Information on Server Is Not Updated

Question

I've been testing HtmlUnit with a few sites; in all these sites,they have elements such as a radio button or checkbox that when you click, then your profile on that site is updated; you don't need to submit a form or anything. But when I take the exact same actions with HtmlUnit, my profile on the server is not really updated. Do I have to do something special such as synchronizing the local copy of the page that HtmlUnit has with the server so that the server sees the change? As an example, I have added my code for switching my resume on a website from private/public and vice versa. When I visit the page on a browser, all I have to do is click one of the two radio buttons to make the resume public/private; but when I do the same on HtmlUnit, and then go and visit the page on a browser to check, I can see that the information on the server hasn't been changed. I've included my code below. Note that I have another method which logs in to the site, and I know that I login correctly. Given this is happening with my sites for me, I thought maybe there is something like synchronizing with the server that I'm not doing.

=====================================

    public void update(String urlOfThePage)
    {
        // First, declare any element name or xapth that you are going to
use.        String xpathOfIsPublicRadioButton = "//input[@id='privacy_show']";
        String xpathOfIsPrivateRadioButton = "//input[@id='privacy_hide']";

        // Get the first page
        try
        {
            final HtmlPage resumePage = (HtmlPage) webclient.getPage(urlOfThePage);
            CrawlerUtility.savePage(resumePage, "resumePage");
            final HtmlRadioButtonInput makePublicRadioButton  =
(HtmlRadioButtonInput)

resumePage.getFirstByXPath(xpathOfIsPublicRadioButton);
            final HtmlRadioButtonInput makePrivateRadioButton  =
                                       (HtmlRadioButtonInput)
resumePage.getFirstByXPath(xpathOfIsPrivateRadioButton);
            Page result = null;
            if (isProfilePublic())
            {
                result = makePrivateRadioButton.click();
                System.out.println("The Profile is changed to private
now.");
                Thread.sleep(60000);
            }
            else
            {
                result = makePublicRadioButton.click();
                System.out.println("The Profile is changed to public now.");
                Thread.sleep(60000);
            }

        }
        catch (Throwable e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }//End of try/catch block.


    }//End of update().

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 10 '15 at 17:51

1

If you don't submit a form, then you may be using AJAX behind the scenes to send data to the server. HTML unit won't send the same to the server since it will not process the AJAX requests. What you need is something more sophisticated such as Sikuli http://www.sikuli.org which actually clicks on elements on your webpage in the exact same way a user does. You can also try Selenium (http://www.seleniumhq.org/) which is specific to web browsers.

answered Aug 10 '15 at 17:51

Akira

4,001
1
16
24

Thanks for your answer. As far as I know, HtmlUnit is supposed to execute JavaScript and Ajax just as a browser does. So, Ajax requests are supposed to be sent. Now, if JavaScript runs into an error and is not executed correctly, that's would explain the problem. But with respect to Sikuli, I doubt it is more sophisticated than HtmlUnit. – user1888243 Aug 10 '15 at 18:01
Sikuli and HTMLunit are very different things. Sikuli is partof an MIT research that uses computational vision to search for elements on screen to click and simulate user input. Therefore there is no browser emulation. You are actually running the actual browser. – Akira Aug 10 '15 at 21:00

Information on Server Is Not Updated

1 Answers1