HttpWebRequest: How to find a postal code at Canada Post through a WebRequest with x-www-form-enclos
- by Will Marcouiller
I'm currently writing some tests so that I may improve my skills with the Internet interaction through Windows Forms. One of those tests is to find a postal code which should be returned by Canada Post website.
My default URL setting is set to: http://www.canadapost.ca/cpotools/apps/fpc/personal/findByCity?execution=e4s1
The required form fields are: streetNumber, streetName, city, province
The contentType is "application/x-www-form-enclosed"
EDIT: Please consider the value "application/x-www-form-encoded" instead of point 3 value as the contentType. (Thanks EricLaw-MSFT!)
The result I get is not the result expected. I get the HTML source code of the page where I could manually enter the information to find the postal code, but not the HTML source code with the found postal code. Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?
Shall I consider going the XML way? Is it first of all possible to search on Canada Post anonymously?
Here's a code sample for better description:
public static string FindPostalCode(ICanadadianAddress address) {
var postData = string.Concat(string.Format("&streetNumber={0}", address.StreetNumber)
, string.Format("&streetName={0}", address.StreetName)
, string.Format("&city={0}", address.City)
, string.Format("&province={0}", address.Province));
var encoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
byte[] postDataBytes = encoding.GetBytes(postData);
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(DefaultUrlSettings);
request.ImpersonationLevel = System.Security.Principal.TokenImpersonationLevel.Anonymous;
request.Container = new CookieContainer();
request.Timeout = 10000;
request.ContentType = contentType;
request.ContentLength = postDataBytes.LongLength;
request.Method = @"post";
var senderStream = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream());
senderStream.Write(postDataBytes, 0, postDataBytes.Length);
senderStream.Close();
string htmlResponse = new StreamReader(request.GetResponse().GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
return processedResult(htmlResponse); // Processing the HTML source code parsing, etc.
}
I seem stuck in a bottle neck in my point of view. I find no way out to the desired result.
EDIT: There seems to have to parameters as for the ContentType of this site. Let me explain.
There's one with the "meta"-variables which stipulates the following:
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml,
text/xml, text/html; charset=utf-8"
And another one later down the code that is read as:
form id="fpcByAdvancedSearch:fpcSearch" name="fpcByAdvancedSearch:fpcSearch" method="post" action="/cpotools/apps/fpc/personal/findByCity?execution=e1s1" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
My question is the following: With which one do I have to stick?
Let me guess, the first ContentType is to be considered as the second is only for another request to a function or so when the data is posted?
EDIT: As per request, the closer to the solution I am is listed under this question:
WebRequest: How to find a postal code using a WebRequest against this ContentType=”application/xhtml+xml, text/xml, text/html; charset=utf-8”?
Thanks for any help! :-)
