Pull webpage information to text box - vb.net

So what I am trying to do is pull some data from a webpage, and put it into a text box. Online, I can find alot about doing it the other way around (putting text box into web) but none the way I want.
I have gotten this far... (not very) and have no clue where to go from here
Dim Helement As HtmlElement
Helement = WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementById("txtAddress1")
Helement.GetAttribute()
Here is the element from the browser I am trying to use
input#ctl00_m_g_79f90d63_a5eb_43e1_9403_69fefa0ba004_ctl00_txtAddress1
Thanks guys!
This is what I tried:
Dim Helement As HtmlElement = WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementById("txtAddress1")
Dim elementtype As String = Helement.GetAttribute("text")
Dim textContents As String = Helement.InnerText
Address.Text = textContents

The GetAttribute function will return the value of an attribute of the element you retrieved using GetElementById.
For example, something like:
<input type="text" id="txtAddress1">
Dim Helement as HtmlElement = WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementById("txtAddress1")
Dim elementType as String = Helement.GetAttribute("type")
Dim textContents as String = Helement.InnerText
InnerText MSDN
GetAttribute MSDN

Related

How would I retrieve certain information on a webpage using their ID value?

In vb.net, I can download a webpage as a string like this:
Using ee As New System.Net.WebClient()
Dim reply As String = ee.DownloadString("https://pastebin.com/eHcQRiff")
MessageBox.Show(reply)
End Using
Would it be possible to specify an ID tag of an item on the webpage so that the reply will only output the information inside of the code box/id tag?
Example:
The ID tag of RAW Paste Data on https://pastebin.com/eHcQRiff is id="paste_code" which includes the following text:
Test=1
Test=2
Is there anyway to get the WebClient to only output that exact same message using the ID tag (or any other method)?
You can use HtmlAgilityPack library
Dim document as HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument()
document.Load(#"C:\YourDownloadedHtml.html")
Dim text as string = document.GetElementbyId("paste_code").InnerText
Some more sample code:
(Tested with HtmlAgilityPack 1.6.10.0)
Dim html As string = "<TD width=""""50%""""><DIV align=right>Name :<B> </B></DIV></TD><TD width=""""50%""""><div id='i1'>SomeText</div></TD><TR vAlign=center>"
Dim htmlDoc As HtmlDocument = New HtmlDocument
htmlDoc.LoadHtml(html) 'To load from html string directly
Dim name As String = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectSingleNode("//td/div[#id='i1']").InnerText
Console.WriteLine(name)
Output:
SomeText

Get value of input in vb.net webbrowser?

I have the following input, I want to get it value using vb.net WebBrowser, and then put it into a variable how can i perform that?
<input type="hidden" name="loginurl" value="https://example.com?ctoken=KWYZlCrYxt">
I'm trying to use this code, but i don't know how to put the value i got into a variable:
For Each Element As HtmlElement In WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("input")
'Depending on how the source code is formatted on the tag, you may also try Element.OuterHTML, Element.InnerText and Element.OuterText in the line below
If Element.OuterHtml.Contains("name=""loginurl""") Then
Element.GetAttribute("value")
Dim login = value
WebBrowser1.Navigate(login)
Exit For
End If
Drag and drop webbrowser control and use the following snippet
WebBrowser1.Navigate("https://example.com?ctoken=KWYZlCrYxt")
Here is a good reference
Hope this is useful
I'd say just assign a variable with Dim attributeValue = Element.GetAttribute("value")... am I missing something obvious here?
For Each Element As HtmlElement In WebBrowser1.Document.GetElementsByTagName("input")
'Depending on how the source code is formatted on the tag, you may also try Element.OuterHTML, Element.InnerText and Element.OuterText in the line below
If Element.OuterHtml.Contains("name=""loginurl""") Then
Dim attributeValue = Element.GetAttribute("value")
Dim login = value
WebBrowser1.Navigate(login)
Exit For
End If
Try:
Dim AllElementes As HtmlElementCollection = WebBrowser1.Document.All
For Each webpageelement As HtmlElement In AllElementes
If webpageelement.GetAttribute("name") = "loginurl" Then
Dim login = webpageelement.GetAttribute("value")
WebBrowser1.Navigate(login)
End If
Next
should work.

