sending request to a page

I'm trying to fill-out a form automatically and press a button on that form and wait for a response. How do I go about doing this? To be more particular, I have a a --HUGE-- collec开发者_JS百科tion DNA strains which I need to compare to each-other. Luckily, there's a website that does exactly what I need. Basically, I type-in 2 different sequences of DNA and click the "Align Sequences" button and get a result (the calculation of the score is not relevant). Is there a way to make a Java program that will automatically insert the input, "click" the button and read the response from this website?

Thanks!

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You can use the apache http client to send a request to a web site.

Look at the source to the page in question, and you'll find the part. This contains all the fields that need to be sent to the server. In particular, you'll see that it needs to be sent as a Post, rather than the more common Get. The link above shows you how to do a post with the http client code.

You'll need to provide a nameValuePair for every field in the form, such as these ones:

<input type="hidden" name="rm" value="lalign_x"/>
<input type="checkbox" name="show_ident" value="1" />
<textarea name="query" rows="6" cols="60">

It will probably take some trial and error for you to get all the fields set up correctly. I'd recommend doing this with small data sets. Once it all seems to be working, then try it with your bigger data.

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In Python you can use mechanize library (http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/). It's quite simple and you doesn't need to know Python very well to use it.

Simple example (filling login form):

br = Browser()
br.open(login_link)
br.select_form(name="login")
br["email"] = "email@server.com"
br["pass"] = "password"
br.submit()

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You could probably do this using Selenium.