How to interact with websites.

[Fogest]

There are many applications I see here and all over that interact with websites and do things on them.

I'm wondering if there is some site or thread here explaining various commands used to interact with websites,

What I mean is say you wanted to have the bot go to a random thread on the first page of this section and save the username and post data of that users post. How would you do something like those clicks and taking that data?

[Hassan]

It's easy. You get the page data using a single statement. You then use Regular Expressions to extract all the required data from that page.

[Jason]

Or you use my WebClass library 'cos Regex on that scale is for lazy fr00bs.

As for interacting (i.e posting data), I wrote a tut a little while ago, If i can dig it up ill link it.

[Fogest]

Yeah Jason if you could get the tut it would be could because I kinda don't know what you or Hassan has told me.

[freedompeace]

I'm gonna break the green posts D:

Or use an actual HTMLDocument class to parse through elements (XMLDocument also works for XHTML).

HTMLDocument doc = ...
var e = doc.Elements("body/div/img");

[Fogest]

I guess you guys don't realize I'm quite a noob. I don't know what all this means.

[~Stephen]

If you don't understand this, than you obviously need to go back to the basics.

@Fogest

[Fogest]

If you don't understand this, than you obviously need to go back to the basics.

@Fogest

Most things I read don't talk or teach you about the web usage part of vb.net

[Leaf]

If you just want to click a button, you have to search up the ID of the button, wich is easy with firebug (add-on for firefox). You could do this with other software on other browsers aswell.

And you can click it with this code:

WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementById("ID").InvokeMember("click")

You need a webbrowser for this.

[Fogest]

If you just want to click a button, you have to search up the ID of the button, wich is easy with firebug (add-on for firefox). You could do this with other software on other browsers aswell.

And you can click it with this code:

WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementById("ID").InvokeMember("click")

You need a webbrowser for this.

Okay this is just like what I did in AutoIT. SO this is good to know for VB.net. But how would I do something like that without having the webbrowser?

[Leaf]

I don't know, you have to replace the webbrowser, with an existing process, like firefox. But i don't know how to do that, maybey Jason could help you with that.

[Fogest]

I don't know, you have to replace the webbrowser, with an existing process, like firefox. But i don't know how to do that, maybey Jason could help you with that.

Well I know it's possible for sure. I just don't know how. Like I don't want the user in my program seeing what's going on behind the scenes.

This is a example and not what I really want but say there is a feedback page on some site the user needs to fill out to get something. Well they fill in the info and hit submit and the bot does it for them without them seeing it. How do I do that? And also taking info from the site at the same time such as when form is submitted look for a string that the site may say such as Feedback submitted so you can relay that to the user when it's done.

[Leaf]

ooooh, i think i get it now. You can do this with the webbrowser, just paste this:

webbrowser1.Visible = False

Nobody will see it.

[Fogest]

ooooh, i think i get it now. You can do this with the webbrowser, just paste this:

webbrowser1.Visible = False

Nobody will see it.

Okay so I guess then I could add that at the end of making the program so that I can see it for debugging purposes and then hide it. Thanks

Now the problem I have now is that the form I want to fill out has a "Choose File" button and a window pops up like this:

[IMG]https://i974.photobucke*****m/albums/ae226/fogest/Untitled-12.png[/IMG]

I'm not sure how to interact with a popup thing? Because it needs to navigate to the location shown in the picture and select the user defined name of the file.cfr Then hit open. But how do I do that then?

[Leaf]

I could help you further with tv/vm/msn/skype
Note: The function i gave you to click a button by ID may not work on every website.