Automating Javascript Web Form Input

[Dave Cragg]

On 27 Feb 2012, at 00:52, Kay C Lan wrote:

> If I manually enter the pdf file I wish to convert, from the resulting web
> page I can see how I can use LC to download the converted text file, what I
> don't know is how to us LC to feed the website my pdf file so I can
> automate the entire process.
> 
> I can see:
> onload="document.theForm.stdin.focus()"
> form name = "theForm"
> method="post"
> enctype="multipart/form-data"
> action="pdf2txt.htm"
> input type="file"
> name="stdin"
> 
> I'm assuming I use the LC 'post' command, but the example in the LC
> Dictionary is rather basic, my knowledge of Javascript nonexistent, so
> apart from using URLEncode to encode the pathname because it contains /, I
> don't know what of the above I need to include in post, and where I
> substitute the actual pathname to the file I wish to convert.

You'll need to use libURLMultipartFormData for this. Try something like this:

on mouseUp
   
   answer file ""  ## select the pdf file
   put it into tFilePath
   if tFilePath is empty then exit mouseUp
   
   put "http://www.fileformat.info/convert/doc/pdf2txt.htm" into tUrl
   
   put empty into tForm
   put "<file>" & tFilePath into tFile
   
   if libURLMultipartFormData(tForm, "stdin", tFile) is not empty then
          answer it ##error
   else
          set the httpHeaders to line 1 of tForm
          post line 2 to -1 of tForm to url tUrl
      	  put it into field 1 -- or whatever
          if the result is not empty then
         answer the result
      end if
          set the httpHeaders to empty
   end if
end mouseUp

I tried it and it seems to work, but it returns an html page from which you need to extract the url which will download the text file.

Cheers
Dave