Pressing A Webpage Button

[Grant Edwards]

On 2005-06-01, Elliot Temple <curi at curi.us> wrote:

> How do I make Python press a button on a webpage?

You just do whatever action is specified for the form
containing the button.

> I looked at urllib, but I only see how to open a URL with
> that.

Guess what happens when you push that button:  the browser
opens a URL.

> I searched google but no luck.
>
> For example, google has a button   <input type=submit value="Google  
> Search" name=btnG>  how would i make a script to press that button?

Find the <form> containing the button, and look to see what the
URL is specified.   For Google, it looks something like this:

<form action="/search" naem="f">

So, /search is the URL you open.

> Just for fun, is there any way to do the equivalent of typing
> into a text field like the google search field before hitting
> the button?  (I don't actually need to do this.)

Sure.  Just send back the field value in the normal manner
using a GET.

> If someone could point me in the right direction it'd be appreciated.

You need an introductory book on HTTP and HTML.

If all you care about is a google query here's a python program
that prints the URL you need to open for a google query:

#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib,sys,os
queryString="whatever you're searching for"
print 'http://www.google.com/search?'+urllib.urlencode({'q':queryString})

I presume you can figure out how to open the URL instead of
printing it?

-- 
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