How to call the user's default browser with a post request.

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Hello!

I need to call a site with a post request in the user's default browser.

What I have tried:

I was able to do this using the web browser component:



Dim postData As String = "par1=val1&par2=" & val2
        Dim Encoding As System.Text.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8
        Dim bytes As Byte() = Encoding.GetBytes(postData)
        Dim url As String = "https://mysite/"
        webBrowser1.Navigate(url, String.Empty, bytes, "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded")

But this does not suit me, because. for this I have to create my form with a web browser, but I need to do all this in the user's default browser.

Does anyone know how this can be done?

Posted 6-Feb-22 19:16pm

Member 14609058

Updated 7-Feb-22 0:35am

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2 solutions

Solution 1

Now, on that website there is a button that performs a POST request and updates the content of the site, without changing the URL. I would like to directly show that updated site, rather than having the user clicking around on the website manually.

Is there any way to do this programmatically in C#?

One idea is doing the POST in C# and somehow pass the response to the browser. I know how to do HTTP requests in C# and I know what parameters I need to send here, but I don't know of a way to make the browser display the response.

Any other ideas are welcome, too.

Posted 6-Feb-22 20:12pm

Member 15525962

Updated 6-Feb-22 20:33pm

Comments

OriginalGriff 7-Feb-22 2:38am

Please do not post things like this as a solution - it removes it from the "Unanswered" queue and that makes it less likely the OP will get an answer.
If you must post comments like this (and your other contribution) then use the "Have a question or comment" facility below the question instead.

Posting "non-answers" can be seen as "rep point farming" and that is considered a form of site abuse for which you can be kicked off the site permanently. I don't think that was the idea here, but the more trigger happy amongst us will assume it was if you continue.

Would you like me to delete this for you?

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Richard Deeming · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-07T00:35:00

Option 1:
Write code to determine the user's default browser. Then write code to automate their default browser. This will need to be different for each browser, since there isn't a standard way to automate them. There may be some browsers which don't support this kind of automation. And you will likely still end up with users whose default browser is some obscure product you've never heard of, so your code won't work for them.

Option 2:
Create a page on your own website which accepts the value to post as a querystring parameter, and returns a pre-populated <form> with some Javascript to automatically submit the form when the page loads. Then construct the URL to your site, and use Process.Start to launch the user's default browser and navigate to that URL.

VB.NET

Process.Start("https://yoursite.local/redirect-to-target/?par1=val1&par2=" & val2)

Option 3:
Create a temporary HTML file on disk containing a pre-populated <form> and some Javascript to submit the form when the page loads. Use Process.Start to open that HTML file in the user's default browser (assuming they haven't configured HTML files to open in a different application or browser).

VB.NET

Dim html As String = $"
<form id=""f"" method=""POST"" action=""https://mysite/"">
    <input type=""hidden"" name=""par1"" value=""val1"" />
    <input type=""hidden"" name=""par2"" value=""{val2}"" />
</form>
<script>
document.getElementById('f').submit();
</script>
"

Dim fileName As String = Path.Combine(Path.GetTempPath(), Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N") + ".html")
File.WriteAllText(fileName, html)

Process.Start(fileName)

You'll want to clean up these temporary HTML files once you've finished with them.