Is there a way to retrieve text from a webpage to a TextBox in VB.NET? - vb.net

Question

Let say I have a TextBox1 and a SaveButton. A website "www.example.com/code1.text" with just a content:
303981
How to retrieve this 303981 to a TextBox?
Do we need a WebBrowser1?
Please help me I'm self learning and beginner also.

Answer 1

Look at the System.Net.WebClient type.
Using wc As New WebClient()
TextBox1.Text = wc.DownloadString("www.example.com/code1.text")
End Using

Answer 2

You need to place a webbrowser control on your form. I would use CefSharp for this
(see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d-AgfFzr70)
then you can do something like:
settings = New CefSettings
CefSharp.Cef.Initialize(settings)
browser = New ChromiumWebBrowser("www.google.com")
Which loads google.com, just change it to the page you want to load.
Now check your website and see if you can get that textbox value by javascript from the console (F12). Check the source if you can access it with it's ID or that you need to use it's class.
for example:
document.getElementsByClassName('textboxclass')[0].value;
if you manage to get the right value back in your browser console, you can go ahead in your program and do somethinh like:
Dim task As Task(Of JavascriptResponse) = browser.EvaluateScriptAsync(code)
where code contains your javascript.
you may do something like:
task.ContinueWith(
Sub(t)
Try
If t.IsFaulted = False And t.Result IsNot Nothing Then
Dim response = t.Result 'Error: Result is not a member of Task'
If response.Success And response.Result IsNot Nothing Then
taskResult = response.Result
Else
taskResult = "bad result"
End If
End If
Catch ex As Exception
'Dbg("!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exception: " & ex.ToString)
taskResult = ex.ToString
End Try
End Sub)
to get the result in a string.