I need help reading the contents of a webpage. Currently i am using the following method to read the contents

BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(page.openStream())); 
String inputLine;
while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null)
{Content = Content + inputLine;}

However with this method there is a problem. . some jsp pages have ajax in them which randomly updates a css class of a webpage like so Javascript code just to give an idea:

if (request.readyState === 4 && request.status === 200) 
{
var type = request.getResponseHeader("Content-Type");
$('.update').empty();
$('.update').append(request.responseText); //update the css class
}

So as a result when this page reader is read through my java method as mentioned above i just get

<div class="update"></div>

although on the screen this class has a value. Now however if i save the page first (by clicking save as in Firefox) then the values appended in the CSS class by jquery are also visible. Is there a method or a way on how i could read the values or obtain the values like firefox does by saving the pages.. I want to read the contents of the entire webpage with the Ajax values present in the string.

On one side i read that this is difficult since the JAvascript in rendered and executed by the browser so i wanted to know does firefox have any apis that might help ? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I need help reading the contents of a webpage. Currently i am using the following method to read the contents

BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(page.openStream())); 
String inputLine;
while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null)
{Content = Content + inputLine;}

However with this method there is a problem. . some jsp pages have ajax in them which randomly updates a css class of a webpage like so Javascript code just to give an idea:

if (request.readyState === 4 && request.status === 200) 
{
var type = request.getResponseHeader("Content-Type");
$('.update').empty();
$('.update').append(request.responseText); //update the css class
}

So as a result when this page reader is read through my java method as mentioned above i just get

<div class="update"></div>

although on the screen this class has a value. Now however if i save the page first (by clicking save as in Firefox) then the values appended in the CSS class by jquery are also visible. Is there a method or a way on how i could read the values or obtain the values like firefox does by saving the pages.. I want to read the contents of the entire webpage with the Ajax values present in the string.

On one side i read that this is difficult since the JAvascript in rendered and executed by the browser so i wanted to know does firefox have any apis that might help ? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

• java
• javascript
• jquery
• webharvest

• 1 You're going to have to render the web page, not just read it with a StreamReader. Google search "Web rendering in Java" (without the quotes) to see if you find something you can work with. – Gilbert Le Blanc Commented Apr 9, 2012 at 14:17

2 Answers 2

You may find the following project useful:

• HTMLUnit

Here is also a very informative blog post from Data Big Bang.

Also check out PhantomJS. In the same way that Crowbar is a headless Mozilla browser, PhantomJS is a headless WebKit browser - the engine that Safari and Google Chrome use.