vb.net POST variables - vb.net

I am performing an integration to a third party site and they have asked me to redirect to their URL with a bunch of POST variables.
The only way I can work out how to do this is by creating an HTML form with hidden fields, and then trigger a JS click event on a button to POST the form to their site.
Ideally I would like to do this from the VB code as the data may be sensitive and there are bits I don't want to render in the client side.
Has anyone any experience of doing this successfully. I have googled around but can only find ways to use GET variables on the URL or POST and read the response.

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VBA send XMLHttpRequest from Internet Explorer

tl;dr: How can one send a POST request in VBA by using an XMLHttpRequest within the Internet Explorer?
I'm about automating the use of page on the internet. The idea is to start from Excel to gather some data in a worksheet, then transfer these data to the internet page, click some buttons in the meantime, and thereafter work on manually.
I recorded the whole process when executed manually by the F12 Developer tools. By bringing the data into the textboxes of the internet page, some Javascript events take place which fire a POST request through XMLHttpRequest:
Now, by replicating the procedure described above in VBA (using getElementById, .click(),.value= and the like), it appears that the relevant events are not fired: no such POST request as shown above are sent to the server, and no additional masks open. This is why I wanted to omit the textbox-filling-and-clicking approach and simply replicate the POST request.
How can I do this from VBA by using the Internet Explorer?
Disclaimer: I'm aware how to send a POST request using MSXML2.serverXMLHTTP, which is described hundreds of times over the web. However, there it's always either-or: either use the Internet Explorer, or MSXML2.serverXMLHTTP. However, I need the request within the Internet Explorer.
These links looks promising |VB5| C# |
Navigate method, 4th argument |Another VB example using StrConv for byte array conversion|
It looks like you simply use the Navigate method and simply data packed into a byte array for the fourth argument. One of the above links is old but the newer link looks very similar so I think the interface has not changed much.
Do please post feedback.

"__RequestVerificationToken is not present" error when I can clearly see it in Developer tools

I'm trying to a CSRF protection to an existing MVC4 web application which uses DevExpress grids. I've added the Html.AntiForgeryToken() into the forms on the aspx pages (which contain ascx as partials containing the grids) and can see the __RequestVerificationToken and it's value clearly in developer tools when a save is called.
I've tried commenting out all my ValidateAntiForgeryToken attributes bar one - I went with the delete post method for simplicity (And also to eliminate the DevExpress grids messing with it) and I still keep coming up against this error:
There was a HttpAntiForgeryException
Url: http://localhost:54653/Users/Delete/f86ad393-0039-44e8-beed-a66dbab9266e?ReturnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A54653%2FUsers
The exception message is
The required anti-forgery form field "__RequestVerificationToken" is not present.
Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? Could it be that the error is non-descriptive and it's actually that the token doesn't match rather than that it doesn't exist? In previous answers to this question people just say "oh, you have to add the token," which is obviously not helpful here.
Are you submitting the form manually through Ajax? If that's the case, you need to pass the anti forgery token as another parameter with the name "__RequestVerificationToken".
Point 1 : Make sure if your application is has https secure protocol. Please load in https.
Point 2 : In case of DevExpress you have to call in the below pattern.
ViewContext.Writer.Write(Html.AntiForgeryToken().ToHtmlString());
After struggling with this for days I had a thought - maybe the browser is stopping the cookie being written. I did a search for dev servers and cookies not being written, and found that with Chrome and IE10 and up that there's problems writing the cookies.
I downloaded Firefox and tried it with that and it worked instantly. I then reapplied all the validate attributes to the all the controller methods and the all worked, every single one of them! Even the DexExpress postbacks seem to be working correctly.
I'll carry out more exhaustive testing, but for now, I think we're there.
Not exactly. If MVC AntiForgeryToken is already defined on page where you are using MvcxGridView and you want to protect grid actions you should send this token back to server during grid client side begin callback event.
settings.ClientSideEvents.BeginCallback = "function(s,e) { e.customArgs[\"__RequestVerificationToken\"] = $('input[name=\"__RequestVerificationToken\"]', $(s.GetMainElement())).val(); }";

Download JSON data from a web form

I am writing an app that asks for some data from a web-based form and then displays the returned JSON data. But I can't seem to get a handle on how "fill in" the form and get the data returned. The website developer has made a development form for testing this so I can see how it works. If I go to that website and enter data into the fields and press "Submit", it returns JSON-formatted text and displays it in the web browser's window.
What I need to do is have my app populate those fields with data and submit them to the server. The server returns the JSON data and I capture and process it in my app.
I would appreciate any advice on how to do this. As you may have guessed, I am a very new to iOS development. Thanks in advance.
Firstly, you'll need to know what form data you're going to send in a POST request. If you don't know where to find that, take a look at this.
Consider using AFNetworking to make that POST request with JSON feedback. Here's a good example.
Good luck!
This walkthrough by Matt Long is particularly good: http://www.cimgf.com/2010/02/12/accessing-the-cloud-from-cocoa-touch/.
Essentially, you just need your fields in the post data to match the fields that are present in the html form. Those fields should be evident by posting the form in chrome and watching the request in the network tab in developer tools.

