Programatically interact with webpage

[Mondeo]

See this page

 

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/cgi-bin/inyourarea/dist.pl

 

How can I programatically put two postcodes into the form and then submit it so I can parse the HTML response and get the distance?

 

Thanks

[MrPaul]

HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse

 

I recommend the (Http)WebRequest and (Http)WebResponse classes within System.Net. If you look at the source of the web page you will find the names of the two fields - postcode1 and postcode2. You will need to create the POST data for the page, encoded correctly, and then attach it to the request.

 

'Imports:
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Net
Imports System.Web



Public Function GetPostcodeDistance( _
   ByVal startPostcode As String, _
   ByVal endPostcode As String _
) As String


   Const siteUrl As String = "http://www.dfes.gov.uk/cgi-bin/inyourarea/dist.pl"

   Dim webReq As HttpWebRequest
   Dim webResp As WebResponse
   Dim reqStm As StreamWriter
   Dim respStm As StreamReader
   Dim postData As String

   'Create web request
   webReq = DirectCast(WebRequest.Create(siteUrl), HttpWebRequest)
   webReq.Method = "POST"
   reqStm = New StreamWriter(webReq.GetRequestStream())

   'Write post data to the stream
   postData = "postcode1=" & HttpUtility.UrlEncode(startPostcode)
   postData &= "&postcode2=" & HttpUtility.UrlEncode(endPostcode)
   reqStm.Write(postData)

   'Send request and get response
   webResp = webReq.GetResponse()

   'Read from stream
   respStm = New StreamReader(webResp.GetResponseStream())

   'Parse HTML here

End Function

 

Good luck :cool: