Programmatic Form Submit

Question

I want to scrape the contents of a webpage. The contents are produced after a form on that site has been filled in and submitted.

I\'ve read on how to scrape the en

Answer 1

you'll need to generate a HTTP request containing the data for the form.

The form will look something like:

 ... 

This tells you the url to request is www.example.com/submit.php and your request should be a POST.

In the form will be several input items, eg:

 ... 

you need to create a string of all these input name=value pairs encoded for a URL appended to the end of your requested URL, which now becomes www.example.com/submit.php?itemnumber=5234&otherinput=othervalue etc... This will work fine for GET. POST is a little trickier.

Just follow S.Lott's links for some much easier to use library support :P