Question

I am trying to use cURL on an ASPX page, and I would like to know if I am not wasting my time dealing with the POSTing values I am not sure of: specifically being :

__VIEWSTATE  
__EVENTVALIDATION  
__EVENTTARGET  
 __EVENTARGUMENT 

I need to send several forms one after the other and I think the values rely on one another.
How can I learn how to generate the correct values for them ?

Answer 1

cURL is an HTTP client, it’ll happily hit whatever URI you tell it to in whatever way it’s instructed to as many times as you tell it. So the answer to “is it possible to use consecutive POSTS with cURL” is yes.

What I think you’re asking is how you can ensure that you’re using cURL to POST data — specifically, form variables — that safely simulate multiple form submissions for that particular site.

Your best bet here, as it is for any HTTP scripting/replay, is to carefully study what happens when you hit the page “normally”, ie with a browser.

As this blog post that’s doing something awfully similar to you suggests, you almost certainly want a tool like LiveHTTPHeaders to clearly see what’s going over the wire.

Once you know what to send, cURL is certainly equal to the task.