Java SE: Open Web Page and Click a Button

Question

I have a Java 7 program (using WebStart technology, for Windows 7/8 computers only).

I need to add a function so that my program clicks a button on a page with know

Answer 1

You may be looking for HtmlUnit -- a "GUI-Less browser for Java programs".

Here's a sample code that opens google.com, searches for "htmlunit" using the form and prints the number of results.

import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.*;
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.html.*;

public class HtmlUnitFormExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
        HtmlPage page = webClient.getPage("http://www.google.com");

        HtmlInput searchBox = page.getElementByName("q");
        searchBox.setValueAttribute("htmlunit");

        HtmlSubmitInput googleSearchSubmitButton = 
                          page.getElementByName("btnG"); // sometimes it's "btnK"
        page=googleSearchSubmitButton.click();

        HtmlDivision resultStatsDiv =
                                page.getFirstByXPath("//div[@id='resultStats']");

        System.out.println(resultStatsDiv.asText()); // About 309,000 results
        webClient.closeAllWindows();
    }
}

Other options are:

• Selenium: Will open a browser like Firefox and operate it.
• Watij: Also will open a browser, but in its own window.
• Jsoup: Good parser. No JavaScript, though.

Answer 2

Your question is kind of difficult to understand what you want. If you have a webstart app and want to open a link in the browser, you can use the java.awt.Desktop.getDesktop().browse(URI) method.

public void openLinkInBrowser(ActionEvent event){

    try {
        URI uri = new URI(WEB_ADDRESS);
        java.awt.Desktop.getDesktop().browse(uri);

    } catch (URISyntaxException | IOException e) {
        //System.out.println("THROW::: make sure we handle browser error");
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

}