Hi Faraz, Have a look at some of the facebook projects on codeplex http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?projectSearchText=facebook
Regards, Raghu On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Faraz Azhar <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello > > Im working on VB.NET <http://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 >
