I have a button on a page that needs to be clicked for me to move on to the next page in a sequence, and I was wondering how this is possible with Python. The button seems to be the mix of an HTTP POST request and Javascript, here is the code for the button:

<FORM name="ff" action="nq2.phtml" method="post">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="target" value="-1">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="fact" value="">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="parm" value="">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="use_id" value="-1">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="nxactor" value="1">
  <TD align="center" valign="top">
  <DIV class="pr">
  <A href="javascript:;" onClick="settarget(5); setch(ch5); return false;">

I honestly have no idea how to approach something like this and was wondering if anyone had some insight about how I would go about doing it.

I have a button on a page that needs to be clicked for me to move on to the next page in a sequence, and I was wondering how this is possible with Python. The button seems to be the mix of an HTTP POST request and Javascript, here is the code for the button:

<FORM name="ff" action="nq2.phtml" method="post">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="target" value="-1">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="fact" value="">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="parm" value="">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="use_id" value="-1">
  <INPUT type="hidden" name="nxactor" value="1">
  <TD align="center" valign="top">
  <DIV class="pr">
  <A href="javascript:;" onClick="settarget(5); setch(ch5); return false;">

I honestly have no idea how to approach something like this and was wondering if anyone had some insight about how I would go about doing it.

• javascript
• python
• html
• post

• What does settarget() function do? Anyway you can't do it with Python but you have to do it with javascript (with a setTimeout() if you need delay). – Fabio Buda Commented Jan 19, 2012 at 7:10
• @FabioBuda Apparently you can! ;) – HarryCBurn Commented Oct 27, 2014 at 17:50
• How did you get the code for this button? Wireshark? – Yu Zhang Commented Feb 2, 2017 at 7:31

1 Answer 1

To simulate the submission of a form, you can send the same POST request that your browser will send to the site once the submit button is clicked. One way to do this is use urllib.urlencode to encode the form data from a dictionary and urllib2.urlopen to send the request:

import urllib, urllib2
form_data = urllib.urlencode({'target': <value>, 'fact': <value>, ...})
urllib2.urlopen("np2.phtml", form_data)