Using BrowserSession and HtmlAgilityPack to login to Facebook through .NET
Solution 1
Sorry, I don't know much about the HTML agility pack or BrowserSession class you've mentioned. But I did try the same scenario with HtmlUnit and it working just fine. I'm using a .NET wrapper (the source code of which can be found here and is explained a bit more here), and here's the code I've used (some details removed to protect the innocent):
var driver = new HtmlUnitDriver(true);
driver.Url = @"http://www.facebook.com/login.php";
var email = driver.FindElement(By.Name("email"));
email.SendKeys("[email protected]");
var pass = driver.FindElement(By.Name("pass"));
pass.SendKeys("xxxxxxxx");
var inputs = driver.FindElements(By.TagName("input"));
var loginButton = (from input in inputs
where input.GetAttribute("value").ToLower() == "login"
&& input.GetAttribute("type").ToLower() == "submit"
select input).First();
loginButton.Click();
driver.Url = @"https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1111111111";
Assert.That(driver.Title, Is.StringContaining("Title of page goes here"));
Hope this helps.
Solution 2
I fixed the root cause of this if anyone cares. It turns out the cookies were being saved in the CookieContainer of the REQUEST object and not the response object. I also added the ability to download a file (provided that file is string based). Code definitely is NOT thread-safe, but the object wasn't thread-safe to begin with:
public class BrowserSession
{
private bool _isPost;
private bool _isDownload;
private HtmlDocument _htmlDoc;
private string _download;
/// <summary>
/// System.Net.CookieCollection. Provides a collection container for instances of Cookie class
/// </summary>
public CookieCollection Cookies { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Provide a key-value-pair collection of form elements
/// </summary>
public FormElementCollection FormElements { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Makes a HTTP GET request to the given URL
/// </summary>
public string Get(string url)
{
_isPost = false;
CreateWebRequestObject().Load(url);
return _htmlDoc.DocumentNode.InnerHtml;
}
/// <summary>
/// Makes a HTTP POST request to the given URL
/// </summary>
public string Post(string url)
{
_isPost = true;
CreateWebRequestObject().Load(url, "POST");
return _htmlDoc.DocumentNode.InnerHtml;
}
public string GetDownload(string url)
{
_isPost = false;
_isDownload = true;
CreateWebRequestObject().Load(url);
return _download;
}
/// <summary>
/// Creates the HtmlWeb object and initializes all event handlers.
/// </summary>
private HtmlWeb CreateWebRequestObject()
{
HtmlWeb web = new HtmlWeb();
web.UseCookies = true;
web.PreRequest = new HtmlWeb.PreRequestHandler(OnPreRequest);
web.PostResponse = new HtmlWeb.PostResponseHandler(OnAfterResponse);
web.PreHandleDocument = new HtmlWeb.PreHandleDocumentHandler(OnPreHandleDocument);
return web;
}
/// <summary>
/// Event handler for HtmlWeb.PreRequestHandler. Occurs before an HTTP request is executed.
/// </summary>
protected bool OnPreRequest(HttpWebRequest request)
{
AddCookiesTo(request); // Add cookies that were saved from previous requests
if (_isPost) AddPostDataTo(request); // We only need to add post data on a POST request
return true;
}
/// <summary>
/// Event handler for HtmlWeb.PostResponseHandler. Occurs after a HTTP response is received
/// </summary>
protected void OnAfterResponse(HttpWebRequest request, HttpWebResponse response)
{
SaveCookiesFrom(request, response); // Save cookies for subsequent requests
if (response != null && _isDownload)
{
Stream remoteStream = response.GetResponseStream();
var sr = new StreamReader(remoteStream);
_download = sr.ReadToEnd();
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Event handler for HtmlWeb.PreHandleDocumentHandler. Occurs before a HTML document is handled
/// </summary>
protected void OnPreHandleDocument(HtmlDocument document)
{
SaveHtmlDocument(document);
}
/// <summary>
/// Assembles the Post data and attaches to the request object
/// </summary>
private void AddPostDataTo(HttpWebRequest request)
{
string payload = FormElements.AssemblePostPayload();
byte[] buff = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(payload.ToCharArray());
request.ContentLength = buff.Length;
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
System.IO.Stream reqStream = request.GetRequestStream();
reqStream.Write(buff, 0, buff.Length);
}
/// <summary>
/// Add cookies to the request object
/// </summary>
private void AddCookiesTo(HttpWebRequest request)
{
if (Cookies != null && Cookies.Count > 0)
{
request.CookieContainer.Add(Cookies);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Saves cookies from the response object to the local CookieCollection object
/// </summary>
private void SaveCookiesFrom(HttpWebRequest request, HttpWebResponse response)
{
//save the cookies ;)
if (request.CookieContainer.Count > 0 || response.Cookies.Count > 0)
{
if (Cookies == null)
{
Cookies = new CookieCollection();
}
Cookies.Add(request.CookieContainer.GetCookies(request.RequestUri));
Cookies.Add(response.Cookies);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Saves the form elements collection by parsing the HTML document
/// </summary>
private void SaveHtmlDocument(HtmlDocument document)
{
_htmlDoc = document;
FormElements = new FormElementCollection(_htmlDoc);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Represents a combined list and collection of Form Elements.