How to Post & Retrieve Data from Website

I am working with a Windows form application. I have a textbox called "tbPhoneNumber" which contains a phone number.
I want to go on the website http://canada411.com and enter in the number that was in my textbox, into the website textbox ID: "c411PeopleReverseWhat" and then somehow send a click on "Find" (which is an input belonging to class "c411ButtonImg").
After that, I want to retrieve what is in between the asterixs of the following HTML section:
<div id="contact" class="vcard">
<span><h1 class="fn c411ListedName">**Full Name**</h1></span>
<span class="c411Phone">**(###)-###-####**</span>
<span class="c411Address">**Address**</span>
<span class="adr">
<span class="locality">**City**</span>
<span class="region">**Province**</span>
<span class="postal-code">**L#L#L#**</span>
</span>
So basically I am trying to send data into an input box, click the input button and store the values retrieved into variables. I want to do this seemlessly so I would need to do something like an HTTPWebRequest? Or do I use a WebBrowser object? I just don't want the user to see that the application is going on a website.
I do a good amount of website scraping and I will show you how I do it. Feel free to skip ahead if I am being too specific, but this is a commonly requested theme and should be made specific.
URL Simplification
The library I use for this is htmlagilitypack (It is a dll, make a new project and add a reference to it). The first thing to check is if we have to go to take any special steps to get to a page by using a phone number. I searched for John Smith and found quite a few. I entered 2 of these results and noticed that the url formatting is very simple. Those results were..
http://www.canada411.ca/res/7056736767/John-Smith/138223109.html
http://www.canada411.ca/res/7052355273/John-Smith/172439951.html
I tested to see if I can remove some of the values from the url that I don't know and just leave the phone number. The result was that I can...
http://www.canada411.ca/search/re/1/7056736767/-
http://www.canada411.ca/search/re/1/7052355273/-
You can see by the url that there are some static areas in the url and our phone number. From this lets construct a string for the url.
Dim phoneNumber as string = "7056736767" 'this could be TextBox1.Text or whatever
Dim URL as string = "http://www.canada411.ca/search/re/1/" + phoneNumber +"/-"
Value Extraction with XPath
Now that we have the page dialed in, lets examine the html you provided above. You need 6 values from the page so we will create them now...
Dim FullName As String
Dim Phone As String
Dim Address As String
Dim Locality As String
Dim Region As String
Dim PostalCode As String
As mentioned above, we will be using htmlagilitypack which uses Xpath. The cool thing about this is that once we can find some unique identifier in the html, we can use Xpath to find our values. I know it may be confusing, but it will become clearer.
All of the values you need are within tags that have a class name. Lets use the class name in our Xpath to find them.
Dim FullNameXPath As String = "//*[#class='fn c411ListedName']"
Dim PhoneXPath As String = "//*[#class='c411Phone']"
Dim AddressXPath As String = "//*[#class='c411Address']"
Dim LocalityXPath As String = "//*[#class='locality']"
Dim RegionXPath As String = "//*[#class='region']"
Dim PostalCodeXPath As String = "//*[#class='postal-code']"
Essentially what we are looking at is a string that will inform htmlagilitypack what to look for. In our case, text contained within the classes we named. There is a lot to XPath and it could take a while to explain all of it. On a side note though...If you use Google Chrome and highlight a value on a page, you can right click inspect element. In the code that appears below, you can right click the value and copy to XPath!!! Very useful.
Basic HTMLAgilityPack Template
Now, all that is left is to connect to the page and get those variables populated.
Dim Web As New HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlWeb
Dim Doc As New HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument
Doc = Web.Load(URL)
For Each nameResult As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In Doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(FullNameXPath)
Msgbox(nameResult.InnerText)
Next
In the above example we create an HtmlWeb object named Web. This is the actual crawler of our project. We then define a HtmlDocument which will consist of our converted and searchable page source. All of this is done behind the scenes. We then send Web to get the page source and assign it to the Doc object we created. Doc is reusable, which thankfully requires us to connect to the page only once.
The for loop looks for any nodes in our Doc that match FullNameXPath which was defined previously as the XPath value for finding the name. When a Node is found, it is assigned to the nameResult variable and from within the loop we call a message box to display the inner text of our node.
So when we put it all together
Complete Working Code (As of 2/17/2013)
Dim phoneNumber As String = "7056736767" 'this could be TextBox1.Text or whatever
Dim URL As String = "http://www.canada411.ca/search/re/1/" + phoneNumber + "/-"
Dim FullName As String
Dim Phone As String
Dim Address As String
Dim Locality As String
Dim Region As String
Dim PostalCode As String
Dim FullNameXPath As String = "//*[#class='fn c411ListedName']"
Dim PhoneXPath As String = "//*[#class='c411Phone']"
Dim AddressXPath As String = "//*[#class='c411Address']"
Dim LocalityXPath As String = "//*[#class='locality']"
Dim RegionXPath As String = "//*[#class='region']"
Dim PostalCodeXPath As String = "//*[#class='postal-code']"
Dim Web As New HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlWeb
Dim Doc As New HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument
Doc = Web.Load(URL)
For Each nameResult As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In Doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(FullNameXPath)
FullName = nameResult.InnerText
MsgBox(FullName)
Next
For Each PhoneResult As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In Doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(PhoneXPath)
Phone = PhoneResult.InnerText
MsgBox(Phone)
Next
For Each ADDRResult As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In Doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(AddressXPath)
Address = ADDRResult.InnerText
MsgBox(Address)
Next
For Each LocalResult As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In Doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(LocalityXPath)
Locality = LocalResult.InnerText
MsgBox(Locality)
Next
For Each RegionResult As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In Doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(RegionXPath)
Region = RegionResult.InnerText
MsgBox(Region)
Next
For Each postalCodeResult As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In Doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(PostalCodeXPath)
PostalCode = postalCodeResult.InnerText
MsgBox(PostalCode)
Next
Yes it is possible, I've done this using the selenium framework, which is aimed for testing automation. However, it provides you with the tools to do exactly that.
Download for .net here:
http://docs.seleniumhq.org/download/

