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How to read the data returned from WebRequest in asp.net ?

Answer 1

+1 A:

I believe madcolor is thinking of a different scenario; you're making a completely new webrequest on the server, which means there are no request parameters; you're dealing with a response. Esentially, you've become the web browser, and you have to do the parsing yourself.

Since the e-store you're using is an app that's designed for browsers, you'll have to deal with the limitations inherent to that format. You're esentially bound to "screen scraping" techniques, because the server doesn't see the text from the response as anything other than that: plain text.

If you're dealing with valid XHTML, you can load it into an XmlDocument, and use XPath/XQuery to pull out the values.

If you're dealing with standard crappy HTML, you're going to have to resort to some parsing; I'd suggest a regex for this one.

Ideally, there would be a non-HTML based version of the e-shop, so you would know you were working with valid XML/JSON/whatever, but if there is no alternative, you're stuck ripping the data out yourself.

jvenema 2009-03-27 22:18:00

I ve posted the xhtml, could you please take a look

Barbaros Alp 2009-03-27 22:26:15

Answer 2

A:

I can't see a way around having to parse the HTML that comes back from the WebRequest. If you're lucky it might be valid XML. Otherwise you'll have to do your own string parsing or use one of the other HTML parsers.

David 2009-03-27 22:19:34

Answer 3

A:

This is the returned data...

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<!-- gateerr_en.htm -->
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
function moveWindow() {
  document.returnform.submit();
}
</script>  
</head>

<body onLoad="javascript:moveWindow()">
<form action="urlHere" method="post" name="returnform">

    <input type="hidden" name="clientid" value="xxx">
    <input type="hidden" name="oid" value="">

    <input type="hidden" name="mdStatus" value="7">
    <input type="hidden" name="mdErrorMsg" value="Tanimlanamayan">

    <input type="hidden" name="ErrMsg" value="Tanimlanamayan">
    <input type="hidden" name="Response" value="Error">
    <input type="hidden" name="ProcReturnCode" value="99"> 


    <!-- To support javascript unaware/disabled browsers -->
    <noscript>
     <center>
     An Error Occurred, Please Click to continue.<br>
     <input type="submit"  value="Submit"></center>
    </noscript> 
</form>
</body>
</html>

I need to get those hidden inputs

Barbaros Alp 2009-03-27 22:25:29

Use this regex:<input type="hidden".+value="(.*)"/{0,1}>That'll give you only the inputs with type hidden, and the first group will have the value.

jvenema 2009-03-30 14:47:53

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How to read the data returned from WebRequest in asp.net ?

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