Use Java to fill out forms, possibly controlling a browser?

Question

Is it possibly, at this point in time, to fill out a post form through Java? The problem with me not just using other tools is that the page has to be logged in with an account, then I can fill out the form. It's a simple form, with only 3 inputs - Name, EMail, Date of birth (text). But I need the cookies set to be able to fill them out.

Here's my current method:

public static void doSubmit(String url, HashMap<String, String> data) throws Exception {
    URL siteUrl = new URL(url);
    HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) siteUrl.openConnection();
    conn.setRequestProperty("Cookie", "user=john; pass=password");
    conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
    conn.setDoOutput(true);
    conn.setDoInput(true);
    System.out.println("Debug 1: URL = "+url);

    DataOutputStream out = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());

    Set keys = data.keySet();
    Iterator keyIter = keys.iterator();
    String content = "";
    for(int i=0; keyIter.hasNext(); i++) {
        Object key = keyIter.next();
        if(i!=0) {
            content += "&";
        }
        content += key + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(data.get(key), "UTF-8");
    }
//  System.out.println(content);
    out.writeBytes(content);
    out.flush();
    out.close();
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
    String line = "";
    while((line=in.readLine())!=null) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }
    in.close();
}

I found this method from another site, and here's the hashmap

        data.put("name", "name");
        data.put("email", "email@email.com");
        data.put("dob", "1/1/1900");
        doSubmit("link.com/index.php", data);

Is there a simpler method? Possibly controlling a browser, such as Chrome to fill it out automatically?

Answer 1

There's HtmlUnit and Selenium. These can be fronted by JWebUnit if you need to swap implementations.

For something as trivial as this, HttpClient might be enough, but there'd be more manual work.

Answer 2

Use HtmlUnit. It's a programmatic Java web browser. You just tell it to go to a URL, fill some text field with some text, click on the submit button, and it returns the next page, just as you would do with a GUI.