POSTing to a website

Question

hi, i was wondering how i would go about posting to a website form, and then getting the data that the form returns. is this easy to do? and can it be done from like a java application. i want to automate entering some information into a text field. i would appreciate any help, thanks.

Answer 1

i wrote this and i am getting somewhere, but it seems what i am reading back is the same as if i were to just visit the main website www.mysite.com. anyone have any suggestions.
                URLConnection connection;
          BufferedReader in;
          PrintWriter out;
          String site = "http://www.mysite.com/",
          action = "/servlet/TestServlet?ACTION=SUBMITsomeotherrandomuserstuff";
          URL url = new URL(site + action);
          connection = url.openConnection();
          System.out.println("Connection Opened");
          ((HttpURLConnection)connection).setRequestMethod("POST");
          System.out.println("POST");
          connection.setDoOutput(true);
          out = new PrintWriter(connection.getOutputStream());
          out.println("asdf");
          out.close();
          in = new  BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
          String s;
          while( (s= in.readLine()) != null)
               System.out.println(in.readLine());