submit form using HTTPURLConnection

Question

Hi I am trying to submit the following form using HTTPURLConnection as a exercise.

<form name="popnames" method="post" action="/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi" onsubmit="return       submitIt();">
<p>
<label for="year">Birth Year:</label><br>
<input type="text" name="year" size="5" maxlength="4" id="year" value="2011">
</p>
<p>
<label for="rank">Popularity:</label><br>
<select name="top" size="1" id="rank">


<option value="20">Top 20</option>
  <option value="50">Top 50</option>
  <option value="100">Top 100</option>
  <option value="500">Top 500</option>
  <option value="1000">Top 1000</option>
</select>
</p>
<fieldset>
<legend>Name rankings may include:</legend>
<input type="radio" name="number" value="p" id="percent">
<label for="percent">Percent of total births</label><br>
<input type="radio" name="number" value="n" id="number">
<label for="number">Number of births</label>
</fieldset>
<hr>
<input class="uef-btn uef-btn-primary" type="submit" value="  Go  ">
</form>

I am using HTTPURLConnection to do the submit This is my code and my test class

public class FormSubmitServiceTest {

@Test
public void testSubmit() throws Exception {
    String url = "http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/babynames/#ht=1";
    Map<String, String> data = new HashMap<String, String>();
    data.put("year", "2010");
    data.put("top", "50");
    data.put("number", "n");

    FormSubmitService service = new FormSubmitService();
    service.doSubmit(url, data);
}
}  

And my service class which does the work

public class FormSubmitService {

    public void doSubmit(String url, Map<String, String> data) throws IOException {
        URL siteUrl = new URL(url);
        HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) siteUrl.openConnection();
        conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
        conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", 
               "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
        conn.setUseCaches (true);
        conn.setDoOutput(true);
        conn.setDoInput(true);

        DataOutputStream out = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());

        Set keys = data.keySet();
        Iterator keyIter = keys.iterator();
        String content = "";
        for(int i=0; keyIter.hasNext(); i++) {
            Object key = keyIter.next();
            if(i!=0) {
                content += "&";
            }
            content += key + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(data.get(key), "UTF-8");
        }
        System.out.println(content);
        out.writeBytes(content);
        out.flush();
        out.close();
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
        String line = "";
        while((line=in.readLine())!=null) {
            System.out.println(line);
        }
        in.close();
    }
}

Can anybody advise why this does not work in submitting the form. Is it because I am not clicking the submit button with a value of GO. And if that is the case then how do i actually click it because I would expect to send a name value pair across but the submit button does not have a name only a value.

When I post the form from this code I expect the response to contain the same data as when I do the form submission manually which is the data on this page http://www.socialsecurity.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi.

However on running the test class the data in the response I get is the same as the original page http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/babynames/#ht=1.

All help appreciated

Thanks

Answer 1

I think that you'll notice that if you change the URL in your testcase to http://www.socialsecurity.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi it'll all work.