Hello Im working on VB.NET and im trying to do an automated login in Facebook. I've tried many ways such as HTTPWebRequest, WebClient, socket approach, WebBrowser, etc.
Only the webbrowser turned out to be successful, but that was the lamest way. I was entering ID and Password directly into the webpage after it was loaded and then submitting the form. I just want the html data so webbrowser doesnt fulfill the purpose as the webbrowser starts loading flash and other scripts and images. In other words im trying to do screen scraping of facebook. The hurdles in this coding is that login into the facebook requires form submitting AND handling cookies. I've made up a code using WebClient. Have a look! http://dotnetdevelopment.pastebin.com/m285ff7cd My approach has been this way: 1. First try to open the www.facebook.com/home.php 2. Obviously it wont open as we haven't logged in yet. So we will be redirected to a login page. 3. I extract the Cookies received thru this response. 4. I extract the hidden input tags in the HTML submit form. 5. Finally I will build up a fresh web request and insert the cookies received above along with the input tags, and of course the user ID and password. Now I *should* be arriving at a plain 2 line web page which says that login was successful and asks to redirect ourselves to the home page. *BUT* I am not getting this page. I've tried all possible ways to achieve this objective but I am failing terribly. Two common errors that facebook gives is that 'web browser is not cookie enabled' or 'incompatible browser'. But those issues have been resolved by me. First one required proper handling of cookies, latter one required UserAgent header to be set in the request. Right now im stuck at nowhere. I try to send the request but facebook throws me back to the login page without giving any error message. Need help! PS. My code above includes another function for handling cookies. Its code is here: http://dotnetdevelopment.pastebin.com/m313ec4b5
