How to I automatcially fill out a 'textarea' in a webpage in python?

[fordie1000]

Hi,

I have been trying to do this for a few days now ... I'd appreciate any help or insights ...

Basically I want to enter text into a web 'textarea' automatically ... here is what I
thought I should have ...

import urllib
import urllib2
import cookielib

url2 = "someUrl"
url = "someOtherUrl"

#Create empty cookie jar.
cj = cookielib.LWPCookieJar()
#Install cookie handler for urllib2.
opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(c j))
urllib2.install_opener(opener)


request = urllib2.Request(url, None)
f = urllib2.urlopen(request)
f.close()

# this is just to log into the site first ...
data = urllib.urlencode({"username": "xxxxx", "password" : "somePassword"})
request = urllib2.Request(url, data)
f = urllib2.urlopen(request)

html = f.read()
#print html
#print data
f.close()


request2 = urllib2.Request(url2, None)
t = urllib2.urlopen(request2)
t.close()
user_agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)'
headers = { 'User-Agent' : user_agent }
#Parse the html here (html contains the page markup).
data2 = urllib.urlencode({"message" : "rows5>blah", "recipients[0]" : "xxxxxxx"})
#print data2
request2 = urllib2.Request(url2, data2, headers)
t = urllib2.urlopen(request2)
html2 = t.read()
print html2
t.close()

but I'm guessing that 'textarea' doesn't have a value attribute .. it looks like the text just goes between the two tags <textarea></textarea>

So how do I go about submitting predetermined text into the textarea? Do I have to parse the page and replace the whole 'textarea' section including my inputted text?

Hope you can help me,

[jlm699]

import urllib
import urllib2
import cookielib
 
url2 = "someUrl"
url = "someOtherUrl"
 
#Create empty cookie jar.
cj = cookielib.LWPCookieJar()
#Install cookie handler for urllib2.
opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cj))
urllib2.install_opener(opener)
 
 
request = urllib2.Request(url, None)
f = urllib2.urlopen(request)
f.close()
 
# this is just to log into the site first ...
data = urllib.urlencode({"username": "xxxxx", "password" : "somePassword"})
request = urllib2.Request(url, data)
f = urllib2.urlopen(request)
 
html = f.read()
#print html
#print data
f.close()
 
 
request2 = urllib2.Request(url2, None)
t = urllib2.urlopen(request2)
t.close()
user_agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)'
headers = { 'User-Agent' : user_agent }
#Parse the html here (html contains the page markup).
data2 = urllib.urlencode({"message" : "rows5>blah", "recipients[0]" : "xxxxxxx"})
#print data2
request2 = urllib2.Request(url2, data2, headers)
t = urllib2.urlopen(request2)
html2 = t.read()
print html2
t.close()

but I'm guessing that 'textarea' doesn't have a value attribute .. it looks like the text just goes between the two tags <textarea></textarea>

What is the textarea that you speak of?

[fordie1000]

What is the textarea that you speak of?

Sorry I should have said ... the textarea i'm speaking about is an area
in a web-form that will accept alot of text (depending on the limits the
web-master has set). The html code for this is :

<div class="form-row">
    <div class="form-col-a"><label for="message">Message </label></div>
    <div class="form-col-b"><textarea style="OVERFLOW: auto"
        wrap="SOFT" name="message" tabindex="1" id="message" cols="25"
        rows="5"></textarea></div>
 

Usually the textarea 'value' goes just before the "</textarea>" part ... but I want to
fill this in automatically ... usually you can do this for a text input field using 'urllib.urlencode' and 'urllib2.Request' but I don't think this will work for a textarea and I was wondering if anyone else has done this?

It seems like it should be pretty easy to do but I am stumped!

Thanks

[woooee]

A link to a Python program that claims to do this. I haven't tried it but have wondered how well it works. http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/ClientForm/ Please post back on whether it works or not.

[fordie1000]

A link to a Python program that claims to do this. I haven't tried it but have wondered how well it works. http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/ClientForm/ Please post back on whether it works or not.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply ... I finally got this working ... thanks to ClientForm ... this
is a great module ... very easy to use.

