CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javahtmlforms
pmoleri
pmoleri

Reputation: 4451

Java HTML Form Client

I'm looking for a pure Java html client library. I need to retrieve html forms, fill the fields and submit them programmatically.

The library should connect to a website acting as a browser, handling cookies, parsing the document's forms and resolving the form submit hassle on its own.

In the past I used Apache HttpClient, but it wasn't simple enough as I was responsible for parsing the document and handle the cookies.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 947

Answers (2)

acdcjunior
acdcjunior

Reputation: 135752

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 301,000 results
        webClient.closeAllWindows();
    }
}

Upvotes: 3

dtech
dtech

Reputation: 14060

Try Lobo, a pure Java web browser. It has an API to embed it in a program.

If you only want the HTML (and CSS etc.) rendering engine you can directly use its engine.

Upvotes: 1

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