populate form from php script and send it - php

Question

I searched the web and found nothing.
On the website, there is a Input box for a E-Mail address. I would like to fill this field with an e-mail address and the send the form.
I found this code:
$postdata = http_build_query(
array(
'email' => 'youremailaddress'
)
);
$opts = array('http' =>
array(
'method' => 'POST',
'header' => 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'content' => $postdata
)
);
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$result = file_get_contents('http://example.com/submit.php', false, $context);
But in my case, the action file is the current page itself and the url is rewritted. So when I put the url like this:
$result = file_get_contents('http://example.com/login.html', false, $context);
var_dump($result);
I get the page but the form is not sent

Answer 1

You may want to check out the Selenium Webdriver & PHPUnit to accomplish this task. You should be able to easily fill out the form and submit it even if the submission URL changes every time. Here's an example of how this would work:
<?php
class phproTest extends PHPUnit_Extensions_Selenium2TestCase
{
protected function setUp()
{
// Which browser to use
$this->setBrowser('firefox');
// The base URL
$this->setBrowserUrl('http://example.com/');
}
public function testContactFormExists()
{
$this->url( 'http://example.com/login.html' );
$email = $this->byName( 'sender_email' );
$submit = $this->byName( 'submit_button' );
$this->assertEquals( '', $email->value() );
$this->assertEquals( 'Submit', $submit->value() );
}
public function testSubmitToSelf()
{
// set the url
$this->url( 'contact' );
// create a form object for reuse
$form = $this->byId( 'contact_form' );
// get the form action
$action = $form->attribute( 'action' );
// check the action value
$this->assertEquals( 'http://example.com/login.html', $action );
// fill in the form field values
$this->byName( 'sender_email' )->value( 'youremailhere' );
// submit the form
$form->submit();
}
}
?>
Looks like a lot but once you break it down, it's not so bad. By using this method, you will be using an actual browser (in this case firefox) to fill out and submit the form. This will load and process javascript which may be needed to create the unique submission URL depending on how your form is created.

Answer 2

One option that may work for you is Goutte written by Fabien Potencier to submit forms.
Example code from packagist:
$crawler = $client->request('GET', 'http://github.com/');
$crawler = $client->click($crawler->selectLink('Sign in')->link());
$form = $crawler->selectButton('Sign in')->form();
$crawler = $client->submit($form, array('login' => 'fabpot', 'password' => 'xxxxxx'));
$crawler->filter('.flash-error')->each(function ($node) {
print $node->text()."\n";
});
Get it on Packagist: https://packagist.org/packages/fabpot/goutte