Website lookup (enter data from database to retrieve info from third party source)

[gschepp]

I'm trying to figure out how to use data from the database and slip it into the fields on a form. In this case, an Indiana voter registration lookup form that requires the county, last, first, and dob. I've tried the Supercontrol Web Content feature but it is not inputting the data. It opens up the website but none of the data is shown entered. The county field is the first active field.

https://indianavoters.in.gov/PublicS...k=Registration


The input names used by the site are:
ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$usrCounty$cboCounty
ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$txtLast
ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$txtFirst
ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$usrDOB$txtDate

Is it possible and if so any helpful suggestions?

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Website lookup (enter data from database to retrieve info from third party source)

I would think you would use http_put() or http_post() to send data to a web page.

[gschepp]

Re: Website lookup (enter data from database to retrieve info from third party source)

Thanks Stan, will try working from that angle.

[mixter]

Re: Website lookup (enter data from database to retrieve info from third party source)

I would think you would use http_put() or http_post() to send data to a web page.

That is good for actually submitting the voter form

But I think if you want to open the voter form and populate some of the form fields (but not actually submit the form) then you will need another method.

It's kind of touching on browser automation, however that's not really an option here, because that requires desktop browser automation

If you look at the voter form using a web sniffer e.g. Fiddler
(and here are some others: http://scraping.pro/web-sniffers-review/ )

take a look at the destination page that the voter form gets POSTed to

(it might actually be POSTed back to itself)

what I would then suggest is try to http_post() a "partially completed" voter form with enough data missing that the form validation fails and it re-loads with your form fields filled in with the data you submitted

However this is really hit and miss, it depends how the developers of the voter form handled their validation, and also relies on the validation being server side, and the values retained on the reload of the failed form submission.... so you might be lucky, or perhaps not!

Actually, first of all, just do that test manually, try and partially fill in the voter form and see if you can trigger validation error, but the form reloads with "some" of the form fields retaining the data typed in

then if that works, use a form sniffer (like Fiddler) to get the form field names for your POST

then do a http_post() from alpha, to the target recipient page of the voter form POST, and send the form field names you found with the sniffer, with the values from your Alpha app.

anyway, just brainstorming here, the method above relies on several factors all lining up correctly for this method to work

perhaps there is some other way to inject some javascript into a page? not sure if that would work with all the cross site scripting security checks that browsers have in place now, but might be another avenue to investigate

[mixter]

Re: Website lookup (enter data from database to retrieve info from third party source)

LOL, I just realised that we are in the desktop forum... my post above I was thinking mobile alpha not desktop, sorry about that

but the good news is, what you want should be possible!

you should be able to manipulate the DOM in some way to populate the form fields and enter the data into the controls

I actually spent half a saturday playing with the alpha desktop browser control but didn't get all that far

In years past I've written lots of browser automation and web scrapers with Access+VBA controlling IE

Browser automation using Alpha Desktop version is something I'd really like to learn, for data harvesting from the web (including form filling and submission)

Please let us know what you learn in your experiments, I'm happy to have a hack at any example objects that you upload to the forum