python and http POST

[galileo228]

Hey All,

Been teaching myself Python for a few weeks, and am trying to write a
program that will go to a url, enter a string in one of the search
fields, submit the search, and return the contents of the search
result.

I'm using httplib2.

My two particular questions:

1) When I set my 'body' var, (i.e. 'body = {'query':'search_term'}),
how do I know what the particular key should be? In other words, how
do I tell python which form on the web page I'm visiting I'd like to
fill in? Do I simply go to the webpage itself and look at the html
source? But if that's the case, which tag tells me the name of the
key?

2) Even once python fills in the form properly, how can I tell it to
'submit' the search?

Thanks all!

Matt

 

[Ken Seehart]

"Use tamperdata to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post
parameters... "

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/966

Enjoy,
Ken

 

[Terry Reedy]

Hey All,

Been teaching myself Python for a few weeks, and am trying to write a
program that will go to a url, enter a string in one of the search
fields, submit the search, and return the contents of the search
result.

I'm using httplib2.

My two particular questions:

1) When I set my 'body' var, (i.e. 'body = {'query':'search_term'}),
how do I know what the particular key should be? In other words, how
do I tell python which form on the web page I'm visiting I'd like to
fill in? Do I simply go to the webpage itself and look at the html
source? But if that's the case, which tag tells me the name of the
key?

2) Even once python fills in the form properly, how can I tell it to
'submit' the search?

This
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli/
*might* help you.

 

[Javier Collado]

Hello,

I haven't used httplib2, but you can certainly use any other
alternative to send HTTP requests:
- urllib/urllib2
- mechanize

With regard to how do you find the form you're looking for, you may:
- create the HTTP request on your own with urllib2. To find out what
variables do you need to post, you can use tamperdata Firefox addon as
suggested (I haven't used that one) or httpfox (I have and it works
great).
- use mechanize to locate the form for you, fill the data in and click
on the submit button.

Additionally, you may wan to scrape some data that may be useful for
your requests. For that BeautifulSoup is good solution (with some
Firebug help to visually locate what you're looking for).

Best regards,
Javier

P.S. Some examples here:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/web-scraping-with-python
http://www.packtpub.com/article/web-scraping-with-python-part-2

 

[galileo228]

Thank you all for your responses, and Javier thank you for your longer
response. I've just downloaded mechanize and beautifulsoup and will
start to play around.

From a pure learning standpoint, however, I'd really like to learn how
to use the python post method (without mechanize) to go to a webpage,
fill in a form, click 'submit', follow the redirect to the results
page, and download content.

For example, if I go to google.com, use firebug and click on the
search bar, the following HTML is highlighted:

<input value="" title="Google Search" class="lst" size="55" name="q"
maxlength="2048"
onblur="google&amp;&amp;google.fade&amp;&amp;google.fade()"
autocomplete="off">

So if I were to use the 'post' method, how can I tell from the code
above what the ID of the searchbar is? Is it 'value', 'name', or
neither?

Assuming that the ID is 'name', then to search google for the term
'olypmics' would the proper code be:

import httplib2
import urllib
data = {'q':'olympics'}
body = urllib.urlencode(data)
h = httplib2.Http()
resp, content = h.request("http://www.google.com", method="POST",
body=body)
print content;

Does content return the content of the 'search results' page? And if
not, how do I tell python to do that?
Finally, must I transmit headers, or are they optional?

Thanks all for your continued help!

Matt

 

[galileo228]

Thank you all for your responses, and Javier thank you for your longer
response. I've just downloaded mechanize and beautifulsoup and will
start to play around.

From a pure learning standpoint, however, I'd really like to learn how
to use the python post method (without mechanize) to go to a webpage,
fill in a form, click 'submit', follow the redirect to the results
page, and download content.

For example, if I go to google.com, use firebug and click on the
search bar, the following HTML is highlighted:

<input value="" title="Google Search" class="lst" size="55" name="q"
maxlength="2048"
onblur="google&amp;&amp;google.fade&amp;&amp;google.fade()"
autocomplete="off">

So if I were to use the 'post' method, how can I tell from the code
above what the ID of the searchbar is? Is it 'value', 'name', or
neither?

Assuming that the ID is 'name', then to search google for the term
'olypmics' would the proper code be:

import httplib2
import urllib
data = {'q':'olympics'}
body = urllib.urlencode(data)
h = httplib2.Http()
resp, content = h.request("http://www.google.com", method="POST",
body=body)
print content;

Does content return the content of the 'search results' page? And if
not, how do I tell python to do that?
Finally, must I transmit headers, or are they optional?

Thanks all for your continued help!

Matt

 

[galileo228]

Thank you all for your responses, and Javier thank you for your longer
response. I've just downloaded mechanize and beautifulsoup and will
start to play around.

From a pure learning standpoint, however, I'd really like to learn how
to use the python post method (without mechanize) to go to a webpage,
fill in a form, click 'submit', follow the redirect to the results
page, and download content.

For example, if I go to google.com, use firebug and click on the
search bar, the following HTML is highlighted:

<input value="" title="Google Search" class="lst" size="55" name="q"
maxlength="2048"
onblur="google&amp;&amp;google.fade&amp;&amp;google.fade()"
autocomplete="off">

So if I were to use the 'post' method, how can I tell from the code
above what the ID of the searchbar is? Is it 'value', 'name', or
neither?

Assuming that the ID is 'name', then to search google for the term
'olypmics' would the proper code be:

import httplib2
import urllib
data = {'q':'olympics'}
body = urllib.urlencode(data)
h = httplib2.Http()
resp, content = h.request("http://www.google.com", method="POST",
body=body)
print content;

Does content return the content of the 'search results' page? And if
not, how do I tell python to do that?
Finally, must I transmit headers, or are they optional?

Thanks all for your continued help!

Matt