How do I search through a string for a particular hyperlink in Visualbasic.net?

I have a written a program which downloads a webpage's source but now I want to search the source for a particular link I know the link is written like this:
<b>Geographical Survey Work</b>
Is there anyway of using "Geographical Survey Work" as criteria to retrieve the link? The code I am using to download the source to a string is this:
Dim sourcecode As String = ((New Net.WebClient).DownloadString("http://examplesite.com"))
So just to clarify I want to type into an input box "Geographical Survey Work" for instance and "/internet/A2" to popup in a messagebox? I think it can be done using a regex, but that's a bit beyond me. Any help would be great.
With HTMLAgilityPack:
Dim vsPageHTML As String = "<html>... your webpage HTML code ...</html>"
Dim voHTMLDoc.LoadHtml(vsPageHTML) : vsPageHTML = ""
Dim vsURI As String = ""
Dim voNodes As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNodeCollection = voHTMLDoc.SelectNodes("//a[#href]")
If Not IsNothing(voNodes) Then
For Each voNode As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode In voNodes
If voNode.innerHTML.toLower() = "<b>geographical survey work</b>" Then
vsURI = voNode.GetAttributeValue("href", "")
Exit For
End If
Next
End If
voNodes = Nothing : voHTMLDoc = Nothing
Do whatever you want with vsURI.
You might need to tweak the code a bit as I'm writing free-hand.

Text from webpage

I need to get some text from this web page. I want to use the trade feed for my program to analyse the sentiment of the markets.
I used the browser control and the get element command but its not working. The problem is that whenever my browser starts to open the page I get Java scripts errors.
I tried with DOM but seems that i dont quite understand what i need to do :)
Here is the code:
Dim code As String
Using client As New WebClient
code = client.DownloadString("http://openbook.etoro.com/ahanit/#/profile/Trades/")
End Using
Dim htmlDocument As IHTMLDocument2 = New HTMLDocument(code)
htmlDocument.write(htmlDocument)
Dim allElements As IHTMLElementCollection = htmlDocument.body.all
Dim allid As IHTMLElementCollection = allElements.tags("id")
Dim element As IHTMLElement
For Each element In allid
element.title = element.innerText
MsgBox(element.innerText)
Next
Update: So I tried the HTML Agility pack, as suggested in the comments, and I am stuck again on this code
Dim plain As String = String.Empty
Dim htmldoc As New HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument
htmldoc.LoadHtml("http://openbook.etoro.com/ahanit/#/profile/Trades/")
Dim goodnods As HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNodeCollection = htmldoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("THE PROBLEM")
For Each node In goodnods
TextBox1.Text = htmldoc.DocumentNode.InnerText
Next
Any advice what to now?
Ok I think I know what the problem is somehow the div that I need is hidden and its not loaded when I load the web page just the source code. Does someone knows how to load all the hidden divs ??
Here is my new code
Dim doc As New HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument
Dim web As New HtmlWeb
doc = web.Load("http://openbook.etoro.com/ahanit/#/profile/Trades/")
Dim nodes As HtmlNode = doc.GetElementbyId("feed-items")
Dim id As String = nodes.WriteTo()
TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & vbCrLf & id
user1336635,
Welcome to SO! Something you might try is to check out his source code, figure out what javascript function is populating the field you want (using firebug - I assume it's the one that "trades result in profit" next to it), and then embedding that script into a web page that your webbrowser control loads. That's where I'd try to start. I checked his source code and searched for "trades result in profit" and didn't find anything which leads me to believe hunting for the element 'might' not be possible. Just a starting place until someone with more experience with this chimes in!! Best!
-sf