How might I provided a URL use the FireShot API to take a screenshot, upload to Imgur, and return some output (eg. markdown)

I am looking for a way to utilize the FireShot API with JS to given a URL (or perhaps a list) use the FireShot API to take screenshot, upload to Imgur, then return the user the URLs or perhaps something like markdown to use quickly in forums.
Method 1: Open new window
I tried opening the URL in a new window, but found that I cant control that page with JS dues to cross domain problems. The same with iFrames.
Method 2: simple $.get()
A simple $.get() wont work because of the same cross domain issues I guess?
http://jsfiddle.net/t6aeq/
$.get($url.val(), function(data) {
console.log(data);
});
Via PHP "Proxy"
So I tried creating a simple PHP script that gets the HTML of the URL and returns it to my JS (using file_get_contents($url)). But some sites like Microsoft will detect that I am using some automated methods and give an error page of sorts. I also cant seem to find a way to use jQuery to query that returned HTML for link[rel=stylesheet], script, style and body to append to the head and a div respectively. I posted abt that on another question
A new Idea: Embed scripts on browser level
So I thought away of getting around these is using iMacros or GreeseMonkey or something to insert scripts into pages on the browser level instead? But any guidance or tips on how can I do that? Also, I'd prefer a pure JS/PHP method if available so users are not limited to using Browser plugin/scripts (tho I will be the only user for now)
It suddenly came to my mind that this may not work because the FireShot API key and Imgur is limited to the domain? Any solutions?
You might be able to inject the FireShot script using Greasemonkey. But, first use GM_xmlhttpRequest() to fetch an API key, for that page's domain, from the "Create FireShot API Key" page.
Note that GM_xmlhttpRequest() does not have the same cross-domain issues that $.get() has.
However, at this point you might be better off just writing your own Firefox add-on. Maybe start with FireShot's code for ideas. Also see the Screengrab add-on.

Retrieving dynamic text from a website in vb.net (VS2008)

I want to be able to retrieve dynamic data from a web page (share prices). I started out by retrieving the html code before I realised that as it is live data, the html code will be of little use. Although I am looking to capture specific data, all i wish to do is process a webpage that I specify which will return the text off that website and not the HTML code. Basically a copy and paste of the entire page would be great..
Any ideas would be really appreciated!
'Screen Scraping' by parsing HTML is so early 2000s...what I would do is read up on Amazon's Mechnical Turk. You can develop a queued architecture where you submit urls to this Mechnical Turk service. The service would automatically distribute these bits of work to users who would then do the dirty task of copying and pasting out the valuable stock quote information you require. Users around the world would anxiously await delivery of the next URL to their Mechanical Turk inbox...pinning for the opportunity to copy/paste out another share price for your application. Sure, it might take a few minutes to update your prices, but hey, they would be HAND parsed by REAL people around the globe! Just think of the possibilities!
Well, the HTML contains the text of the website, so you "just" need to parse the HTML.
EDIT: If the data is not in the HTML but loaded dynamically, the situation is different. As I can see, you have two options:
Find out how the data is loaded (i.e. read the JavaScript on the page). If it is updated via some web service, you could query the same web service in your program.
Use a web browser to get the data and then get the dynamic HTML tree of the page. Maybe the WPF Webbrowser control can help you with this, but I'm not sure since I've never done this myself.
Is it possible to find this same data provided in a ready-to-consume format rather than scraping HTML for it? It seems like there's probably public web-services for stock quotes.
For example: A quick search for "Stock price webservice" turned up http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx; an ASMX web-service that is easy to consume in .NET.
In your Visual Studio project you should be add a reference to this service via the "Add Web Reference" command; the dialog you're given varies depending on whether your project is targeting for .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.0/3.5.
I added a reference to the service named StockPriceProxy:
Public Function GetQuote(ByVal symbol As String) As String
Using quoteService As New StockPriceProxy.StockQuote
return quoteService.GetQuote(symbol)
End Using
End Function