Question

I am currently in the process of automating a web interface for administrating users of an FTP.

I am trying to do this with HttpWebRequest, i have one call that logs me on the site and the second call is supose to add a new user for the FTP access.

I have tried my two urls in the browser and they work, they end up creating a user.

string login = "https://www.ftpsite.net/./panel/index.php?txvUsername=myaccount&txvPassword=myPassword&submitButton=Login";

this gets me logged in when i enter it in the browser address bar.

the second call to create a user is as follows.

string createUser = "https://www.ftpSite.net/panel/ftpsites/updatelogin?login_id=&login=toto123&realname=realnametoto&homedir=root&passwd=superpassword11&expdate=01-01-2100&neverExpire=on&quota_value=0&quota_unit=GB&group_id=0&status=on&ftp=on&filelist=on&ftp_download=on&http=on&web_filelist=on&web_download=on&email=";

This creates a user when i enter it in the browser’s address bar if it follows the one that logs us in.

My problem is that i am trying to do this using HttpWebRequest and without success. I can get myself logged in but when i try to create the user it seems to return a “bad” error code saying i have created too many users already which isnt the case since i can create more after that call. Here is the code i use with HtttpRequest

        _datCookie = new CookieContainer();
        HttpWebRequest httpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(login);
        httpWebRequest.Method = "POST";
        httpWebRequest.CookieContainer = _datCookie;

        WebResponse response = httpWebRequest.GetResponse();
        referer = response.ResponseUri.AbsoluteUri;

        Stream requestStream = response.GetResponseStream();
        StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(requestStream);
        _datCookie = httpWebRequest.CookieContainer;
        response.Close();



        httpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(createUser);
        httpWebRequest.CookieContainer = _datCookie;
        httpWebRequest.Referer = referer;
        httpWebRequest.Method = "POST";


        response = httpWebRequest.GetResponse();

        requestStream = response.GetResponseStream();
        streamReader = new StreamReader(requestStream);


        webBrowser.DocumentText = streamReader.ReadToEnd();

        response.Close();

What i caught and tried to imitate without success here.

Answer 1

Are you sure they should be POST requests? The URLs seem to have all of the fields in the query-string, which suggests they should be GET requests instead.

Based on the Fiddler screen-shot, you need to make a POST request with the fields in the body, not the query-string:

var cookies = new CookieContainer();

// Request 1 : Login
var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://www.ftpsite.net/./panel/index.php");
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.CookieContainer = cookies;

string postData = "txvUsername=myaccount&txvPassword=myPassword&submitButton=Login";
byte[] postBytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(postData);
request.ContentLength = postBytes.Length;
using (Stream bod = request.GetRequestStream())
{
   body.Write(postBytes, 0, postBytes.Length);
}

WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
string referer = response.ResponseUri.AbsoluteUri;

// Request 2 : Create user
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://www.ftpSite.net/panel/ftpsites/updatelogin");
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.CookieContainer = cookies;

postData = "login_id=&login=toto123&realname=realnametoto&homedir=root&passwd=superpassword11&expdate=01-01-2100&neverExpire=on&quota_value=0&quota_unit=GB&group_id=0&status=on&ftp=on&filelist=on&ftp_download=on&http=on&web_filelist=on&web_download=on&email=";
postBytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(postData);
request.ContentLength = postBytes.Length;
using (Stream bod = request.GetRequestStream())
{
   body.Write(postBytes, 0, postBytes.Length);
}

response = request.GetResponse();
requestStream = response.GetResponseStream();
streamReader = new StreamReader(requestStream);
webBrowser.DocumentText = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
response.Close();