Filling Out Web Form Data Using Built-In Python Modules
You do want Selenium. It simulates GUI interactions on a browser. When doing things like entering competition form data, this is going to be the way that is least detectable.
A note about selenium: It is not a language-specific library. There are client specific bindings for each language. Most examples and how-to's you'll see are actually written in Java.
A good resource is Selenium-python
Here's your working example. Including submit button.
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
i = 2 # do it 2 times
while i > 0:
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("http://www.jonessoda.com/contests/back2school")
def find_by_xpath(locator):
element = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(
EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, locator))
)
return element
class FormPage(object):
def fill_form(self, data):
find_by_xpath('//input[@name = "fname"]').send_keys(data['fname'])
find_by_xpath('//input[@name = "lname"]').send_keys(data['lname'])
find_by_xpath('//input[@name = "email"]').send_keys(data['email'])
find_by_xpath('//select[@name = "birthday_month"]').send_keys(data['month'])
find_by_xpath('//select[@name = "birthday_day"]').send_keys(data['day'])
find_by_xpath('//select[@name = "birthday_year"]').send_keys(data['year'])
return self # makes it so you can call .submit() after calling this function
def submit(self):
find_by_xpath('//input[@value = "Submit"]').click()
data = {
'fname': 'Sheep',
'lname': 'Test',
'email': '[email protected]',
'month': 'October',
'day': '29',
'year': '1920'
}
FormPage().fill_form(data).submit()
driver.quit() # closes the webbrowser
i = i - 1
Related videos on Youtube
DarkPirate
Updated on June 15, 2022Comments
-
DarkPirate almost 2 years
Alright so I have used mechanize, requests, beautiful soup, and even selenium on my venture to do something like this and I have come to the conclusion that urllib and the other default modules are the best way to go. Only problem is I can't figure out how to use it at all.. So can someone please show me some good places to learn about that specifically? Also I learn best by examples so if someone would convert this to what I am asking for that would be great (also include a submit button lol)
from selenium import webdriver driver = webdriver.Firefox() driver.get("http://www.jonessoda.com/contests/back2school") element = driver.find_element_by_name("fname") element.send_keys("Ben")
-
DarkPirate over 9 yearsThank you so much! EXACTLY what I was looking for... and I geuss GUI is pretty cool anyways. I am a beginner to python (A few weeks) I know most basic commands but one think I dont understand is the loop function. Could you edit this code to have a loop function? (Also submit isn't working)
-
Jess over 9 yearsAdded. Submit is working if you call it. You need to do
FormPage().submit()
for it to submit. -
Jess over 9 yearsAlso, if you do it like 1000x in a row it's very visible that your same ip address is spamming submissions in. I would look into scheduling it at various random times in the day.
-
DarkPirate over 9 yearsGreat works perfectly now thanks a lot man, and yes I know about submissions. I have been botting for a while now. Also how are proxies used using selenium? That is my last question :)
-
AdjunctProfessorFalcon almost 9 years@sheeptest Could this be adopted to login into Facebook or Instagram? Or would it not work with an OAuth login?
-
Jess almost 9 yearsGUI automation uses javascript to simulate browser interactions. There can be close to 0 differences between a real user and GUI automation. I don't know why you wouldn't call the OAuth login api directly tho. GUI automation should be your last resort.
-
Jess almost 9 yearsIf you're trying to do anything malicious, you'll run into issues using this method or hitting the API. (CAPTCHAs and Server-side lockout for N # invalid login attempts)
-
AdjunctProfessorFalcon almost 9 yearsIt is my last resort because there's no way to get the access code at the end of the redirect URL using raw API calls, I've tried a slew of methods and nothing's working....
-
AdjunctProfessorFalcon almost 9 yearsDefinitely not doing anything malicious, just trying to automate a part of my dev workflow...
-
Jess almost 9 yearsAccess code? like 2 factor authentication? I don't know what you're trying to get out of logging in to Facebook/Instagram for anything work-related. E2E tests should stub out third party integrations as much as possible.
-
Jess almost 9 yearsLet us continue this discussion in chat.