Interacting with a form on an external website
I am developing a program to automate some of the more repetitive tasks of my job. One of these tasks is to add some simple information to a form on a website that is run internally by the company for which I work, and then to submit that form. Unfortunately, this website does not have an API I can access, so I will need to use screen scraping techniques to achieve my goals.
I originally used the COM object SHDocVw to create a hidden browser object through which I could interact with the website.
dim ieBrowser as new SHDocVw.InternetExplorer
ieBrowser.navigate("www.website.com")
Do until ieBrowser.ReadyState = SHDocVw.tagREADYSTATE.READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Loop
.
.
.
This works fine in my test environment, but when the site is published to the new server, the Do loop never completes. ReadyState remains READYSTATE_LOADING, and the page never resolves.
I have opened the security on the server as well as I know how, and if I type the web address in IE on the server, I can navigate without issue. I am looking for insight into what I may be missing, as well as other possible approaches (hopefully another object that is intrinsic to .net).
I realize that I can retrieve data from the website using System.Net.HTTPWebRequest, but I don't think I can fill in controls on the remote site, or submit the post with this object.
Any assistance is appreciated.
Thank you for your time.