Question

How does one log in to a website programmatically?

I just want to check that the provided username and password of a website is correct or not.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this from .NET is Watin. You would do something like:

 using (var browser = new IE("http://mysite.com"))
 {
  browser.TextField(Find.ByName("email")).TypeText("[e-mail]");
  browser.TextField(Find.ByName("password")).TypeText("password");
  browser.Button(Find.ByName("login")).Click();

  if (browser.ContainsText("Welcome [e-mail]!"))
  {
    // Success
  } 
 }

To do it with HttpWebRequest, you would:

var req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
req.Method = "POST";
req.ContentLength = postContent.Length;
req.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";

using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(req.GetRequestStream()))
{
    streamWriter.Write(postContent);
}

using (var res = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse())
{
  _status = res.StatusCode;
  using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(res.GetResponseStream()))
  {
    response = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
  }
}       

Just to add a 3rd way, you could also use WebClient:

var nvc = new NameValueCollection();
nvc.Add("email", "[e-mail]");
nvc.Add("password", "password");

var wc = new WebClient();
byte[] responseArray = wc.UploadValues("http://mysite.com",nvc);
string responseText = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(responseArray));