/// </summary>
public class FormElementCollection : Dictionary<string, string>
{
/// <summary>
/// Constructor. Parses the HtmlDocument to get all form input elements.
/// </summary>
public FormElementCollection(HtmlDocument htmlDoc)
{
var inputs = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.Descendants("input");
foreach (var element in inputs)
{
string name = element.GetAttributeValue("name", "undefined");
string value = element.GetAttributeValue("value", "");
if (!this.ContainsKey(name))
{
if (!name.Equals("undefined"))
{
Add(name, value);
}
}
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Assembles all form elements and values to POST. Also html encodes the values.
/// </summary>
public string AssemblePostPayload()
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (var element in this)
{
string value = System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(element.Value);
sb.Append("&" + element.Key + "=" + value);
}
return sb.ToString().Substring(1);
}
}
Solution 3
You might want to use WatiN (Web Application Testing In .Net) Or Selenium to drive your browser. This will help make sure you don't have to fiddle with the cookies and do any custom work to make subsequent requests work since you're simulating actual user.
Solution 4
I had similar symptoms - login worked but authentication cookie was not present in the cookie container and so it was not sent on subsequent requests. I found out this was because the web request was handling the Location: header internally, redirecting behind the scenes to a new page, losing the cookies in the process. I fixed this by adding:
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false; // Location header messing up cookie handling!
...to the OnPreRequest() function. It now looks like this:
protected bool OnPreRequest(HttpWebRequest request)
{
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false; // Location header messing up cookie handling!
AddCookiesTo(request); // Add cookies that were saved from previous requests
if (_isPost) AddPostDataTo(request); // We only need to add post data on a POST request
return true;
}
I hope this can help someone experiencing the same issue.
Solution 5
Today I was facing the same problem. I also worked with Rohit Agarwal's BrowserSession class together with HtmlAgilityPack. After trial and error programming the whole day, I figured out that the problem is caused, because of not setting the correct cookies in the subsequent requests. I couln't change the initial BrowserSession code to work correctly but I added the following functions and slightly modified the SameCookieFrom-function. In the end it worked nicely for me.
The added/modified functions are the following:
class BrowserSession{
private bool _isPost;
private HtmlDocument _htmlDoc;
public CookieContainer cookiePot; //<- This is the new CookieContainer
...
public string Get2(string url)
{
HtmlWeb web = new HtmlWeb();
web.UseCookies = true;
web.PreRequest = new HtmlWeb.PreRequestHandler(OnPreRequest2);
web.PostResponse = new HtmlWeb.PostResponseHandler(OnAfterResponse2);
HtmlDocument doc = web.Load(url);
return doc.DocumentNode.InnerHtml;
}
public bool OnPreRequest2(HttpWebRequest request)
{
request.CookieContainer = cookiePot;
return true;
}
protected void OnAfterResponse2(HttpWebRequest request, HttpWebResponse response)
{
//do nothing
}
private void SaveCookiesFrom(HttpWebResponse response)
{
if ((response.Cookies.Count > 0))
{
if (Cookies == null)
{
Cookies = new CookieCollection();
}
Cookies.Add(response.Cookies);
cookiePot.Add(Cookies); //-> add the Cookies to the cookiePot
}
}
What it does: It basically saves the cookies from the initial "Post-Response" and adds the same CookieContainer to the request called later. I do not fully understand why it was not working in the initial version because it somehow does the same in the AddCookiesTo-function. (if (Cookies != null && Cookies.Count > 0) request.CookieContainer.Add(Cookies);) Anyhow, with these added functions it should work fine now.
It can be used like this:
//initial "Login-procedure"
BrowserSession b = new BrowserSession();
b.Get("http://www.blablubb/login.php");
b.FormElements["username"] = "yourusername";
b.FormElements["password"] = "yourpass";
string response = b.Post("http://www.blablubb/login.php");
all subsequent calls should use:
response = b.Get2("http://www.blablubb/secondpageyouwannabrowseto");
response = b.Get2("http://www.blablubb/thirdpageyouwannabrowseto");
...
I hope it helps many people facing the same problem!
Admin
Updated on August 02, 2022Comments
-
Admin over 1 year
I'm trying to use Rohit Agarwal's BrowserSession class together with HtmlAgilityPack to login to and subsequently navigate around Facebook.
I've previously managed doing the same by writing my own HttpWebRequest's. However, it then only works when I manually fetch the cookie from my browser and insert a fresh cookie-string to the request each time I'm doing a new "session". Now I'm trying to use BrowserSession to get smarter navigation.
Here's the current code:
BrowserSession b = new BrowserSession(); b.Get(@"http://www.facebook.com/login.php"); b.FormElements["email"] = "[email protected]"; b.FormElements["pass"] = "xxxxxxxx"; b.FormElements["lsd"] = "qDhIH"; b.FormElements["trynum"] = "1"; b.FormElements["persistent_inputcheckbox"] = "1"; var response = b.Post(@"https://login.facebook.com/login.php?login_attempt=1");The above works fine. Trouble comes when I try to use this BrowserSession again to fetch another page. I'm doing it this way since BrowserSession saves the cookies from the last response and inserts them into the next request, thus I should not have to manually inser cookiedata fetched from my browser anymore.
However, when I try to do something like this:
var profilePage = b.Get(@"https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1111111111");the doc I get back is empty. I would appreciate any input on what I'm doing wrong.