expression engine log-in
Simplehat
- Joined: May 23, 2010
- Posts: 3
I'm trying to create a bot that will log into an account on an expression engine forum, such as this forum: http://fatnews.com/index.php/member/profile/, and edit the account's bio. It needs to run in the background, so I'm trying to use the Download from web action.
Here's the information I'm putting in the action:
URL: Select http:// and paste fatnews.com/index.php/member/profile/ in the text box.
Method: Post
Post Parameters:
username (account username)
password (account password)
auto_login 0
anon 0
ACT 9
site_id 1
FROM (blank)
RET http://fatnews.com/index.php/member/profile/
I found all of those things by looking at the source text for the page.
Here's the return data I get when I run the bot.
<html>
<head>
<title>Error</title>
<style type="text/css">
body {
background-color: #ffffff;
margin: 50px;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Sans-serif;
font-size: 11px;
color: #000;
background-color: #fff;
}
a {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
letter-spacing: .09em;
text-decoration: none;
color: #330099;
background-color: transparent;
}
a:visited {
color: #330099;
background-color: transparent;
}
a:active {
color: #ccc;
background-color: transparent;
}
a:hover {
color: #000;
text-decoration: underline;
background-color: transparent;
}
#content {
border: #999999 1px solid;
padding: 22px 25px 14px 25px;
}
h1 {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 14px;
color: #000;
margin-top: 0;
margin-bottom: 14px;
}
p {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 12px;
margin-bottom: 14px;
color: #000;
}
ul {
margin-bottom: 16px;
}
li {
list-style: square;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 8px;
margin-bottom: 8px;
color: #000;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="content">
<h1>The following errors were encountered</h1>
<ul><li>You are not authorized to perform this action</li>
</ul>
<p><a href='JavaScript:history.go(-1)'>Return to Previous Page</a></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Can anyone tell me how to use the download from web action to log into the site? I'm lost. Thanks in advance.
D.M.Altizer
- Joined: Jan 12, 2010
- Posts: 204
Hello there,
There are a couple of things that you should notice when you are trying to use the "Download from Web" action:
- The URL in the "Download from Web" action, should be the same with the "action" property of the <form> tag. In your example, the form tag is:
<form id='member_login_form' method="post" action="http://fatnews.com/index.php" >
so your URL is fatnews.com/index.php
- The second thing that you should notice is that some of the hidden inputs may have standard values and some may not. So, in your example, the post parameters:
ACT, RET, FROM, site_id seem to have a standard value, but the XID parameter seems to be something that changes everytime that you try to login. This is why, you should probable use a "Download from Web" action with the "Get" method and the URL:
fatnews.com/index.php/member/profile
Then, in the variable that you will get from this download from web action, you should use a Parse Text action, retrieve the first occurrence only, and use the following regular expression to grab the XID parameter and save it in a variable (remember to check the "Use Regular Expressions" checkbox and use the %Match% variable):
(?<=<input\stype="hidden"\sname="XID"\svalue=").*?(?=")
After that, you can post to the URL:
fatnews.com/index.php
and use the static parameters for the rest of the inputs, and the %Match% that you got from the "Parse Text" action for the XID input.
If you can't make it work, let me know and I will create a sample job for you.
Simplehat
- Joined: May 23, 2010
- Posts: 3
Works like a charm! Thanks.
D.M.Altizer
- Joined: Jan 12, 2010
- Posts: 204
Glad that I could help :)