the WebClient Class (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webclient%28v=VS.100%29.aspx) to request the page and get the response as a string.
WebClient wc = new WebClient();
String s = wc.DownloadString(DestinationUrl);
You can search the response for specific HTML using String.IndexOf, SubString, etc, regular expressions, or try something like the HTML Agility Pack (http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/) which was created specifically to help parse HTML.

first of all, you better find a good Web Service for this purpose.
and this is an HttpWebRequest example:
HttpWebRequest httpRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://zipinfo.com/cgi-local/zipsrch.exe?zip=60680");
httpRequest.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
HttpWebResponse httpResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpRequest.GetResponse();
Stream dataStream = httpResponse.GetResponseStream();

You need to use HttpWebRequest for receiving content and some tools for parsing html and finding what you need. One of the most popular libs for working with html in c# is HtmlAgilityPack, you can see simple example here: http://www.fairnet.com/post/2010/08/28/Html-screen-scraping-with-HtmlAgilityPack-Library.aspx

you can use a WebClient object, and an easy way to scrape the data is with xpath.

HTTP Post in C# console app doesn't return the same thing as a browser request

I have a C# console app (.NET 2.0 framework) that does an HTTP post using the following code:
StringBuilder postData = new StringBuilder(100);
postData.Append("post.php?");
postData.Append("Key1=");
postData.Append(val1);
postData.Append("&Key2=");
postData.Append(val2);
byte[] dataArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData.ToString());
HttpWebRequest httpRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://example.com/");
httpRequest.Method = "POST";
httpRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
httpRequest.ContentLength = dataArray.Length;
Stream requestStream = httpRequest.GetRequestStream();
requestStream.Write(dataArray, 0, dataArray.Length);
requestStream.Flush();
requestStream.Close();
HttpWebResponse webResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpRequest.GetResponse();
if (httpRequest.HaveResponse == true) {
Stream responseStream = webResponse.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader responseReader = new System.IO.StreamReader(responseStream, Encoding.UTF8);
String responseString = responseReader.ReadToEnd();
}
The outputs from this are:
webResponse.ContentLength = -1
webResponse.ContentType = text/html
webResponse.ContentEncoding is blank
The responseString is HTML with a title and body.
However, if I post the same URL into a browser (http://example.com/post.php?Key1=some_value&Key2=some_other_value), I get a small XML snippet like:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<RESPONSE RESULT="SUCCESS"/>
with none of the same HTML as in the application. Why are the responses so different? I need to parse the returned result which I am not getting in the HTML. Do I have to change how I do the post in the application? I don't have control over the server side code that accepts the post.

If you are indeed supposed to use the POST HTTP method, you have a couple things wrong. First, this line:
postData.Append("post.php?");
is incorrect. You want to post to post.php, you don't want post the value "post.php?" to the page. Just remove this line entirely.
This piece:
... WebRequest.Create("http://example.com/");
needs post.php added to it, so...
... WebRequest.Create("http://example.com/post.php");
Again this is assuming you are actually supposed to be POSTing to the specified page instead of GETing. If you are supposed to be using GET, then the other answers already supplied apply.

You'll want to get an HTTP sniffer tool like Fiddler and compare the headers that are being sent from your app to the ones being sent by the browser. There will be something different that is causing the server to return a different response. When you tweak your app to send the same thing browser is sending you should get the same response. (It could be user-agent, cookies, anything, but something is surely different.)

I've seen this in the past.
When you run from a browser, the "User-Agent" in the header is "Mozilla ...".
When you run from a program, it's different and generally specific to the language used.

I think you need to use a GET request, instead of POST. If the url you're using has querystring values (like ?Key1=some_value&Key2=some_other_value) then it's expecting a GET. Instead of adding post values to your webrequest, just put this data in the querystring.
HttpWebRequest httpRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://example.com/?val1=" + val1 + "&val2=" + val2);
httpRequest.Method = "GET";
httpRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
....
So, the result you're getting is different when you POST the data from your app because the server-side code has a different output when it can't read the data it's expecting in the querystring.

In your code you a specify the POST method which sends the data to the PHP file without putting the data in the web address. When you put the information in the address bar, that is not the POST method, that is the GET method. The name may be confusing, but GET just means that the data is being sent to the PHP file through the web address, instead of behind the scenes, not that it is supposed to get any information. When you put the address in the browser it is using a GET.
Create a simple html form and specify POST as the method and your url as the action. You will see that the information is sent without appearing in the address bar.
Then do the same thing but specify GET. You will see the information you sent in the address bar.

I believe the problem has something to do with the way your headers are set up for the WebRequest.
I have seen strange cases where attempting to simulate a browser by changing headers in the request makes a difference to the server.
The short answer is that your console application is not a web browser and the web server of example.com is expecting to interact with a browser.
You might also consider changing the ContentType to be "multipart/form-data".
What I find odd is that you are essentially posting nothing. The work is being done by the query string. Therefore, you probably should be using a GET instead of a POST.

Is the form expecting a cookie? That is another possible reason why it works in the browser and not from the console app.