Basically, I wanted to log into a website (using password and username) navigate to a page and enter details into a form and submit it. I wanted to do this so I could send sms text messages from the command line (without a browser open).

Here is the code that I wrote to do the task ...
any comments/suggestions are welcome :

You run it from command line using : python progname.py "your message" number

#!/scisoft/bin/python2.4
 
import time
import urllib
import urllib2
import cookielib
import ClientForm
from HTMLParser import HTMLParser
import sre
 
#----------------- START WEBSITE URLS  ---------------------------#
 
url = "www.someURL.com/login"
url2 = "www.someURL.com/webtext/index.jsp"
url3 = "www.someURL.com/myv/messaging/webtext/Process.shtml"
 
 
#----------------- START USER VARIABLES --------------------------#
 
etag = "None"
user_agent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT"
protocol = 'https://'
username = YOUR_USERNAME
password = YOUR_PASSWORD
maxMesgLen = 160
 
#--------------------------- END ---------------------------------#
 
 
def sendSMS(textmessage,*number):
        """
 
        """
 
        print "Sending ........"
 
        lenMessage = countCharacters(textmessage)
        # Check to see if message is less than 160 characters
        overFlowText = lenMessage - maxMesgLen
        if lenMessage <= maxMesgLen:
 
 
                #Create empty cookie jar.
                cj = cookielib.LWPCookieJar()
 
                opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cj))
                urllib2.install_opener(opener)
 
                request1 = urllib2.Request(protocol+url, None)
                t1 = opener.open(request1)
                forms = ClientForm.ParseResponse(t1, backwards_compat=False)
                t1.close()
 
                form = forms[1]
                form["username"] = username
                form["password"] = password
                # Check the keep me logged on checkbox
                form.find_control("keeplogon").items[0].selected = True
                #print form
 
                request11 = form.click()
                request11.add_header("User-Agent", user_agent)
                response11 = opener.open(request11)
 
 
 
                request2 = urllib2.Request(protocol+url2, None)
                t = opener.open(request2)
                #print t.geturl()
                #print t.info()
                #print "This is the code for the webtext page: ",t.code
                forms = ClientForm.ParseResponse(t, backwards_compat=False)
                t.close()
 
 
                form = forms[1]  
                form["message"]  = textmessage
 
                numberList = list(*number)
                noArgs = len(numberList)
                for i,recip in enumerate(numberList):
                        form["recipients[%d]" % i] = recip
 
 
                request3 = form.click()
 
                request3.add_header('User-Agent', user_agent)
                request3.add_header('Referer', protocol+url2)
                request3.add_header('Charset', "utf-8")
                request3.add_header('If-None-Match', etag)
                request3.add_header('Content-type', "text/html")
 
                #This is vital for the message to send correctly!!!
                time.sleep(2)
 
                response2 = opener.open(request3)
 
                # Was your message sent successfully???
                success = response2.geturl()
                recipList = []
                if success == protocol+url3 :
                        for recip in numberList:
                                if recip != "":
                                        recipList.append(recip)
                        print "Your message was sent successfully to : ", recipList
                else :
                        print "Your message was _NOT_ sent!!!!!!"
                #print response2.info()  # headers
                #print 'This is the code :', response2.code
                ##print response2.read()
                response2.close()
 
 
 
                # Get number of remaining Messages ... left
                reqMesgRem = urllib2.Request(protocol+url2, None)
                req = urllib2.urlopen(reqMesgRem)
                dataMesgRem = req.read()
                # find the number of remaining text messages left and the renewal date
                matches = sre.findall('<span class="msg-total">(.*?)</span>', dataMesgRem)
                print " "
                print "# Messages Remaining -----> ", matches[0]
                print "Renewal Date is      -----> ", matches[1]
                req.close()
 
        else :
                print "Message too long by", overFlowText,"!"
 
 
def countCharacters(message):
        """
        Counts the number of characters in the message
        """
 
        charCount= []
        for char in message:
                charCount.append(char)
        messageLength = len(charCount)
        return messageLength
 
 
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
        import sys
        if len(sys.argv) < 8:
                sendSMS(sys.argv[1],sys.argv[2:])
        else :
                print "ERROR : You have entered too many numbers!!!"