vb.net httpwebrequest to login to EmpireAvenue.com - vb.net

Question

This is driving me insane. I know I have to be close on this. My requests matches a real one as far as I can see except the cookies are a bit different. I appear to be missing the google analytics ones. Not sure if that is the issue or not. I get redirected like I am supposed to but on the redirect page it is asking me to login again. Any help is appreciated. Here is my code:
Private Function eaLogin(ByVal ticker As String, ByVal password As String)
Try
ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = False
Dim request As HttpWebRequest = httpWebRequest.Create("http://www.empireavenue.com")
request.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials
request.CookieContainer = cookieJar
Dim response As HttpWebResponse = request.GetResponse()
Dim dataStream As Stream = response.GetResponseStream()
Dim reader As New StreamReader(dataStream)
Dim responseFromServer As String = reader.ReadToEnd()
reader.Close()
response.Close()
Dim session As String = ""
ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = False
'Set the initial parameters
Dim UserID As String = ticker ' Username
Dim PWord As String = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(password) ' Password
Dim domain As String = "https://www.empireavenue.com/user/login/do"
Dim encoding As New System.Text.ASCIIEncoding
' Use the appropriate HTML field names to stuff into the post header
Dim PostData As String = _
"login_username=" & ticker & _
"&login_password=" & PWord
Dim Data() As Byte = encoding.GetBytes(PostData)
' Initialise the request
Dim LoginReq As Net.HttpWebRequest = Net.WebRequest.Create(domain) ' Login location taken from the form action
With LoginReq
.KeepAlive = True
.Method = "POST"
' Note: if the page uses a redirect if will fail
.AllowAutoRedirect = False
.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
.ContentLength = Data.Length
' Set empty container
.CookieContainer = cookieJar
.Referer = "http://www.empireavenue.com/"
.UserAgent = userAgent
.Accept = "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8"
.Host = "www.empireavenue.com"
End With
' Add the POST data
Dim SendReq As IO.Stream = LoginReq.GetRequestStream
LoginReq.Headers.Add("Accept-Language", "en-US,en;q=0.5")
LoginReq.Headers.Add("Accept-Encoding", "gzip, deflate")
SendReq.Write(Data, 0, Data.Length)
SendReq.Close()
' Obtain the response
Dim LoginRes As Net.HttpWebResponse = LoginReq.GetResponse()
' Retreive the headers from the request (e.g. the location header)
Dim Redirect As String = LoginRes.Headers("Location")
' Add any returned cookies to the cookie collection
cookieJar.Add(LoginRes.Cookies)
' Move to the redirected page as a GET request...
Dim newUrl As String = ""
If Not (Redirect Is Nothing) Then
If Redirect.StartsWith("http://") Then
newUrl = Redirect
Else
newUrl = "https://www.empireavenue.com" & Redirect
End If
LoginReq = Net.WebRequest.Create(newUrl)
With LoginReq
.KeepAlive = False
.Method = "GET"
.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
.AllowAutoRedirect = True
.CookieContainer = cookieJar
End With
' Perform the navigate and output the HTML
LoginRes = LoginReq.GetResponse()
Dim sReader As IO.StreamReader = New IO.StreamReader(LoginRes.GetResponseStream)
Dim HTML As String = sReader.ReadToEnd
If HTML.Contains(ticker) Then
MessageBox.Show("yay!")
Return True
Else
MessageBox.Show("no!")
Return False
End If
Else
MessageBox.Show("no too!")
Return False
End If
Catch ex As Exception
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message.ToString)
Return False
End Try
End Function

Answer 1

I couldn't try it on the empirevenue because of the restrictions at work but try this:
Dim tempCookies As CookieContainer
ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = False
Dim postReq As HttpWebRequest = DirectCast(WebRequest.Create("https://www.empireavenue.com/user/login/do"), HttpWebRequest)
Dim postData As String = "login_username=" & ticker & "&login_password=" & PWord
Dim encoding As New UTF8Encoding
Dim byteData As Byte() = encoding.GetBytes(postData)
postReq.Method = "POST"
postReq.KeepAlive = True
postReq.CookieContainer = tempCookies
postReq.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
postReq.Referer = "http://www.empireavenue.com/"
postReq.UserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1"
postReq.ContentLength = byteData.Length
Dim postreqstream As Stream = postReq.GetRequestStream()
postreqstream.Write(byteData, 0, byteData.Length)
postreqstream.Close()
Dim postresponse As HttpWebResponse
postresponse = DirectCast(postReq.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)
tempCookies.Add(postresponse.Cookies)
logincookie = tempCookies
Dim postreqreader As New StreamReader(postresponse.GetResponseStream())
Dim thepage As String = postreqreader.ReadToEnd
Hope it will work for you