DotNetNuke, PHP, Simulating a remote postback using curl

Question

I have a page in DNN like: http://nolimitswebdesign.com.dnnmax.com/test/tabid/57/ctl/Edit/mid/374/Default.aspx

I need to send a post request to that page using PHP+Curl which modifies the content of text area and saves it (like as if someone modified it manually and clicked the update button on that page). I doubt that with DNN it might not be possible. Please advise.

Answer 1

Here is how I would approach the problem the same general technique will work on any website. In this context DNN is just an average ASP.Net website. First look at the javascript that runs when update is clicked:

__doPostBack('dnn$ctr374$EditHTML$cmdUpdate','')

Find the __doPostBack method:

function __doPostBack(eventTarget, eventArgument) {
  if (!theForm.onsubmit || (theForm.onsubmit() != false)) {
    theForm.__EVENTTARGET.value = eventTarget;
    theForm.__EVENTARGUMENT.value = eventArgument;
    theForm.submit();
  }
}

This is the standard doPostBack() method used in many ASP.Net forms. From this you can see that you want to fill in the __EVENTTARGET and __EVENTARGUEMENT hidden fields with the appropriate values from the method call and submit the form.

Of course you also need to fill in the data you actually want to save into the input control for the text box. It will probably be easier to do this if you use the basic text box mode of the HTML module, then you just need to set the value of a textarea rather than figure out where to insert the value in the fckEditor, and the technique will be still work if the site is configured to use the Telerik provider instead of the fck provider.

One thing to watch out for is that the control name may change from time to time, so you need to be sure you are reading the correct ids for the event target, and textarea not just hard coding something.